If
you are aware of my science blog, or you have ever encountered a gamer by the
name of ‘The Laughing Chemist’ online, you may wonder where I got this alias
from. The name is actually an inspiration from one of the philosophers I admire
the most in the history of thoughts: Democritus of Abdera. Democritus was
probably the last of the key Pre-Socratic philosophers, and he could be
considered the ultimate natural philosopher of Ancient Greece. The great
philosopher was committed to the almost completely materialistic accounts of
everything in his world, which was a stance unprecedented until that stage of
Greek philosophy. His philosophical outlook was probably the most complete and
systematic of all of Pre-Socratic thoughts, from his account of reality to
advice of how one should live ethically. To many, Democritus was one of the
first natural scientists of humanity. His theory of atoms might have been
undermined for many years in the Western culture, yet it experienced a revival
in the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, and that would
eventually become the foundations of modern physical science. From his writings
one can easily get the impression that Democritus has lived as a very fine
human being – his emphasis of a cheerful outlook on life has earned him the
name of ‘The Laughing Philosopher’. And you will be even happier if you
understand true knowledge!
There
are two aspects, due to various reasons, that we are not sure about Democritus.
The first aspect is the connection of Democritus to another philosopher,
Leucippus. In ancient writings, the two philosophers were often mentioned together
and it was alleged that Leucippus was the teacher of Democritus. While there
are some sayings which are attributed to Leucippus, we are not certain if he
has existed at all in history. Thus, the materialist theory of atomism tends to
be associated with the Laughing Philosopher, or they are attributed to both
philosophers at the same time.
The
second aspect is the reception of Democritus in antiquity. While Democritus is
considered as a Pre-Socratic philosopher, the notion is actually quite
misleading because the designation implies that Democritus lived before
Socrates. The truth is, Democritus and Socrates were actually contemporaries and
indeed Democritus was younger than Socrates! So it is quite likely that
Socrates and Democritus were aware of each other’s ideas, but we did not know
if they have interacted with each other at all. The reason is because Socrates
never wrote anything – all we know about Socrates’ thinking was from Plato’s
work. While in Plato we have read that Socrates has shifted his focus from an
interest of natural philosophy to humanism, we did not have any idea of their
opinions on Democritus, because Plato did not mention Democritus at all. It was
alleged that Plato hated Democritus’ ideas (it could not be proved), and that
made sense because Plato would likely perceive Democritus’ materialism to be
belonged to the sensual world rather than the world of Forms. It was a puzzling
move because even when Plato despised the Sophists as swindlers of knowledge,
he still mentioned their teachings and challenged their ideas in a number of
his world. So leaving out Democritus was a big mystery. Aristotle, who also
disagreed with Democritus for different reasons, was less hostile in this
respect and gave the natural philosopher some credits in the development of
philosophical thoughts.
Democritus,
and his mentor Leucippus, were advocates of atomism. The word ‘atom’ should be
familiar to anyone in science, yet the meaning for the ancient thinkers were
broader – and in a sense less precise – than the demands from scientific rigor.
The Greek word for atom is ‘atomos’, which literally means ‘uncuttable’. Literally,
an atom for these materialist philosophers was a single particle. The thinkers
took the liberty to say that the atoms had different size, shape, and also
texture, leading to the different things that human experienced in the
universe. The atomists asserted that atoms were not infinitely divisible,
meaning that one could not indefinitely divided an atom to a smaller piece.
There was a limit to the division, and the limit signified the essence of that
thing.
The
origin of ancient atomism followed a larger trend of the development of
Pre-Socratic philosophy: the responses towards the Eleatic school of
philosophy. Parmenides of Elea, who was considered as the founder of the
Eleatic school of thought, was probably the first who proposed a rational
account of reality in Western history. For him, the metaphysical origin was
‘being’, which was unchangeable, static and spherical. The reality Parmenides
speculated was very different from the appearances our common senses addressed
to us, thus he was considered as the founder of the field of metaphysics, which
concerned the reality of things. Parmenides’ appearance-reality distinction
would eventually be taken to extreme by later thinkers such as Plato, and his
followers have proposed further accounts and questions regarding reality, such
as questions of movement and multiplicity. The philosophers after Parmenides –
Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus – have all come up with their own solutions
to the Eleatic school’s challenges. Denying Parmenides’ assertion there are no
void (empty space) in reality, the atomists believed that only atoms and void
existed in the world. Democritus was innovative in the sense that he was
probably the first thinker to propose and address the importance of void for
out world. Moreover, atoms possessed the attributes of movement, and they were
in constant motion through the void, and the atoms could collide with each
other to generate new things. It should
also be reiterated that a key disagreement between the atomists and the Eleatic
thinkers were the indivisibility of things. Thus one can see that the
motivation of atomism was not from a desire to discover some novel ‘science’,
but actually as a philosophical response to the Eleatic challenge.
Democritus’ materialistic account of things was therefore an eliminative atomism. That means only atoms are metaphysically real, and all other appearances are conventions or mere illusions. This standpoint was reminiscent of the nomos-physis distinction of Classical Greek, succinctly summarized by one of his most famous quotes:
by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention color;
but in reality atoms and void.”
-Democritus
The distinction between atomic reality and convention would also influence later thinkers. In the 17th century, the natural philosophers stressed the distinction of primary qualities and secondary qualities of things (details in the next article). In short, the primary qualities reflect what the thing really is – its atomic compositions and arrangement, that will not be altered due to perception by sensory organs or other subjective factors. The secondary qualities, in contrast, are originated from sense impressions – the ‘convention’ side of things.
From
the understanding of atomic properties, Democritus also proposed the mechanism
for the formation of the universe. Because atoms have very different properties,
they can be combined in different ways and that can result in formation of
different worlds. Democritus believed that there were infinite number of worlds
due to the combinatorial arrangements from atoms, and indeed he turned out to
be correct from modern astronomy!
There
are some caveats we have to be aware of regarding Democritus’ revolutionary
thinking of the world. The first one is that, unlike modern empirical science,
the theory of atomism was completely based on speculation. It was a rationalist
account just like the metaphysical speculations of Parmenides and others. Democritus
and his school certainly had no way to observe the existence of atoms, and
therefore he could not claim a higher standing for empirical science than the
competing theories did. Nevertheless, one should be impressed by his keen
insights into things and how he successfully foresaw and inspired later
generation of scientists.
The
second point is that Democritus had a very skeptical attitude of using sense
impressions to arrive at true knowledge. That should be surprising for many
because many empirically-minded thinkers tended to be materialists for their
understanding of the word. Democritus advised his readers against the use of
their senses to know something, asserting nothing was true when one acquired
them from their sense organs. While I do not think Democritus was completely
hostile to observations and empirical methods (he was also an astronomer), he
has addressed the possible limitations of our senses to deceive us. It is
ironic that his beliefs in atomism would eventually inspire and guide the
development of empirical and physical science for the centuries to come.
Democritus
has given us a very naturalistic view of our world. Are there still any places
for the Divine in human existence? What is the direction of human progress? How
should we live well according to the atomist doctrines? Well, Democritus had a
lot to say about all that!
(End
of Part 1)
by Ed
Law
Conatus
Classics
