Democritus

Democritus a Greek philosopher of Abdera in Thrace (c. 460–370 BC) who, with his teacher Leucippus, developed the atomic theory of matter. He taught that the universe consists of nothing but atoms and void, that everything happens according to necessity, and that the soul, like all else, is composed of atoms. His system was the most complete materialist philosophy of antiquity.

Life and Writings

Democritus was born in Abdera, a city on the northern coast of the Aegean, and is said to have travelled widely in Egypt, Persia and perhaps as far as India in pursuit of learning. He inherited a substantial fortune which, according to tradition, he spent on travel and study rather than on his family. He lived to a great age and was known for his cheerfulness, earning the name the Laughing Philosopher.

Ancient sources credit him with an enormous output covering ethics, physics, mathematics, music, medicine and the art of war. Although none of his works survives complete, a large number of fragments and testimonials are preserved in later writers, especially Aristotle, Sextus Empiricus and Diogenes Laertius. The range of his interests shows the breadth of early Greek natural philosophy.

He was a contemporary of Socrates and a younger man than Anaxagoras, and he is sometimes grouped with the pluralists who sought to reconcile the permanence of being demanded by Parmenides with the evident reality of change. His solution, the atomism he developed with Leucippus, proved to be the most durable of all ancient physical theories.

Atoms and Void

The fundamental claim of Democritean physics is that only two things exist: atoms and the void. Atoms are indivisible, solid, eternal and unchanging particles, infinite in number and varied in shape and size. The void is empty space, without which motion would be impossible. All other things — water, air, animals, souls, gods — are compounds of atoms separated by void.

Change is explained entirely by the motion of atoms. Atoms move through the void, collide, combine and separate, and the objects of the visible world are temporary aggregates of them. Because atoms are indestructible, nothing is ever created from nothing or destroyed into nothing; apparent generation and destruction are merely the coming together and falling apart of the permanent particles.

Democritus held that the motion of atoms is governed by necessity and that there is no purpose or design in nature. Everything happens for a reason in the sense of a mechanical cause, but not for an end. This thoroughgoing determinism was one of the most radical features of his thought and set him apart from the teleological thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle.

Perception and Knowledge

Democritus distinguished between the qualities of things as they are in themselves and the qualities as they appear to us. Colour, taste, smell and temperature, he argued, exist by convention rather than in reality; in truth there are only atoms and void. The senses give us information, but the information is not a picture of the way things really are, and true knowledge must go beyond what the senses report.

He developed a theory of perception in which thin films of atoms, called images or eidola, are thrown off by objects and enter the eye of the observer. This theory, whatever its faults, was an attempt to explain sensation in purely physical terms and to account for the possibility of error. It represents one of the first systematic accounts of the relation between appearance and reality.

The tension between the evidence of the senses and the conclusions of reason is a permanent theme of philosophy, and Democritus stated it with unusual sharpness. His remark that we know nothing for certain, since truth lies in a well, expresses the sceptical side of his position, while his confidence in the atomic theory expresses the rationalist side. Both strands passed into later thought.

Ethics and the Cheerful Life

Democritus wrote extensively on ethics, and the surviving fragments present a practical philosophy of moderation and contentment. The goal of life, he taught, is cheerfulness or good spirit, a calm and stable condition of the soul achieved by avoiding excess, controlling the desires, and judging pleasures by their consequences rather than by their immediate intensity.

He emphasised the importance of self-respect over reputation, of inner wealth over external goods, and of the pleasures of understanding over the pleasures of the body. The greatest pleasures, he thought, come from the contemplation of noble things, and the person who has learned to find satisfaction in his own resources is the least dependent and the most free.

His ethics are closely tied to his physics. Because the soul is a body of fine atoms, its well-being consists in the orderly motion of those atoms, disturbed by violent emotion and restored by tranquillity. The wise person, understanding the nature of things, is not troubled by fear of death or of the gods, since both are themselves compounds of atoms that will disperse. This union of materialism with serenity is the distinctive mark of Democritean wisdom.

Legacy

Democritus was largely overshadowed in antiquity by Plato and Aristotle, whose teleological and idealist systems came to dominate the schools. Plato is said to have wished to burn his books, and Aristotle criticised his account of motion and of the soul. Yet his atomic theory was preserved in the writings of Epicurus, whose philosophy was in many respects a development of the Democritean scheme.

Through Epicurus and the Roman poet Lucretius, the doctrine of atoms and void reached the Renaissance and the scientific revolution. Gassendi, Boyle and Newton took up atomism, and the success of modern chemistry and physics in describing matter in terms of particles gave the ancient theory an unexpected vindication. The idea that the material world is composed of invisible units in empty space is now fundamental to science.

Democritus is remembered as the father of the atomic hypothesis and as one of the first thoroughgoing materialists in Western thought. His distinction between appearance and reality, his determinism and his ethics of cheerfulness all mark him as a thinker of remarkable range. The fragments that survive show a mind at once scientific and humane, and his influence, though long delayed, has proved enduring.

References

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↑ C. C. W. Taylor, The Atomists: Leucippus and Democritus, University of Toronto Press, 1999.
↑ G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, Cambridge University Press, 1983.
↑ Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, translated by A. E. Stallings, Penguin Classics, 2007.
↑ Paul Cartledge, Democritus and the Birth of Materialism, Bristol Classical Press, 1999.

[r1-1] C. C. W. Taylor, The Atomists: Leucippus and Democritus, University of Toronto Press, 1999.

[r2-2] G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, Cambridge University Press, 1983.

[r3-3] Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, translated by A. E. Stallings, Penguin Classics, 2007.

[r4-4] Paul Cartledge, Democritus and the Birth of Materialism, Bristol Classical Press, 1999.

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