A number of philosophical schools in different parts of the ancientworld held that the universe is composed of some kind of‘atoms’ or minimal parts, albeit for different reasons.Although the modern term ‘atom’ derives from the ancientGreek adjectiveatomos, which literally means‘uncuttable’, it is possible that the first theories wecan describe as atomist were developed in classical Indian philosophy.While the ancient Greeks from whom we derive the modern term weretheorizing about the fundamental constituents of the natural world,philosophical discussions have embraced various forms of minima,indivisible units or building blocks. Scholarly uses of the term‘atomism’ range over mereological theories in widelydifferent contexts (Zilioli 2021); not all possible senses of the termare discussed here. Several ancient atomist theories are treated inmore depth in other articles in this encyclopedia: the reader isreferred to individual entries for detailed discussions by therelevant experts (see the list of related entries at the end of thisarticle).

The term ‘atomism’ is sometimes understood to refer totheories explaining changes in the material world by therearrangements of minute particles of matter, or to the idea that anykind of magnitude—geometrical extension, time and space—iscomposed of indivisible parts. Theories of mathematical minima wereformulated in response to paradoxes like those of Zeno of Elea (early5^th c. BCE) about infinite divisibility of magnitudes.However, theories of smallest parts could be introduced for reasonsquite distinct from mathematical problems about divisibility: atomismin classical Indian philosophy seems to have been motivated by thedesire to reflect the categories used in analysis of the metaphysicalstructure of reality shown in language (Carpenter 2021). While in theGreek tradition, atoms were held to be eternal and indestructibleparticles that persist through changes in the visible world ofexperience, that is not always a feature of ancient atomist theories.Some Indian philosophical systems held that atoms are created andsubject to transformation or destruction, or that they are onlymomentary features of experience. Atomists from monotheisticschools—including medieval Islamickalāmphilosophers and seventeenth century figures like PierreGassendi—adapted atomist theories to allow for the creation anddestruction of atoms by God. Some scholars (Pyle 1997) treat aparticular strand of atomist thought as an ideal type, yet thediversity of atomist thought seems to belie this stricture(Lüthy, Murdoch and Newman 2001).

The interactions of particles too small to observe is a compelling wayto account for perceptible changes in the natural world. EvenAristotle—often cast as the arch-enemy of atomism—allowedthat there might be a lower limit to the quantity of matter that couldinstantiate certain properties. But not all atomist theories werebased on an appearance/reality distinction: Buddhist philosophersposited phenomenal instants with minimum extension in time as well asspace, to mirror the ephemerality of moments of human experience. Voidspaces between atoms sometimes, but not always, feature in atomisttheories.

• 1. Atomism in Classical Indian Philosophy
  • 1.1 Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika atomism
  • 1.2 Buddhist atomist theories
  • 1.3 Jaina atomism
• 2. Ancient Greek Atomism
  • 2.1 Leucippus and Democritus
  • 2.2 Plato, Platonists and Pythagoreans
  • 2.3 Minima Naturalia in Aristotelian Thought
  • 2.4 Diodorus Cronus
  • 2.5 Epicurean Atomism
  • 2.6 Atomism and Particle Theories in Ancient Greek Sciences
• 3. The Legacy of Ancient Atomism
  • 3.1 Atomism in the Islamic World
  • 3.2 Ancient Greek Atomism in Later European Philosophy
  • 3.3 Early Modern Indian Atomism
• Bibliography
  • General
  • Atomism in Classical Indian Philosophy
  • Leucippus and Democritus
  • Plato, Platonists and Pythagoreans
  • Minima Naturalia in Aristotelian Thought
  • Diodorus Cronus
  • Epicurean Atomism
  • Atomism and Particle Theories in Ancient Greek Sciences
  • Atomism in the Islamic World
  • Ancient Greek Atomism in Later European Philosophy
  • Early Modern Indian Atomism
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Atomism in Classical Indian Philosophy

The beginnings of atomism in classical Indian philosophy are difficultto ascertain, but it likely has origins several centuries before thecommon era. Two distinct systems that regard Vedic texts asauthoritative, Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika, favoured atomistaccounts of the material world. Quite different atomist theories arefound in Buddhist and Jaina systems. Other Indian philosophicalsystems were critical of atomism, arguing instead for an idealistaccount of experience. The Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu (5th c.CE), whose earlierTreasury of Metaphysics is oftenconsidered an atomist account, critiqued atomism in hisTwentyVerses.

The terms translated ‘atom’ in Indian philosophy(aṇu,paramāṇu) referprimarily to the smallness of parts (Gangopadhyaya 1980): this notionof smallness, found in the Upanishads, was developed into atomisttheories in the commentary tradition. A classic argument for atomismreasons by analogy from the fact that perceptible objects seem to becomposed of parts (Chatterjee 2017). Yet, the argument ran, bodiescannot be infinitely divisible because this would lead to theparadoxical result that a mountain and a mustard seed would be equalin size. This rebuttal—closely echoed in Islamicdebates—is based on the kind of paradox about summation ofinfinite series also found in the ancient Greek tradition (Bhaduri1947, 55). The comparison of mountain and mustard seed was alsodeployed to argue that the concepts of small and large would beindistinguishable unless smallness had a defined magnitude(Gangopadhyaya 1980, 29).

Not all Indian atomist theories regard minima as substantial entities.Carpenter (2021) describes the trope theory of Vasubandhu as‘absolute atomism’: this characterization challenges thenotion that atomism canonically centres on the positing of enduringparticles. Instead, the focus is on minimal units in time as well asspace, which are simultaneously minimal components of ontologicalunits and not substance-attribute composites.

A tradition that the Greek atomist Democritus was acquainted with theideas of the ‘gymnosophists’ or ‘naked wisemen’ of India is difficult to authenticate. Claims that Indianatomism was shaped by Greek influences (Keith 1921, 17) are uncommonin recent scholarship. The possibility that Islamic atomism wasimpacted by debates in classical Indian philosophy has been moreextensively considered, particularly given parallel arguments and theshared view that atoms never exist in isolation (Pines 1997; Wolfson1976). Another feature common to both traditions is a willingness toascribe sensible qualities to atoms, in contrast to Greek atomisttheories. Indian Buddhist scholars introduced atomist theories toChina from the second century CE onward, but they seem not to havebeen adopted into ancient Chinese natural philosophy (Needham 1969,22).

1.1 Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika atomism

The Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika systems developed separately,the former focusing on epistemological issues and the latter onontology. Nonetheless, there were enough overlap and laterreconciliations between them that scholars often consider theirpicture of the natural world together. Both schools developed astraditions of commentary on the Upanishads, dating back to 800 BCE(Phillips 1995). In contrast to the Buddhist tradition, atoms in thesesystems of thought were regarded as external material substances thatpersist through change, although—in line with the teachings ofthe Vedic scriptures—the atoms were thought to be created.Important figures in the textual tradition include Kaṇāda,regarded as founder of the Vaiśeṣika school;Prásastapāda, author of the first surviving commentary;Gautama (ca. 150 CE); Vātsyāyana (ca. 400 CE). The work ofUdayana (11th c. CE) and Gañgeśa (c. 1325 CE) gave rise toa new school, Navya- Nyāya, that largely merged the twotraditions (Matilal 1977; Phillips 1995; Ganeri 2019).

Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika atomism developed in constant dialoguewith other Indian philosophical schools: in a context where Buddhismoffered a compelling narrative of personal salvation throughdetachment from the unrealities of the experienced world, some Hinduphilosophers responded by bolstering their case for the realism of theexperienced world, and real atomic substances were invoked to explainboth mental and physical events (Ganeri 2011, 167–8). The ideathat experienced properties inhere in real external substances wasused to account for intersubjective agreement about the externalworld.

The Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika theory posited different kinds ofatoms for each of the elements earth, water, air and fire, in contrastto the Jaina theory that there is a single homogenous matter out ofwhich everything is composed (Gangopadhyaya 1980). Atoms were regardedas substances and bearers of different attributes. Different clustersof properties were ascribed to atoms of different kinds (Dasgupta1987; Chatterjee 2017). In contrast to the Greek atomists, who deniedthat sensible properties really inhere in atoms at all, atoms ofdifferent elements are thought to have perceptible properties, such ascold for water atoms. Some theorists allow for the possibility ofaltering the fundamental properties of atoms by heating (Thakar 2003).For atomists in the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika systems, who heldthat the atoms are made of fundamentally different matter, there is aproblem of explaining how properties of one kind of atom can affect anatom of a different kind, i.e. how the viscosity of water atoms isable to combine with earth atoms and to change their consistency(Gangopadhyaya 1980, 34).

Atoms combine into dyads and triads before they aggregate into bodiesof a kind that can be perceived. The theory however faced a questionhow atoms can combine, if they are indeed partless: unless we candistinguish different parts to an atom, it is difficult to see howthey can be said to benext to one another—side byside—any more than mathematical points can be said to jointogether rather than collapsing into a single point. The response isto deny the analogy to points, since atoms are tangible entities andtwo of them cannot occupy the same place (Bhaduri 1947, 63), thusatoms do not lose their identity when they aggregate. Another approachto the problem is due to Vasubandhu in the Buddhist tradition (seeCarpenter 2021).

Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika atomism also faced the challenge thattheir theory was only based on logical inference and could not beconfirmed by experience (Bhaduri 1947, 58). In the atomism of Gautama,recognizing the reality of composites is important to secure the basisfor knowledge, since atoms themselves are too small to be seen.Vātsyāyana supports this conclusion empirically, pointingout that a forest may be visible from a distance where the individualtrees are not (Sarkar 2021). In an ongoing controversy with Buddhistphilosophers over the reality of composite entities, Nyāyaatomists denied that we are aware of composites only indirectly or bymeans of awareness of individual parts (Matilal 1986, 268).

Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika atomists held that the world wascreated when order was imposed on pre-existing matter: the motion ofatoms was ascribed to a divine source. Their analysis of motion andits causes employs concepts that have been compared to modern notionsof force (Kumar 2019). Although the systems had naturalistic leanings,unusual motions such as the action of a magnet might beascribed—as it was in the European middle ages—to themoral condition of human agents (Matilal 1977, 58). The organizationof atoms was cited as a proof for the existence of God by the 11thcentury CE atomist Udayana (Gangopadhyaya 1980, 36). The mind and selfor soul—like time and space—was regarded as a distinctcategory from material elements, a distinction traced back to theclassical scriptures.

1.2 Buddhist atomist theories

Developed in the centuries after the Buddha (6th c. BCE), Buddhistphilosophies, especially the Abhidhamma school, systematized theunderlying philosophy of a body of texts that focused on human livedexperience. The entities in Buddhist theory that are consideredatomistic are not substances but momentary events,dharmas ordhammas: ‘the constituents of sentient experience, theirreducible “building blocks” that make up one’sworld’ (Ronkin 2005, 41). These atomic particulars can be mentalor physical, and have been compared to trope theories or processmetaphysics in contemporary scholarship. Unlike theories of atomicsubstances, Buddhist atoms are not composed of multiple properties. Incontrast to Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika atomists, Buddhists denythat there is an underlying substance uniting different propertieslike the colour and the weight of a jar (Bhaduri 1947). Atomicproperty-instances do not occur in isolation, any more than nouns andverbs made sense alone.

Despite the phenomenological character that atoms sometimes bear inBuddhist thought, questions about compositionality occur whichparallel issues in other ancient atomist theories (Goodman 2004,Carpenter 2021). Vaiśeṣika thought—which acceptedcategories like substance and soul—impacted the articulation ofAbhidhamma ontology, an articulation that sometimes led to charges of‘ontologization,’ i.e. of moving away from theexperiential focus of Buddhist thought towards a more systematicmetaphysics (Ronkin 2005). Material atoms are first found in Buddhistthought in the work of Dharmasri (2nd c. CE), and feature in the workof Vasubandhu and Sanghabhadra (both 5th c. CE) (Ronkin 2005, 56).

Buddhist versions of atomism differ fromNyāya-Vaiśeṣika versions on the status of the wholescomposed of atoms, with the former treating composites as mereaggregates, the latter regarding them as distinct entities in theirown right (Sarkar 2021). The Buddhist emphasis on the transitorynature of material reality was part of the motivation for theirinterest in atomist explanations (Gangopadhyaya 1980, 52; Ronkin 2005,59). In the enumeration of different kinds of mental states, notionsthat correspond to materiality are included, although earth, water,wind and fire are typically considered to be merely mental constructsin Buddhist thought.

Atoms were nonetheless used in materialist explanations, which accountfor physical phenomena such as the combination of different elementsto form macroscopic materials. Because we appear to see visibleparticles of dust, or rays of light shining on glass or mirrors, itseemed reasonable to suppose that interactions too small to perceiveproduce observed changes in the macroscopic world (Dasgupta 1987).Heat and light were thought to be produced by minute corpusclesentering other bodies. Buddhist atomism regarded atomic propertiessuch as solidity, heat and motion as producing perceptible changes atthe macroscopic level (Gangopadhyaya 1980, 13–14). Even withnon-material atoms, the question of their occupation of space wasconsidered: Matilal suggests that tangibility may have been regardedas a latent property of the atoms, which emerges like visibility whenthey cluster (Matilal 1986, 361). Different Buddhist schools disagreedon the answer to these questions.

Problems about the possibility of motion, developed especially by theBuddhist Nāgārjuna (2nd c. CE), prompted responses in otherschools of thought (Matilal 1977, 79; Dasgupta 1987). Although thepersistence of macroscopic bodies might be illusory, there werediscussions about the momentum or persisting tendencies of movingbodies, the different directions exhibited by these tendencies in arotating wheel, and the cohesion of particles within movingbodies.

1.3 Jaina atomism

Jaina atomist theory treats matter, space and time as composed ofindivisible smallest parts (Pines 1987). Although natural philosophymay not have occupied a large role in Jaina thought, the reason forpositing atoms is as the ultimate cause of perceived physicalqualities (Nyayavijayaji 1998). They posited a homogenous matter outof which every material body is composed, in contrast to the atomismof the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika and Buddhist systems, whichposited atoms of different kinds for each of the elements earth,water, fire and air (Gangopadhyaya 1980). Atoms thus bring differentproperties to aggregates, as, for example, the addition of water atomscauses earth atoms to stick together (Dasgupta 1987). The tendency ofatoms to cohere into aggregates was thought to come from their ownnature and not from external pressures (Nyayavijayaji 1998).

Jaina atomists also regarded soul as a distinct kind of entity,although they held that material atoms can percolate into soul andaffect it. Space was also treated as a distinct kind of substance(Mehta 1954). Jaina tradition claims to have been the oldest atomistsystem and to have inspired Vaiśeṣika atomism, althoughrecent scholarship suggests that the reverse is true (Matilal 1977,60; Thakar 2003, 7–8, 450).

2. Ancient Greek Atomism

Ancient Greek atomists developed a systematic and comprehensivenatural philosophy accounting for the origins of everything from theinteraction of indivisible bodies, as these atoms—which haveonly a few intrinsic properties like size and shape—strikeagainst one another, rebound and interlock in an infinite void. Inboth its Democritean and its Epicurean versions, Greek atomismeschewed teleological explanation and denied divine intervention ordesign, regarding every composite of atoms as produced purely bymaterial interactions of bodies, and accounting for the perceivedproperties of macroscopic bodies as produced by these same atomicinteractions. Ancient Greek atomists formulated views on ethics,theology, political philosophy and epistemology consistent with thisphysical system. This powerful and consistent materialism was regardedby Aristotle as a chief competitor to teleological natural philosophy;following his criticisms, the theory was reformulated by Epicurus andhad a second life as the philosophy of a school devoted to the pursuitof tranquillity and a communal life of simple pleasures.

2.1 Leucippus and Democritus

Leucippus (5th c. BCE) is usually credited with inventing atomism inthe Greek tradition. According to a passing remark by the geographerStrabo, Posidonius (1^st c. BCE Stoic philosopher) reportedthat ancient Greek atomism can be traced back to a figure known asMoschus or Mochus of Sidon, who lived at the time of the Trojan wars.This report was given credence in the seventeenth century: theCambridge Platonist Henry More traced the origins of ancient atomismback, via Pythagoras and Moschus, to Moses. This theologicallymotivated view appealed to those who saw revelation as the source ofall truth and wanted to trace ancient Greek ideas to Biblical sources.An ancient Greek source commenting on the travels of Democrituscredits his mathematical interests to time spent among Egyptiangeometers and suggests that he may have learned from the philosophersof India.

In 1877, Tannéry argued that Zeno of Elea’s argumentsabout divisibility would make most sense if formulated in response toan atomist theory supposedly held by some early Pythagoreans.Tannéry’s thesis has been thoroughly challenged sincethen: most scholars instead consider atomism to be one of a number ofpositions formulated in response to the arguments of Parmenides andZeno (first half of the fifth century).

Little is known about Leucippus, while the ideas of his studentDemocritus—who is said to have taken over and systematized histeacher’s theory—are known from a large number of reportsand fragments quoted by others. These early atomists theorized thatthe two fundamental and oppositely characterized constituents of thenatural world are indivisible bodies—atoms—and void. Thelatter is described simply as nothing, or as the negation of being.Atoms were said to be intrinsically unchangeable; they can move aboutin the void and combine into different clusters, which give rise tothe macroscopic bodies of the perceived world. Because all macroscopicobjects are in fact combinations of atoms, everything in the world ofour experience is transitory and subject to dissolution while theatoms themselves persist through all time.

According to Aristotle’s presentation (On Generation andCorruption I 8), the motivation for the first postulation ofindivisible bodies is to answer a metaphysical puzzle about thepossibility of change and multiplicity. Parmenides had argued that anydifferentiation or change in Being implies that ‘what isnot’ either is or comes to be. Although there are problems ininterpreting Parmenides’ precise meaning, he was understood tohave raised a problem about how change can be possible withoutsomething coming from nothing. Several Presocratics formulated, inresponse, philosophical systems in which change is not considered torequire something coming into being from complete nonexistence, butrather the arrangement of pre-existing elements into new combinations.The atomists held that, the atoms are unchangeable and contain nointernal differentiation of a sort that would allow for division.

By positing indivisible bodies, the atomists were also thought to beanswering Zeno’s paradoxes about the impossibility of motion.Zeno had argued that, if magnitudes can be divided to infinity, itwould be impossible for motion to occur. The problem seems to be thata body moving would have to traverse an infinite number of spaces in afinite time. By supposing that the atoms form the lowest limit todivision, the atomists escape from this dilemma: a total spacetraversed has only a finite number of parts. As it is unclear whetherthe earliest atomists understood the atoms to be physically ortheoretically indivisible, they may not have made the distinction.Makin’s argument that atomic indivisibility is based on thehomogeneity of substance and not smallness explains why Democritusallowed for the possibility of even very large atoms (Makin 1993,55).

Atoms can differ in size, shape, order and position; they move aboutin the void, and—depending on their shape—some cantemporarily bond with one another by means of tiny hooks and barbs ontheir surfaces. Thus the shape of individual atoms affects themacroscopic texture of clusters of atoms, which may be fluid andyielding or firm and resistant, depending on the amount of void spacebetween and the coalescence of the atomic shapes. The texture ofsurfaces and the relative density and fragility of different materialsare also accounted for by the same means. Atoms cannot fuse, butrather repel one another when they collide. Observations about thetendencies of bodies bumping one another were frequently exploited toexplain the apparently patterned motions of macroscopic bodies in thevisible world.

The atomists accounted for perception by means of films of atomssloughed off from their surfaces by external objects, and entering andimpacting the sense organs. They tried to account for all sensibleeffects by means of contact, and regarded all sense perceptions ascaused by the properties of the atoms making up the films acting onthe atoms of animals’ sense organs. Perceptions of color arecaused by the ‘turning’ or position of the atoms; tastesare caused by the shape of the atoms contacting the tongue, e.g.,bitter tastes by the tearing caused by sharp atoms; feelings of heatare ascribed to friction. Heat itself is said to be caused by theadmixture of tiny fire atoms. Democritus considered thought to be amaterial process involving the local rearrangement of bodies, just asmuch as is perception.

A famous quotation from Democritus distinguishes between perceivedproperties like colors and tastes, which exist only ‘byconvention,’ in contrast to the reality, which is atoms andvoid. However, he apparently recognized an epistemological problem foran empiricist philosophy that nonetheless regards the objects of senseas unreal. In another famous quotation, the senses accuse the mind ofoverthrowing them, although mind is dependent on the senses. Theaccusation is that, by developing an atomist theory that underminesthe basis for confidence in sense perception, thought has in effectundercut its own foundation on knowledge gained through the senses.Democritus sometimes seems to doubt or deny the possibility ofknowledge.

The early Greek atomists try to account for the formation of thenatural world by means of their simple ontology of atoms and voidalone. Leucippus held that there are an infinite number of atomsmoving for all time in an infinite void, and that these can form intocosmic systems orkosmoi by means of a whirling motion whichrandomly establishes itself in a large enough cluster of atoms. It iscontroversial whether atoms are thought to have weight as an intrinsicproperty, causing them all to fall in some given direction, or whetherweight is simply a tendency for atoms (which otherwise move in any andevery direction, except when struck) to move towards the centre of asystem, created by the whirling of the cosmic vortices. When a vortexis formed, it creates a membrane of atoms at its outer edge, and theouter band of atoms catches fire, forming a sun and stars. Thesekosmoi are impermanent, and are not accounted for by purposeor design. The earth is described as a flat cylindrical drum at thecenter of our cosmos.

Species are not regarded as permanent abstract forms, but as chancecombinations of atoms. Living things are regarded as having apsychê or principle of life; this is identified withfiery atoms. Organisms are thought to reproduce by means of seed:Democritus seems to have held that both parents produce seeds composedof fragments from each organ of their body. Whichever of the partsdrawn from the relevant organ of the parents predominates in the newmixture determines which characteristics are inherited by theoffspring. Democritus is reported to have given an account of theorigin of human beings from the earth. He is also said to be thefounder of a kind of cultural anthropology (Cole 1967), since hisaccount of the origin of the cosmos includes an account of the originof human institutions, including language and social and politicalorganization.

A large group of reports about Democritus’ views concern ethicalmaxims: some scholars have tried to regard these as systematic ordependent on atomist physics, while others doubt the closeness of theconnection. Because several maxims stress the value of‘cheerfulness,’ Democritus is sometimes portrayed as‘the laughing philosopher.’ The frequent associationbetween hedonism and atomism may stem from the denial of any source ofgood other than immediate experience; the tendency to reduceexperience to the rubbing together of atoms may have contributed tothe impression that atomists are preoccupied with physicalpleasure.

2.2 Plato, Platonists and Pythagoreans

Although the Greek termatomos is most commony associatedwith the solid and impenetrable bodies posited by Leucippus andDemocritus, Plato’sTimaeus presents a different kindof physical theory based on indivisibles and was also regarded as akind of atomism. Plato’s discussion of the composition of solidsfrom plane surfaces is sometimes thought to be based on fourth-centuryPythagorean theories. A fourth-century Pythagorean, Ecphantus,interpreted the Pythagorean monads as indivisible bodies: he isreported to have been sympathetic to atomism of a kind similar toDemocritus’.

Plato’sTimaeus elaborates an account of the worldwherein the four different basic kinds of body—earth, air, fire,and water—are regular solids composed from plane figures:isosceles and scalene right-angled triangles. Because the sametriangles can form into different regular solids, the theory thusexplains how some of the elements can transform into one another, aswas widely believed. In this theory, it is the elemental trianglescomposing the solids that are regarded as indivisible, not the solidsthemselves. When Aristotle discusses the hypothesis that the naturalworld is composed of indivisibles, the two views he considers arethose of Plato and Democritus. Aristotle criticizes both Plato andfourth-century Pythagoreans for constructing natural bodies possessingweight from indivisible mathematical abstractions, whether planesurfaces or numbers. It has been suggested that Plato accepted timeatoms, i.e., indivisible minima in time, but this iscontroversial.

A treatise in the Aristotelian corpus probably not by Aristotlehimself (On Indivisible Lines) addresses and refutes a numberof arguments offered for the existence of indivisible lines, withoutnaming their author. Plato’s student Xenocrates (396–314BCE), third head of the Academy, is reported to believe in indivisiblelines, and he may well be the target of the Aristotelian treatise. Oneof the arguments attacked addresses a Zenonian problem abouttraversing or touching in succession an infinite series of parts. Theidea that there are indivisible lines offers an alternative to theview that any extended magnitude must be divisible to infinity. Adistinct argument claims that, if the physical elements composing abody are regarded as the ultimate parts, they cannot be furtherdivisible. Although this does not argue for indivisible linesperse, it is used to suggest that the objects of sense as well asthose of thought must include things without parts.

A further argument depends on thinking that opposite properties musthave opposite characteristics: if ‘many’ or‘large’ things have infinite parts, it is argued, then‘few’ or ‘small’ things must have only afinite number of parts. It is then concluded that there must be amagnitude without parts, apparently so that it is not furtherdivisible and thus composed of an infinite number of parts. The lastargument depends on the idea that mathematicians talk of commensurablelines, and posit a single unit of measurement: this would not bepossible if the unit were divisible, because the parts of the unit, ifmeasured, would be measured by the unit measure and it would then turnout to contain multiple units within itself.

In late antiquity, the Neoplatonist Proclus defended Plato’saccount against Aristotle’s objections; these arguments arepreserved in Simplicius’ commentary on Aristotle’sOnthe Heavens. Simplicius credits the Pythagoreans as well as Platowith a theory composing bodies from plane surfaces. Simplicius alsocompares Pythagorean views to Democritean atomism, inasmuch as boththeories posit a cause for hot and cold rather than taking these to befundamental principles, as the Aristotelians do.

2.3 Minima Naturalia in Aristotelian Thought

An argument in Aristotle (Physics 1.4, 187b14–21) issometimes taken by later writers as evidence that Aristotle allowedfor the existence of minima in natural things. Aristotle writes thatthere is a smallest size of material substrate on which it is possiblefor the form of a given natural tissue to occur. Blood and bone, say,are all materially composed of given proportions of earth, air, fire,and water: there needs to be a certain minimal amount of thesematerial components present before the form of blood or bone canoccur. This doctrine—while surely compatible withAristotle’s view that the material components are nonethelesscontinuous and divisible at any point—is sometimes read byNeoplatonist commentators and later sources interested inrapprochement with atomism as evidence that Aristotleendorsed the existence of minimal physical parts.

In late antiquity, this debate seems to have moved away from theradical solution of positing minimal physical parts or atoms—aview that seems to have had few advocates—into a puzzle aboutthe possibilities of ‘bottom up’ explanation versus theneed to regard emergent properties as ‘supervening’ andnot mere products of the necessary material base. The termtraditionally translated ‘supervene’here—epigignomai—refers to the idea that formsare thought to come from a distinct source and inhere in suitablematerial, rather than to be produced by the material substrate: itdoes not exactly correspond to the technical notion of supervenienceformulated in late-20th century philosophy of mind. The reasons forpositing minimal thresholds for the supervenience of form in JohnPhiloponus concern the inadequacy of material explanation becausechanges in the matter do not correlate numerically to—and hencecannot fully explain—changes in qualities, and not because ofconcerns about minimal parts (Berryman 2002).

Scholars have highlighted the importance of Islamic philosophers indeveloping what came to be known in medieval Latin philosophy as thedoctrine ofminima naturalia (Dijksterhuis 1961, 205; Glasner2001; McGinnis 2015). Giles of Rome particularly developed the notionof a natural minima in Thomistic thought: the notion of a minimum sizefor a given substance was linked in these discussions to the problemthat a given quantity of one element could only be rarefied so farbefore it becomes a different element (Duhem 1985, 35–45).

Book 4 of Aristotle’sMeteorology was sometimesregarded as inauthentic in the past because of its use of explanationsof the microstructure of matter, explanations that some scholarsargued were too much of a concession in the direction of atomism to beAristotle’s own. These arguments are no longer widelyaccepted.

2.4 Diodorus Cronus

Diodorus Cronus (late 4th c. BCE), a member of the supposedDialectical School, is reported to have offered new arguments thatthere must be partless bodies or magnitudes. Most reports suggest thathis focus was on logical arguments rather than on physical theory: heused arguments that depend on positing mutually exhaustivealternatives.

Perhaps drawing on an argument of Aristotle’s (Sens. 7,449a20–31]), Diodorus apparently used the idea that there is asmallest size at which an object at a given distance is visible as thebasis for an argument that there are indivisible magnitudes. Hisargument begins from the idea that there is a difference in sizebetween the smallest size at which a given object isvisible—presumably from a given distance—and the largestsize at which it is invisible. Unless we concede that, at somemagnitude, a body is both invisible and visible (or neither), therecannot be any other magnitude intermediate between these twomagnitudes. Magnitudes must increase by discrete units.

Sextus Empiricus (AM 10.48ff) reports an argument ofDiodorus’ also concluding that magnitudes have discreteintervals. It also denies the existence of moving bodies, insistingthat bodies move neither when they are in the place where they are,nor when they are in the place where they are not. Since thesealternatives are presented as exhaustive, the conclusion must be thatbodies are never moving. However, rather than assert that everythingis static, Diodorus took the view that bodies musthave movedwithout everbeing in motion: they are simply at one place atone moment, and at another place at another moment.

As well as postulating the existence of indivisible smallest bodiesand magnitudes, Diodorus seems to have supposed that there areindivisible smallest units of time. The argument about motion does notquite make it explicit that this is what he is committed to, but it isa reasonable inference: given his insistence that bodies are always atone place or another at any given time, he might well suppose thatinfinite divisibility of time would open up the threateningpossibility of indeterminacy as to whether the change of place hastaken place.

For those who posit indivisibles as a way to escape paradoxes aboutinfinite divisibility, parallel arguments might equally well have beenapplied to the problem of completing tasks in an infinitely divisibletime. Sextus Empiricus reports that the Aristotelian Strato ofLampsacus (d. 268/70 BCE) argued for time atoms, although this iscontradicted by other sources. Sorabji (1983) suggests that Stratomerely countenanced thepossibility that time could bediscrete while space and motion are continuous, without endorsing thisposition.

2.5 Epicurean Atomism

Democritus’ atomism was revived in the early Hellenistic period:Epicurus (341–270 BCE) founded an atomist school in Athens about306 BCE. The Epicureans formed more of a closed community than otherschools, and promoted a philosophy of a simple, pleasant life livedwith friends. The community included women, and some of its membersraised children. The works of the founder were revered and some ofthem were memorized, a practice that was thought to have discouragedphilosophical innovation by later members of the school, although thisview has been challenged (Fish and Sanders 2011).

Epicurus seems to have learned of atomist doctrine throughDemocritus’ follower Nausiphanes. Because Epicurus made somesignificant changes in atomist theory, it is often thought that hisreformulation of the physical theory is an attempt to respond toAristotle’s criticisms of Democritus. Even more significant,however, is the increasing centrality of ethical concerns toEpicurus’ atomism, and the importance of the view that belief inan atomist physical theory helps us live better lives.

Epicurus takes to heart a problem Democritus himself recognized, whichis that atomist theory threatens to undermine itself if it removes anytrust we can place in the evidence of the senses, by claiming thatcolors, etc. are unreal. He notoriously said that ‘allperception is true,’ apparently distinguishing between thecausal processes which impact our senses, all of which originate withthe films of atoms sloughed off by objects, and the judgments we makeon the basis of them, which may be false. Reasoning to truths aboutthings that are not apparent—like the existence ofatoms—depends on the evidence of the senses, which is alwaystrue in that it consists of impacts from actually existing films. Forparticular phenomena, like meteorological events, Epicurus endorsesthe existence of multiple valid explanations, acknowledging that wemay have no evidence for preferring one explanation over another.

It may be that Epicurus was less troubled by any such epistemologicaluncertainties because of his emphasis on the value of atomist theoryfor teaching us how to live the untroubled and tranquil life. Denyingany divine sanction for morality, and holding that the experience ofpleasure and pain are the source of all value, Epicurus thought we canlearn from atomist philosophy that pursuing natural and necessarypleasures—rather than the misleading desires inculcated bysociety—will make pleasure readily attainable. At the same time,we will avoid the pains brought on by pursuing unnatural andunnecessary pleasures. Understanding, on the basis of the atomisttheory, that our fears of the gods and of death are groundless willfree us from our chief mental pains.

Epicurus made significant changes to atomist physical theory. It seemsthat Democritus did not distinguish clearly between the physicaluncuttability of atoms and their conceptual indivisibility: thisraises a problem about how atoms can have parts, as evidenced by theirvariations in shape or their ability to compose a magnitude, touchingone another in a series on different sides. Epicurus distinguished thetwo, holding that uncuttable atoms did have conceptually distinctparts, but that there was a lowest limit to these. Different solutionsto this problem are found in ancient Indian atomism.

Epicurus’ view of the motion of atoms also differs fromDemocritus’. Rather than talking of a motion towards the centerof a given cosmos, possibly created by the cosmic vortex, Epicurusgrants to atoms an innate tendency to downward motion through theinfinite cosmos. The downward direction is simply the originaldirection of atomic fall. This may be in response to Aristoteliancriticisms that Democritus does not show why atomic motion exists,merely saying that it is eternal and that it is perpetuated bycollisions. Moreover, although this is not attested in the survivingwritings of Epicurus, authoritative later sources attribute to him theidea that it belongs to the nature of atoms occasionally to exhibit aslight, otherwise uncaused swerve from their downward path. This isthought to explain why atoms have from infinite time entered intocollisions instead of falling in parallel paths: it is also said, byLucretius, to enter into the account of action and responsibility.Scholars have proposed a number of alternative interpretations as tohow this is thought to work.

The epistemological concerns discussed above required a different viewon the nature of composites and macroscopic, perceptible properties.Epicurus rejected Democritus’ eliminativist position thatperceived properties only exist ‘by convention’ (Sedley1988; O’Keefe 2005). Epicurus’ successor Polystratusfurther defended and elaborated a claim about the reality ofproperties, including relational properties. Moreover, with therecovery of new papyrological evidence, controversy has arisen aboutthe extent to which Epicurus rejected Democritus’ attempt toaccount for all causal processes by the properties of the atoms andvoid alone. Although Epicurus’ ideas have long been known fromthree surviving letters preserved in the biography by DiogenesLaertius, no copy of his longer workOn Nature had beenavailable. However, following excavation of the Epicurean library atHerculaneum that was buried by a volcanic eruption, some parts of thiswork are being recovered. Many of the scrolls found are badly damaged,however, and interpretation of this newly recovered material isongoing.

The Herculaneum library contains much work of the Epicurean Philodemus(1st c. BCE). Philodemus wrote extensively, including on the historyof philosophy, ethics, music, poetry, rhetoric and the emotions. Hewrote a treatise on the theory of signs: because they are empiricists,believing that all knowledge comes from our sense experience, laterEpicureans were concerned about the basis for our knowledge ofimperceptibles like the atoms, and engaged in an extensive debate withthe Stoics about the grounds for inferences to imperceptibleentities.

Although Epicurus’ doctrines teach the value of a quiet life ina specially constructed Epicurean community and decry the search forfame, atomist theory is also regarded as a cure for the troublesafflicting others outside the community, and there are certainlyEpicurean texts written for a wider audience. Besides the letters byEpicurus himself summarizing his doctrines, the Epicurean philosopherLucretius (d. c. 50 BCE) wrote a long Latin poem advocatingEpicurus’ ideas to Roman audiences (Sedley 1998). Lucretiusmakes clear his close allegiance to Epicurus’ own views, andprovides more detail on some topics than has survived fromEpicurus’ own work, such as an extended account of the originsof human society and institutions. A less sympathetic contemporary ofLucretius, Cicero, also wrote a number of Latin works in which anEpicurean spokesman presents the doctrines of the school.

Diogenes of Oenoanda propagated Epicurean doctrines in Asia Minor,inscribing them on the wall of a Stoa in his home town so as toconvert passersby to Epicurean theory. Excavation of these since thenineteenth century has also produced new texts. Smith (1993), in hislatest edition of the text of the inscriptions, dates them to theearly second century CE.

2.6 Atomism and Particle Theories in Ancient Greek Sciences

Some figures concerned with the natural sciences, especially medicine,are thought to have regarded organic bodies as composed of particles.Galen (2nd c. CE), inOn the Natural Faculties, dividesmedical theorists into two groups, following the division of naturalphilosophers. On the one side are continuum theorists, who hold thatall matter is infinitely divisible but that all the matter in thingssubject to generation and corruption is susceptible to qualitativealteration. On the other are those who suppose that matter is composedof tiny, unchangeable particles separated by void spaces, and explainqualitative change as produced only in compound bodies, byrearrangement of the particles alone. In Galen’s view,qualitative alteration is needed to produce the powers wherebybeneficent Nature directs change: Galen credits the first group withasserting the priority of Nature and its beneficent order, and thelatter with denying this.

Although ancient Greek natural philosophers tend to fall on eitherside of Galen’s divide (Furley 1987)—continuum theory plusbeneficent teleology, vs. atomism plus blind necessity— there isa danger in taking this dichotomy to be exhaustive or exclusive ofpossible natural philosophies. Inasmuch as the view Plato develops inTimaeus is atomistic and also endorses teleologicalexplanation, for example, his position complicates the picture, andother theories of natural philosophy in the Hellenistic period do notdivide so neatly onto one side or the other. Comparison to othertraditions makes clear that atomism has no necessary affinity to theabsence of divine organization. Galen has polemical interests indiscrediting those who deny the need for qualitatively irreduciblefaculties or powers employed by Nature to produce beneficialresults.

A prevailing tendency in modern scholarship to identify particletheories with ‘mechanistic’ thinking is not representativeof ancient atomism: the identification of Greek atomism as a precursorto the New Science was due to the work of 17th century figures likePierre Gassendi, Henry More and Robert Boyle. Galen elsewhereexplicitly contrasts atomist thought with the schools who appeal toexplanations from mechanics (Berryman 2002). Galen’spresentation of Greek natural philosophy was important in the laterreception of ideas into Islamic philosophy (Langermann 2009) and theRenaissance (Copenhaver 1998).

The theories of Heracleides of Pontus (4th c. BCE) and Asclepiades ofBythnia (2nd c. BCE) are sometimes likened to atomism (Gottschalk1980; Vallance 1990). Both—a pupil of Plato, and a medicaltheorist—are said to have posited the existence of corpusclesthey callanarmoi onkoi, likely some kind of partless masses:the precise meaning is uncertain. Although the theories of Asclepiadesin particular are often assimilated to atomism, it may be thatGalen’s characterization of this view is polemical, and thatAsclepiades’ particles are capable of division. Galen is thesource for a distinctive argument against the idea that atoms werealike in substance, based on the Hippocratic idea that organismscomposed of a single substance would not be able to experiencesensations like pain (Leith 2014). Ironically, Galen’s theory ofthe four elements was sometimes interpreted as an atomist theory bymedieval sources (Langermann 2009).

One of the most prominent writers on mechanics in antiquity, Hero ofAlexandria (1st c. CE), is sometimes regarded, following HermannDiels, as an atomist in the Democritean tradition. In the introductionto hisPneumatica, Hero describes matter as made up ofparticles with spaces between them. However, Hero’s account ofpneumatic effects involving compression of air seems to depend on thedeformation of elastic particles which can be compressed artificiallybut will spring back to their original shape quite vehemently. If so,his account denies a fundamental tenet of classical atomism, thatatoms do not change in their intrinsic properties like shape (Berryman2011). Pneumatics, because its effects were thought to depend onforces acting against a void, provided stimulus to discussions of thepossibility of void and why its supposed impossibility would causewater to move against its natural direction. In late antiquity, JohnPhiloponus theorized that void must be at least theoretically possiblefor these effects to occur (Sedley 1987).

3. The Legacy of Ancient Atomism

The conventional division into ‘ancient and modern’ wasdeveloped in a European context that does not necessarily reflect thehistory of other cultures. Without intending to overstate the value orgenerality of this division, we might regard three major bodies ofthought as inheriting ideas from the ‘ancient’ traditionsdiscussed above: atomism in Islamickalām thought; therevival of atomism in the European Renaissance and after; and thecontinued interest in atomist theories in Indian philosophy throughthe early modern period.

3.1 Atomism in the Islamic World

Beginning in the late 8^th century CE/2nd century AH),different versions of atomism were adopted and developed by manyadherents of the Islamic schools ofkalām or theology.The most important of these early atomist schools were located inBasra and Baghdad. The philosopher-physician Abū Bakral-Rāzī (d. 313/925) also developed an atomist theory (Pines1997; Baffioni 1982; Adamson 2014; Koetschet 2019), although adherentsof the philosophical schools known asfalsafa more commonlyadhered to a philosophical picture based on Neoplatonic continuummetaphysics. Some medieval Jewish philosophers of the Karaite school,writing in Arabic and influenced bykalām thought,adopted atomist views (Ben-Shammai, 1985). Critics ofkalām atomism include Ibn Sīnā, the11^th/5^th century philosopher known as Avicennain the West, and Maimonides (12th/6th C) in hisGuide for thePerplexed. Fakhr al-dīn al-Rāzī responded to IbnSīnā’s criticisms in the 12th/6th century (Dhanani2015), and atomist ideas were publicized by the work of al-Ijī(d. 1355 CE) and his student al-Taftazani, which present argumentsfrom earlierkalam andfalsafa natural philosophyand were used for teaching purposes (Dhanani 2017).

Although the loss of texts makes it difficult to trace the origins ofatomism in Islamic thought, scholars argue that ancient Greek theoriesmay have reached theMutakallimun by oral transmission if notby translation of texts; the indirect transmission may explain somedivergences (Wolfson 1976; Dhanani 1994). Epicurean rather thanDemocritean ideas may have been transmitted through doxographies (vanEss 2018) or from Galen’s critiques (Langermann 2009); otherpossible routes of transmission that have been explored include theGreek sceptical tradition and the supposed atomism of the PythagoreanEcphantus (Baffioni 1982). Attempts have also been made to linkkalām atomism to the Indian tradition (Pines 1997;Wolfson 1976): echoes include a similar argument that a mountain and amustard seed would be equal if bodies were infinitely divisible, andthe fact that perceptible properties are ascribed to atoms, incontrast to the Greek tradition. Whatever its antecedents, thedevelopment of atomism in an Islamic context—where differentphilosophical questions prevailed—led to creative innovationsand a distinctive critical tradition of atomist thought (Rashed2005).

Unlike Greek atomists, Abu al-Hudhayl—regarded as the founder ofkalām atomism—posited that atoms wereindiscernible from one another even in size or shape. Rashed (2005)argues for the distinctness of al-Hudhayl’s atoms from bothancient Greek or Indian antecedents, since atoms were conceived asEuclidean points and not as extended material bodies. Rashed stressesthe importance of the conception of atoms as in motionat aninstant, connecting it to the development of a notion that bodiesoccupying infinitesimal locations could possess motion as a dynamicproperty, and to a treatment of mathematical properties that were notmerely regarded as abstracted from bodies, as in the Aristoteliantradition (Rashed 2005). Al-Nazzān, a prominent early critic ofatomism, tried to solve paradoxes about motion over infinitelydivisible continua with the alternative thesis that motion consistedin an imperceptible ‘leap’ from one location toanother.

Because any Islamic metaphysical system was committed to a CreatorGod, the ancient Greek use of atomism to solve the problem of changewithout something coming from nothing could not be the motivation forkalām atomism. Some scholars believe the created natureof atoms could have been used as an argument for the existence of God,since creation implies a Creator (Adamson 2016, 16). Atoms could notcontinue existing on their own but were continually recreated by Godat every instant. Al-Rāzī’s atomism, by contrast,denied that creation from nothing was possible and supposed that atomswere eternal (Pines 1997, 48). Baffioni (1982) contrastsal-Rāzī’s physical motivations for adopting atomismwith the ‘teleological’ atomism of thekalāmschools.

Central debates about the viability of atomism in the Islamic worldcentred on infinite divisibility, applying paradoxes similar to thoseof Zeno to the problem of an ant crawling over a sandal. A problemabout the fact that different particles in a rolling millstone orwheel must be moving at different speeds, despite the apparentcohesiveness of the millstone, is found in Islamic discussions. Theinsistence withinkalām atomism on recognizing accidentsthat adhere in the whole of composite bodies, and that cannot betraced back to the properties of individual atoms, may share themotivation of Epicurus’ attempt to avoid the eliminativism ofDemocritus’ theory. Likewise, epistemological arguments forpreserving confidence in sense perception, even given the possibilityof illusion, may have been formulated to avoid the sceptical potentialinherent in a Democritean approach to perception and empiricalknowledge.

Atoms in Islamic philosophy were typically defined by the occupationof space and the exclusion of other bodies; by their ability toreceive accidents; and by their ability to be perceived by the sensesof sight and touch, presumably in sufficiently large aggregates. Theassertion of an entailment between materiality and occupying space wasapparently directed against the Peripatetic notion of matter and theAristotelian notion of natural place (Dhanani 1994, 88–89). Thespatial extendedness of atoms was also linked to the notion that atomsserved as a unit for measuring extension. Because spherical atomspacked together would leave a space that is smaller than theatom—which would be impossible if atoms represented the smallestpossible magnitude—atoms were said to be cubic (Dhanani 1994,115). Atoms were thought to adhere to one another without the physical‘hooks’ proposed by Democritus; even so, it proveddifficult to avoid ascribing subatomic parts to atoms.

As in the Greek tradition, the positing of atoms in Islamic thoughtwas paired with assertions about the existence of void space, inopposition to the continuum physics characteristic of mostfalsafa thought (cf. Pines 1979). Debate over the existenceof void was enriched by the need to explain the operation of so-calledpneumatic devices like the siphon, medical cupping glasses or syringe(Lugal and Sayili 1951; Koetschet 2019). The supposed impossibility ofvoid space forming was used to account for observed fluid movements inpneumatic devices, raising questions about how a metaphysicalimpossibility might produce physical motions. Ingenious thoughtexperiments were developed to test the assumptions at work, askingwhat would happen if a single film of atoms were trapped between twocupping glasses, or comparing the effect of cupping glasses on stoneto their effect on flesh (Dhanani 1994, 77). The fascination withpneumatic technology in the medieval Islamic world is attested insurviving texts which detail increasingly complex marvels: trickfountains, surprise vessels, water clocks with elaborate mechanicalside-shows (Hill 1974, 1979), although the explanation of theseeffects did not necessarily involve atomist or particle theories ofmatter.

3.2 Ancient Greek Atomism in Later European Philosophy

Aristotelian natural philosophy came to predominate in the medievalLatin West during the 13th century, and prevailed in the universitiesinto the seventeenth century. Nonetheless, scholars recognize pocketsof interest in atomist thought in the middle ages, including a 12thcentury ‘renaissance’ of atomism (Pabst 1991, 1994; Grant1996; Dijksterhuis 1961), and the work of the 14th century‘indivisibilists,’ who focused on the mathematics ofmotion (Duhem 1985; Murdoch 1982, 1984). Reasons for the renewedinterest in atomist thought have been linked to the vision of arelatively autonomous nature found inTimaeus (Pabst 1994),and to the need to account for motion of immaterial bodies like angels(Murdoch 1984). Medical authors and Latin sources were important inthe transmission of ideas from antiquity to the 12th century, for whomthe atomist theories in the Arabic tradition were largely inaccessible(Pabst 1994, 86). Later medieval Latin philosophers would have accessto ideas from the Islamic atomist tradition through Maimonides’reports and Ibn Sīnā’s refutations: modern scholarlyopinions differ as to the extent to which Latin theorists were awareof Islamic atomism, however: recent scholarship has uncovered moreevidence of borrowings from the Islamic world into the 14th centuryLatin texts (Murdoch 1974; Sorabji 1982; Freudenthal 2003; Grellard2009; Robert 2009).

Although 12th century atomists were inspired by Plato,Calcidius’ widely circulated commentary did not include thepassages detailing Plato’s geometrical atomism: instead, theydeveloped particle theories and attempted to reconcile these with thedoctrine of the four elements. An original attempt by Thierry ofChartes to solve the problem of the different motions of the fourelements—fire and air tending upward, earth and water tendingdownward to different degrees—relied on the relativecohesiveness of different elements to explain the different degrees ofmobility (Pabst 1991). Elemental intertransformation shows thatelements must be composed of atoms of similar substance, but fireatoms, say, are less entangled with one another and thus more mobilethan other kinds of atoms. Other classic problems, including puzzlesabout the different speeds of particles of a rotating wheel, continuedto occupy theorists into the early modern period; this problem wascalledrota Aristotelis or ‘Aristotle’swheel’ because of its appearance in the pseudo-AristotelianMechanica (Palmerino 2001).

Renaissance alchemy, as much as the reworking of ancient Greek atomisttheories by adherents of the ‘New Science’ of theseventeenth century, proved important sources of inspiration forcorpuscularian theories in the early modern world (Newman 2006). TheAristotelian notion ofminima naturalia, and the appeal tomicrostructures of matter in explanation of chemical changes inAristotle’sMeteorology IV, meant that consideration ofcorpuscularian explanations need not automatically be framed as arejection of Aristotle. A useful corrective here to the tendency toregard early modern atomism as merely reviving ancient Greek theoriesis Newman’s argument that an ‘operational’ notion ofminima—the smallest unit that seems to be manifest in the bestexplanation of the observed phenomena—emerged from thealchemical tradition and provided an alternative to the metaphysicalarguments of the ancient Greek atomists (Newman 2006, 2009).

Hero of Alexandria’s matter theory has long been considered animportant source for Robert Boyle and other New Scientists of theseventeenth century (Boas 1949). However, Hero’s theory differedfrom classical atomism, and drew heavily on the need to explainpneumatic effects (see section 2.6 above). The evidence ofSennert’s influence on Boyle casts further doubts on thecentrality of ancient Greek atomism to his matter theory. Newman(2006, 2009) argues that the relevant sense of ‘atom’depended on the incapacity for chemical decomposition, not spatial orphysical indivisibility, a notion grounded in empirical evidencerather than logical or mathematical reasoning.

Milton (2002) offers a helpful perspective on why ancient Greekatomism, despite its naturalist worldview, was not especiallyconducive to scientific investigation. Features of seventeenth centuryNew Science that do not fit well with classical atomist theory includethe application of mathematical analysis to motion and the appeal to amachine model to conceptualize the possibility that complex causalsequencing could produce regular and determinate results withoutongoing intelligent direction (Berryman 2009). A modern scholarlytendency to describe Democritean atomism as ‘mechanistic’contributes to a prevailing overestimate of the scientific credentialsof ancient Greek atomism.

Epicurean philosophy played a very different role in the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries, providing a classical ‘cover’for hedonistic and anti-religious sentiment among intellectualsattracted by the vision of a tranquil life free of fear of the gods(Kargon 1966; Wilson 2008). Women philosophers and intellectuals wereunusually prominent amongst the seventeenth century advocates andtranslators of Epicurus (Wilson 2008). The Cambridge Platonists mayhave fueled the identification of atomism with atheism, because of thepresentation of ancient Greek natural philosophy in Cudworth’sTrue Intellectual System of the Universe. A tendency tomischaracterize Epicurean philosophy as licentious persisted.

The young Karl Marx wrote his doctoral dissertation on Democritus, afact that may have contributed to his sensitivity to materialistexplanations. Given the association with Marx, Soviet-era scholarshipproduced important work on Democritus, especially S.I. Luria’smagisterial edition of the fragments.

3.3 Early Modern Indian Atomism

The philosophical traditions discussed above continued for over amillenium in the Indian schools, without the historical discontinuitycaused in Europe and West Asia by the collapse of the Roman Empire andthe rise of Islam. The debate between ‘idealist’ and‘realist’ metaphysics continued, the latter represented bythe Navya-Nyāya school which developed about the fourteenthcentury, building on the work of Udayana and Gángeṣa(Phillips 1995). Stephen Phillips argues that the ‘NewLogic’ thought of Navya-Nyāya school proliferated in Indianculture and law as well as impacting other philosophical schools,especially after 1500 CE. Although it incorporatedVaiśeṣika realism, the focus was on epistemology and oncognitive experience rather than on the atomist metaphysics.

Jonardon Ganeri (2011) has argued for regarding the early modernperiod in India as a period of innovation comparable to that inEurope, although the Indian intellectual world was less concerned topresent itself as a radical break from the past than was true of theEuropean ‘New Science.’ François Bernier, protegeof the French atomist Pierre Gassendi, travelled to India in 1656 andfound a receptive audience in the Sanskrit scholars trained in theatomism of the classical period of Indian philosophy (Ganeri 2011).Jayarāma, an early modern Indian atomist working in theVaiśeṣika tradition, produced an atomist theory that Ganeriargues is closer to that of Daniel Sennert than to that of Gassendi(Ganeri 2011, p. 218). Substantial concessions are made within thisatomist metaphysics towards acknowledging the reality of emergentproperties.

Bibliography

For works on atomism in the Indian philosophical traditions, onLeucippus, Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, al-Rāzī, Islamicand Renaissance atomism, see primarily the relevant articles in thisencyclopedia. This bibliography focuses on sources for alternativevarieties of atomism, as well as sources that connect and comparedifferent periods and traditions.

General

• Dijksterhuis, E.J., 1961.The Mechanization of the WorldPicture, trans. C. Dikshoorn. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.
• Furley, David J., 1987.The Greek Cosmologists vol 1: TheFormation of the Atomic Theory and its Earliest Critics,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Konstan, David, 1982. ‘Atomism and its Heritage: MinimalParts,’Ancient Philosophy, 2: 60–75.
• Lasswitz, Kurd, 1890.Geschichte der Atomistik vom Mittelalterbis Newton, Hamburg: Verlag von Leopold Voss.
• Lüthy, Christoph, John E. Murdoch and William R. Newman,2001. ‘Introduction: Corpuscles, Atoms, Particles andMinima,’ inLate Medieval and Early Modern CorpuscularMatter Theories, Leiden: Brill, 1–38.
• Pines, Shlomo, 1997.Studies in Islamic Atomism, trans.Tzvi Langermann. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, Magnes Press.
• Pyle, Andrew, 1997.Atomism and Its Critics: From Democritusto Newton, Bristol: Thoemmes Press.
• Rashed, Marwan, 2005. ‘Natural philosophy,’ in PeterAdamson and Richard C. Taylor (eds.),The Cambridge Companion toArabic Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,287–307.
• Sorabji, Richard, 1982. ‘Atoms and Time Atoms,’ in N.Kretzmann (ed.),Infinity and Continuity in Ancient and MedievalThought, Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 37–86.
• –––, 1983.Time, Creation and the Continuum:Theories in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, London andIthaca, NY: Duckworth and Cornell University Press.
• Zilioli, Ugo (ed.), 2021.Atomism in Philosophy: A Historyfrom Antiquity to the Present, London: BloomsburyPublishing.

Atomism in Classical Indian Philosophy

• Bhaduri, Sadananda, 1947.Studies inNyāya-Vaiśeṣika Metaphysics, Poona: BhandarkarOriental Research Institute
• Carpenter, Amber, 2014.Indian Buddhist Philosophy,Durham: Routledge.
• Carpenter, Amber with Ngaserin, Sherice, 2021. ‘Atoms andOrientation: Vasubandhu’s solution to the problem ofcontact,’ in Ugo Zilioli (ed.),Atomism in Philosophy,London: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, 159–81.
• Chatterjee, Amita, 2017. ‘Naturalism in Classical IndianPhilosophy’,Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy(Winter 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/naturalism-india/>.
• Dasgupta, Surendranath, 1987.Natural Science of the AncientHindus, edited by Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya. New Delhi: IndianCouncil of Philosophical Research
• Ganeri, Jonardon, 2001.Philosophy in Classical India,London: Routledge.
• –––, 2019. ‘Analytic Philosophy in EarlyModern India’,Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy(Summer 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2019/entries/early-modern-india/>.
• Gangopadhyaya, M., 1980.Indian Atomism: History andSources, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi.
• Goodman, Charles, 2004. ‘TheTreasury ofMetaphysics and the Physical World,’PhilosophicalQuarterly, 54(216): 389–401.
• Keith, Arthur Berriedale, 1921.Indian Logic and Atomism: AnExposition of the Nyāya and Vaiceṣika NyâyaSystems, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Kumar, Shashi Prabha, 2019.Categories, Creation and Cognitionin Vaiśeṣika Philosophy, Springer.
• Matilal, Bimal Krishna, 1977.Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika:A History of Indian Literature, 6.2. Wiesbaden: OttoHarrassowitz.
• –––, 1986.Perception: An Essay on ClassicalIndian Theories of Knowledge, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Mehta, Mohan Lal, 1954.Outlines of Jaina Philosophy: TheEssentials of Jaina Ontology, Epistemology and Ethics, Bangalore:The Jain Mission Society.
• Mishra, A.K., 2006. ‘Atomism ofNyāya-Vaiśeṣika and Jainism’,Indian Journalof the History of Science, 41: 247–61.
• Needham, Joseph, 1969.The Grand Titration: Science andSociety in East and West, London: George Allen and UnwinLtd.
• Nyayavijayaji, Muni Shri, 1998.Jaina Philosophy andReligion, translated by Nagin J. Shah. Delhi: Motilal BanarsidassPublishers.
• Phillips, Stephen H., 1995.Classical Indian Metaphysics:Refutations of Realism and the Emergence of ‘NewLogic’, Chicago: Open Court.
• Ronkin, Noa, 2005.Early Buddhist Metaphysics, London:Routledge.
• Sarkar, Sahotra, 2021. ‘Aggregates versus Wholes: Anunresolved debate between the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika andBuddhist schools in ancient Indian atomism,’ in Ugo Zilioli(ed.),Atomism in Philosophy, London: Bloomsbury AcademicPublishing, 182–97.
• Thakar, Anantalal, 2003.Origin and Development of theVaiśeṣika System (PHISPC, Volume II, Part 4), NewDelhi: Center for Studies in Civilizations.

Leucippus and Democritus

• Guthrie, W.K.C., 1967.A History of Greek Philosophy vol. 1:The Earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
• Heidel, W.A., 1940. ‘The Pythagoreans and GreekMathematics,’American Journal of Philology, 61:1–33.
• Makin, Stephen, 1993.Indifference Arguments, Oxford:Oxford University Press.
• Mihai, Adrian, 2021. ‘Atomism and the CambridgePlatonists,’ in Ugo Zilioli (ed.),Atomism in Philosophy: AHistory from Antiquity to the Present, London: BloomsburyPublishing, 206–71.
• More, Henry, 1653.Conjectura Cabbalistica, London: J.Flesher.
• Owen, G.E.L., 1957–8. ‘Zeno and themathematicians,’Proceedings of the AristotelianSociety, 58: 199–222.
• Sedley, David, 2008. ‘Atomism’s Eleatic Roots,’in Patricia Curd and Daniel W. Graham (eds.),The Oxford Handbookof Presocratic Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press,305–332.
• Tannéry, Paul, 1887.L’Histoire de la sciencehéllène, Paris: Georg Olms.

Plato, Platonists and Pythagoreans

• Dillon, John, 2003.The Heirs of Plato: A Study of the OldAcademy (347–274 BC), Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Konstan, David, 1988. ‘Points, Lines, and Infinity:Aristotle’sPhysics Zeta and HellenisticPhilosophy,’ in John J. Cleary (ed.),Proceedings of theBoston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, 3: 1–32.
• Mueller, Ian, 2000. ‘Plato’s Geometrical Chemistry andIts Exegesis in Antiquity,’, in P. Suppes, J. Moravcsik and H.Mendell (eds.),Ancient and Medieval Traditions in the ExactSciences: Essays in Memory of Wilbur Knorr, Stanford: CSLIPublications, 159–76.
• Opsomer, J., 2012. ‘In Defence of Geometric Atomism:Explaining Elemental Properties,’ in J. Wilberding and C. Horn(ed),Neoplatonism and the Philosophy of Nature, Oxford:Oxford University Press, 147–73.
• Pines, Shlomo, 1986. ‘A New Fragment of Xenocrates and itsImplications,’ inStudies in Arabic Versions of Greek Textsand in Medieval Science, Jerusalem: The Magnes Press,3–95.
• Sambursky, S., 1962.The Physical World of LateAntiquity, London: Routledge.
• Sattler, Barbara, 2021. ‘Platonic Reception – Atomismand the Atomists in Plato’sTimaeus,’ in ChelseaC. Harry and Justin Habash (eds.),Brill’s Companion to theReception of Presocratic Natural Philosophy in Later ClassicalThought, Leiden: Brill, 429–52 .
• Sedley, David, 2004. ‘On Generation and Corruption1.2,’ in Frans de Haas and Jaap Mansfeld (eds.),Aristotle: On Generation and Corruption,Book 1:Symposium Aristotelicum, Oxford: Clarendon Press,65–89.
• Siorvanes, Lucas, 1996.Proclus: Neo-Platonic Philosophy andScience, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Minima Naturalia in Aristotelian Thought

• Berryman, Sylvia, 2002. ‘The Sweetness of Honey: Philoponusagainst the Doctors on Supervenient Qualities,’ in CeesLeijenhorst, Christoph Lüthy and Johannes M.M.H. Thijssen (eds.),The Dynamics of Aristotelian Natural Philosophy from Antiquity tothe Seventeenth Century, Leiden: Brill, 65–79.
• Dijksterhuis, E.J., 1961.The Mechanization of the WorldPicture, trans. C. Dikshoorn. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.
• Duhem, Pierre, 1985.Medieval Cosmology: Theories of Infinity,Place, Time, Void, and the Plurality of Worlds, ed. and trans.Roger Ariew. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Glasner, Ruth, 2001. ‘Ibn Rushd’s Theory of MinimaNaturalia,’Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 11:9–26
• McGinnis, Jon, 2015. ‘A Small Discovery: Avicenna’sTheory ofMinima Naturalia,‘Journal of the Historyof Philosophy, 53(1): 1–24.
• Murdoch, John E., 2001. ‘The Medieval and RenaissanceTradition ofMinima Naturalia,’ in ChristophLüthy, John E. Murdoch and William R. Newman (eds.),LateMedieval and Early Modern Corpuscular Matter Theories, Leiden:Brill, 91–132.
• Rashed, Marwan, 2005. ‘Natural philosophy,’ in PeterAdamson and Richard C. Taylor (eds.),The Cambridge Companion toArabic Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,287–307.

Diodorus Cronus

• Denyer, Nicholas, 1981. ‘The Atomism of DiodorusCronus,’Prudentia, 13: 33–45.
• Sedley, David, 1977. ‘Diodorus Cronus and HellenisticPhilosophy,’Proceedings of the Cambridge PhilologicalSociety (New Series), 23: 74–120.

Epicurean Atomism

• Clay, Diskin, 1998.Paradosis and Survival: Three Chapters inthe History of Epicurean Philosophy, Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan Press.
• Fish, Jeffrey and Kirk R. Sanders, 2011.Epicurus and theEpicurean Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Frischer, B., 1982.The Sculpted Word: Epicureanism andPhilosophical Recruitment in Ancient Greece, Berkeley: Universityof California Press.
• Gigante, Marcello, 1995.Philodemus in Italy: The Books fromHerculaneum, translated by Dirk Obbink, Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan Press.
• Konstan, David, 1979. ‘Problems in Epicurean Physics,’Isis, 70(3): 394–418
• Netz, Reviel, 2015. ‘Were There EpicureanMathematicians?’Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy,XLIX: 283–320.
• O’Keefe, Tim, 2005.Epicurus on Freedom, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
• Sedley, David, 1988. ‘Epicurean Anti-Reductionism,’ inJonathan Barnes and Mario Mignucci (eds.),Matter andMetaphysics, Naples: Bibliopolis, 297–327 .
• –––, 1998.Lucretius and the Transformationof Greek Wisdom, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Smith, Martin Ferguson, 1993.Diogenes of Oinoanda: TheEpicurean Inscription, Edited with Introduction, Translation andNotes, Naples: Bibliopolis.
• Warren, James, 2002.Epicurus and Democritean Ethics: AnArchaeology of Ataraxia, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.
• Warren, James (ed.), 2009.Cambridge Companion toEpicureanism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Atomism and Particle Theories in Ancient Greek Sciences

• Berryman, Sylvia, 2002. ‘Galen and the MechanicalPhilosophy,’Apeiron: a journal for ancient philosophy andscience, 235–53.
• –––, 2011. ‘The Evidence for Strato ofLampsacus in Hero of Alexandria,’ in Marie-Laurence Desclos andW.W. Fortenbaugh (eds.),Strato of Lampsacus, New Brunswick,NJ: Transaction Publishers.
• Copenhaver, Brian, 1998. ‘The Occultist Tradition and ItsCritics,’ in Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers,The CambridgeHistory of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (Volume 1), Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 454–512.
• Damiani, Vincenzo, 2021. ‘The Reception of Atomism inAncient Medical Literature: From Hippocrates to Galen,’ in UgoZilioli (ed.),Atomism in Philosophy, London: BloomsburyAcademic Publishing, 39–60.
• Drachmann, A. G., 1948.Ktesibios, Philon and Heron: A Studyin Ancient Pneumatics, Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
• Gottschalk, Hans, 1980.Heracleides of Pontus, Oxford:Clarendon Press.
• Langermann, Tzvi, 2009. ‘Islamic Atomism and the GalenicTradition,’History of Science, 47: 1–20.
• Leith, David, 2014. ‘Galen’s Refutation ofAtomism,’ in Peter Adamson, Rotraud Hansberger and JamesWilberding (eds.),Philosophical Themes in Galen(Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies:Supplementary Volume 114), London: Institute of Classical Studies,213–234 .
• Sedley, David, 1987. ‘Philoponus’ Conception ofSpace,’ 140–153 in Richard Sorabji (ed.),Philoponusand the Rejection of Aristotelian Science, London: GeraldDuckworth.
• Vallance, J.T., 1990.The Lost Theory of Asclepiades ofBithynia, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Atomism in the Islamic World

• Adamson, Peter, 2014. ‘Galen on Void,’ in PeterAdamson, Rotraud Hansberger and James Wilberding (eds.),Philosophical Themes in Galen (Bulletin of the Instituteof Classical Studies, Supplementary Volume 114), London:Institute of Classical Studies, 197–212.
• –––, 2016.Philosophy in the IslamicWorld,A History of Philosophy Without any Gaps (Volume3), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Baffioni, Carmela, 1982.Atomismo e Antiatomismo nel PensieroIslamico, Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale.
• –––, 2011. ‘Presocratics in the ArabWorld’, in Lagerlund H. (eds.)Encyclopedia of MedievalPhilosophy, Dordrecht: Springer, 1073–6.doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-9729-4_416
• Ben-Shammai, Hagai, 1985. ‘Studies in KaraiteAtomism,’Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 6:243–93.
• Dhanani, Alnoor, 1994.The Physical Theory of Kalam,Leiden: E.J. Brill.
• –––, 2013. ‘Atoms and Atomism,’The Oxford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Science and Technology inIslam, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––. 2015. ‘The Impact of IbnSīnā’s Critique of Atomism on SubsequentKalām Discussions of Atomism,’Arabic Sciencesand Philosophy, 25: 79–104.
• Dhanani A. 2016. ‘Atomism in Islamic Thought,’ in H.Selin (ed.),Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology,and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures Dordrecht: Springer.doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-4425-0_8463
• –––, 2017. ‘Al-Mawaqif fi ‘ilmal-kalam by ‘Adud al-din al-Iji (d. 1355), and itscommentaries’, in Khaled al-Rouayheb and Sabine Schmidtke(eds.),An Oxford Companion to Islamic Philosophy, Oxford:Oxford University Press.
• Hill, Donald R., 1974.The Book of Knowledge of IngeniousMechanical Devices by Ibn al-Razzāz al-Jazarī,Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
• –––, 1979.The Book of Ingenious Devices bythe Banū (sons of) Mūsà bin Shākir,Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
• Langermann, Tzvi, 2009. ‘Islamic Atomism and the GalenicTradition,’History of Science, 47: 1–20.
• Lugal, Necati and Aydin Sayili, 1951.‘Fārābi’s Article on Vacuum,’Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayinlarindan, 15(1):21–36.
• Koetschet, Pauline, 2019.Abū Bakr al-Rāzī,Doutes sur Galien, Berlin: De Gruyter.
• McGinnis, Jon, 2003. ‘The Topology of Time: An Analysis ofMedieval Islamic Accounts of Discrete and Continuous Time,’The Modern Schoolman, 81: 5–25.
• Pines, Shlomo, 1979. ‘Etudes sur Awhad al-Zaman Abual-Barakat al-Baghdadi’, inThe Collected Works of ShlomoPines Volume 1: Studies in Studies in Abu’l-Barakat al-Baghdadi:Physics and Metaphysics, Jerusalem: The Magnes Press,1–95.
• –––, 1986. ‘What was original in ArabicScience?’ inStudies in Arabic Versions of Greek Texts andin Medieval Science, Jerusalem: The Magnes Press,329–53.
• –––, 1997.Studies in Islamic Atomism,Tzvi Langermann (trans.), Jerusalem: The Hebrew University MagnesPress.
• Rashed, Marwan, 2005. ‘Natural philosophy,’ in PeterAdamson and Richard C. Taylor (eds.),The Cambridge Companion toArabic Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,287–307.
• Sorabji, Richard R.K., 1983.Time, Creation and the Continuum:Theories in Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, London andIthaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• van Ess, Josef, 2018.Theology and Society in the Second andThird Centuries of The Hijra: A History of Religious Thought in EarlyIslam (Volume 4), Gwendolin Goldbloom (trans.), Leiden: Brill,514–34.
• Wolfson, Harry Austryn, 1976.The Philosophy of theKalam, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
• Zamboni, Francesco Omar, 2021. ‘Atomism and IslamicThought,’ in Ugo Zilioli (ed.),Atomism in Philosophy,London: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, 198–215.

Ancient Greek Atomism in Later European Philosophy

• Boas, Marie, 1949. ‘Hero’sPneumatica: AStudy of Its Transmission and Influence,’Isis, 40(1):38–48.
• Dijksterhuis, E.J., 1961.The Mechanization of the WorldPicture, trans. C. Dikshoorn. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.
• Duhem, Pierre, 1985.Medieval Cosmology: Theories of Infinity,Place, Time, Void, and the Plurality of Worlds, ed. and trans.Roger Ariew, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Freudenthal, Gad, 2003. ‘Review ofLate Medieval andEarly Modern Corpuscular Matter Theories,’Journal ofthe History of Philosophy, 41(2): 273–4.
• Grant, Edward, 1996. ‘Review of Bernhard Pabst,Atomtheorien des Lateinischen Mittelalters’Isis, 87(2): 346–7.
• Grellard, Christophe and Aurélien Robert (eds.), 2009.Atomism in Late Medieval Philosophy and Theology, Leiden:Brill.
• Grellard, Christophe, 2009. ‘Nicolas of Autrecourt’sAtomistic Physics,’ in Grellard and Robert (eds.),Atomismin Late Medieval Philosophy and Theology, Leiden: Brill,107–126.
• Kargon, Robert H., 1966.Atomism in England from Hariot toNewton, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Lüthy, Christoph, John E. Murdoch and William R. Newman(eds.), 2001.Late Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscular MatterTheories, Leiden: Brill.
• Milton, J.R., 2002. ‘The Limitations of AncientAtomism,’ in C.J. Tuplin and T.E. Rihll,Science andMathematics in Ancient Greek Culture, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 178–95.
• Murdoch, John E., 1974. ‘Naissance et Développementde l’Atomisme au Bas Moyen Âge Latin,’ inCahiers d’Études Médiévales II. Lascience de la nature: théories et pratiques, Montreal:Bellarmin, 11–32.
• –––, 1984. ‘Atomism and Motion in theFourteenth Century,’ in Everett Mendelsohn (ed),Transformation and Tradition in the Sciences, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 45–66.
• Newman, William R., 2006.Atomism and Alchemy: Chymistry andthe Experimental Origins of the Scientific Revolution, Chicago:University of Chicago Press.
• –––, 2009. ‘The Significance of“Chymical Atomism”,’Early Science andMedicine, 14: 248–64.
• Pabst, Bernhard, 1991. ‘Atomism II: MedievalTheories,’ in Hans Burkhardt and Barry Smith (eds.),Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology (Volume 1: A-K), Munich:Philosophia Verlag, 63–5.
• –––, 1994.Atomtheorien des LateinischenMittelalters, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
• Palmerino, Carla Rita, 2001. ‘Galileo’s andGassendi’s Solutions to theRota Aristotelis Paradox: ABridge Between Matter and Motion Theories,’ in Lüthy,Murdoch and Newman (eds.),Late Medieval and Early ModernCorpuscular Matter Theories, Leiden: Brill, 381–422.
• Robert, Aurélien, 2009. ‘William of Crathorn’sMereotopological Atomism,’ in Grellard and Robert (eds.),Atomism in Late Medieval Philosophy and Theology, Leiden:Brill, 127–62.
• Wilson, Catherine, 2008.Epicureanism at the Origins ofModernity, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Early Modern Indian Atomism

• Ganeri, Jonardon, 2011.The Lost Age of Reason: Philosophy inEarly Modern India 1450–1700, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.
• Phillips, Stephen H., 1995.Classical Indian Metaphysics:Refutations of Realism and the Emergence of ‘NewLogic’, Chicago: Open Court.

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Other Internet Resources

• Atomism, maintained by S. Marc Cohen, University of Washington
• The Final Cut: Democritus and Leucippus, atHistory of Philosophy Without Gaps, maintained by PeterAdamson, King’s College London
• Atomism, entry in Wikipedia.
• Christopher Taylor, site at Academia.edu – this websitegives access to CCW Taylor’s English translation of thefragments of Democritus as collected by S. Luria.

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al-Razi, Abu Bakr |Arabic and Islamic Philosophy, disciplines in: natural philosophy and natural science |Aristotle |atomism: 17th to 20th century |Democritus |Early Modern India, analytic philosophy in |Epicurus |Indian Philosophy (Classical): naturalism |Leucippus |Lucretius |natural philosophy: in the Renaissance |Plato |Pythagoras |Zeno of Elea: Zeno’s paradoxes

Acknowledgments

This attempt to survey address similarities and differences in atomistthought between different traditions and time periods would not havebeen possible without generous assistance from a number of scholars. Iwish to thank John Cooper, Patrick O’Donnell, Tim O’Keefeand Ednaldo Silva for helpful comments and suggestions on olderversions of this article, and Charles Taylor for offering a link tohis website translation of Luria’s collection on Democritus.

In expanding the article to a more comprehensive crossculturaltreatment, I particularly thank Alnoor Dhanani and Robert Wisnovskyfor helpful advice and comments on atomism in Islamic thought; AmberCarpenter, Jonardon Ganeri and Cat Prueitt for invaluable help inwriting the sections on Indian atomism; William Newman and ChristophLüthy for feedback and references on the transmission of Islamicatomism into medieval Europe; and Ted Slingerland for advice onatomism in Chinese philosophy.