Atomism – Getting Physics Right Accidentally

More right than he knew.

Start the Wayback Machine

It's time to drop some straight physics on you all. No, wait. Time to drop some history. Oh, hold on. Get ready for some history of physics! All the way back to 5^th century BC Greece. This story starts with the metaphysical philosopher Leucippus.

Without going too deep into Greek philosophy, which is at the same time interesting and incomprehensible, Leucippus was trying to resolve an argument. One side argued that the universe was static and eternal where motion and changes were just an illusion, while the other spoke of a universe where the concept of change was the only thing that truly existed. Leucippus tried to make peace by hypothesizing that everything is made of some indivisible building block, but that these fundamental pieces could experience motion and constructed and that exists. Leucippus and his student Democritus named these particles atomos, or atoms; literally Greek for "uncuttable." For 2,400 years Leucippus' and Democritus' theory of Atomism was more correct than they probably ever imagined.

It would take thousands of years to figure out what exactly these "Atoms" were, but now we know there are, in fact, tiny particles that make up the entire physical world around us, not counting light and radio waves. Atoms of different types (elements) create the different materials and objects we see.