A SHORT HISTORY OF ATOMS

MUCH LIKE CAR KEYS when you’re in a hurry, you know atoms exist, but you just can’t see them.

Greek philosopher Democritus, who lived from roughly 460 to 370BCE, is generally regarded as the originator of the term “atom”. The peer-reviewed Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy calls him an “atomist” and says this of atomist philosophy: “There are two fundamentally different kinds of realities composing the natural world – atoms and void. Atoms, from the Greek adjective atomos or atomon, ‘indivisible’, are infinite in number and various in size and shape, and perfectly solid, with no internal gaps… Other than changing place, they are unchangeable, ungenerated and indestructible.”

Known as “the laughing philosopher” because he valued cheerfulness and mocked human follies, Democritus was a contemporary of Aristotle, who, despite being a leading critic of his atomist viewpoints, praised Democritus for the strength of his arguments as a natural philosopher.