Democritus

First published Sun Aug 15, 2004; substantive revision Wed Aug 25, 2010

Democritus, known in antiquity as the ‘laughing philosopher’ because of his emphasis on the
value of ‘cheerfulness,’ was one of the two founders of ancient atomist theory. He elaborated a
system originated by his teacher Leucippus into a materialist account of the natural world. The
atomists held that there are smallest indivisible bodies from which everything else is composed,
and that these move about in an infinite void space. Of the ancient materialist accounts of the
natural world which did not rely on some kind of teleology or purpose to account for the
apparent order and regularity found in the world, atomism was the most influential. Even its
chief critic, Aristotle, praised Democritus for arguing from sound considerations appropriate to
natural philosophy.

 1. Life and Works

 2. Atomist Doctrine
 3. Theory of Perception
 4. The Soul and the Nature of Living Things
 5. Theory of Knowledge
 6. Indivisibility and Mathematics
 7. Ethics
 8. Anthropology
 Bibliography
 Other Internet Resources
 Related Entries

1. Life and Works

According to ancient reports, Democritus was born about 460 BCE (thus, he was a younger
contemporary of Socrates) and was a citizen of Abdera, although some reports mention Miletus.
As well as his associate or teacher Leucippus, Democritus is said to have known Anaxagoras,
and to have been forty years younger than the latter (DK 68A1). A number of anecdotes concern
his life, but their authenticity is uncertain.

The work of Democritus has survived only in secondhand reports, sometimes unreliable or
conflicting. Much of the best evidence is that reported by Aristotle, who regarded him as an
important rival in natural philosophy. Aristotle wrote a monograph on Democritus, of which only
a few passages quoted in other sources have survived. Democritus seems to have taken over and
systematized the views of Leucippus, of whom little is known. Although it is possible to
distinguish some contributions as those of Leucippus, the overwhelming majority of reports refer
either to both figures, or to Democritus alone; the developed atomist system is often regarded as
essentially Democritus'.
Diogenes Laertius lists a large number of works by Democritus on many fields, including ethics,
physics, mathematics, music and cosmology. Two works, the Great World System and the Little
World System, are sometimes ascribed to Democritus, although Theophrastus reports that the
former is by Leucippus (DK 68A33). There is more uncertainty concerning the authenticity of
the reports of Democritus' ethical sayings. Two collections of sayings are recorded in the fifth-
century anthology of Stobaeus, one ascribed to Democritus and another ascribed to an otherwise
unknown philosopher ‘Democrates’. DK accepts both as relating to Democritus, but the
authenticity of sayings in both collections is a matter of scholarly discussion, as is the
relationship between Democritus' atomism and his ethics.

2. Atomist Doctrine
Ancient sources describe atomism as one of a number of attempts by early Greek natural
philosophers to respond to the challenge offered by Parmenides. Despite occasional challenges
(Osborne 2004), this is how its motivation is generally interpreted by scholars today. Parmenides
had argued that it is impossible for there to be change without something coming from nothing.
Since the idea that something could come from nothing was generally agreed to be impossible,
Parmenides argued that change is merely illusory. In response, Leucippus and Democritus, along
with other Presocratic pluralists such as Empedocles and Anaxagoras, developed systems that
made change possible by showing that it does not require that something should come to be from
nothing. These responses to Parmenides suppose that there are multiple unchanging material
principles, which persist and merely rearrange themselves to form the changing world of
appearances. In the atomist version, these unchanging material principles are indivisible
particles, the atoms: the atomists are said to have taken the idea that there is a lower limit to
divisibility to answer Zeno's paradoxes about the impossibility of traversing infinitely divisible
magnitudes.

The atomists held that there are two fundamentally different kinds of realities composing the
natural world, atoms and void. Atoms, from the Greek adjective atomos or atomon, ‘indivisible,’
are infinite in number and various in size and shape, and perfectly solid, with no internal gaps.
They move about in an infinite void, repelling one another when they collide or combining into
clusters by means of tiny hooks and barbs on their surfaces, which become entangled. Other than
changing place, they are unchangeable, ungenerated and indestructible. All changes in the visible
objects of the world of appearance are brought about by relocations of these atoms: in
Aristotelian terms, the atomists reduce all change to change of place. Macroscopic objects in the
world that we experience are really clusters of these atoms; changes in the objects we see—
qualitative changes or growth, say—are caused by rearrangements or additions to the atoms
composing them. While the atoms are eternal, the objects compounded out of them are not.
Clusters of atoms moving in the infinite void come to form kosmoi or worlds as a result of a
circular motion that gathers atoms up into a whirl, creating clusters within it (DK 68B167); these
kosmoi are impermanent. Our world and the species within it have arisen from the collision of
atoms moving about in such a whirl, and will likewise disintegrate in time.

In supposing that void exists, the atomists deliberately embraced an apparent contradiction,
claiming that ‘what is not’ exists. Apparently addressing an argument by Melissus, a follower of
Parmenides, the atomists paired the term for ‘nothing’ with what it negates, ‘thing,’ and claimed
that—in a phrase typical of the atomists—the one ‘no more’ exists than the other (DK 67A6).
Schofield (2002) argues that this particular phrase originated with Democritus and not his
teacher Leucippus. By putting the full (or solid) and the void ontologically on a par, the atomists
were apparently denying the impossibility of void. Void they considered to be a necessary
condition for local motion: if there were no unoccupied places, where could bodies move into?
Melissus had argued from the logical impossibility of void to the impossibility of motion; the
atomists apparently reasoned in reverse, arguing from the fact that motion exists to the necessity
for void space to exist (DK 67A7). It has been suggested that Democritus' conception of void is
that of the (temporarily) unfilled regions between atoms rather than a concept of absolute space
(Sedley 1982). Void does not impede the motion of atoms because its essential quality is that of
‘yielding,’ in contrast to the mutual resistance of atoms. Later atomist accounts attest that this
‘yielding’ explains the tendency of bodies to drift into emptier spaces, driven out by collision
from more densely packed regions (Lucretius DRN 6.906–1089).

Some controversy surrounds the properties of the atoms. They vary in size: one report—which
some scholars question—suggests that atoms could, in principle, be as large as a cosmos,
although at least in this cosmos they all seem to be too small to perceive (DK 68A47). They can
take on an infinite variety of shapes: there are reports of an argument that there is ‘no more’
reason for the atoms to be one shape than another. Many kinds of atoms can interlock with one
another because of their irregular shapes and hooks at their surface, accounting for the
cohesiveness of some compounds. It is not clear whether the early atomists regarded atoms as
conceptually indivisible or merely physically indivisible (Furley 1967). The idea that there is a
smallest possible magnitude seems to suggest that this is the lower limit of size for atoms,
although notions like being in contact or having shape seem to entail that even the smallest atoms
have parts in some sense, if only mathematically or conceptually.

There are conflicting reports on whether atoms move in a particular direction as a result of their
weight: a number of scholars have tried to reconcile these by supposing that weight is not
intrinsic to the atoms, but is a result of the centripetal tendencies set up in the cosmic whirl (cf.
O'Brien 1981; Furley 1989, pp. 91–102). Atoms may have an inherent tendency to a kind of
vibratory motion, although the evidence for this is uncertain (McDiarmid 1958). However, their
primary movement seems to result from collision with other atoms, wherein their mutual
resistance or antitupia causes them to move away from one another when struck. Democritus is
criticized by Aristotle for supposing that the sequence of colliding atoms has no beginning, and
thus for not offering an explanation of the existence of atomic motion per se, even though the
prior collision with another atom can account for the direction of each individual atomic motion
(see O'Keefe 1996). Although the ancient atomists are often compared to modern ‘mechanistic’
theories, Balme warned of the danger of assuming that the atomists share modern ideas about the
nature of atomic motion, particularly the idea that motion is inertial (Balme 1941).

According to different reports, Democritus ascribed the causes of things to necessity, and also to
chance. Probably the latter term should be understood as ‘absence of purpose’ rather than a
denial of necessity (Barnes 1982, pp. 423–6). Democritus apparently recognized a need to
account for the fact that the disorderly motion of individual distinct atoms could produce an
orderly cosmos in which atoms are not just randomly scattered, but cluster to form masses of
distinct types. He is reported to have relied on a tendency of ‘like to like’ which exists in nature:
just as animals of a kind cluster together, so atoms of similar kinds cluster by size and shape. He
compares this to the winnowing of grains in a sieve, or the sorting of pebbles riffled by the tide:
it is as if there were a kind of attraction of like to like (DK 68B164). Although this claim has
been interpreted differently (e.g. Taylor 1999b p. 188), it seems to be an attempt to show how an
apparently ordered arrangement can arise automatically, as a byproduct of the random collisions
of bodies in motion (Furley 1989, p. 79). No attractive forces or purposes need be introduced to
explain the sorting by the tide or in the sieve: it is probable that this is an attempt to show how
apparently orderly effects can be produced without goal-directioned forces or purpose.

Democritus regards the properties of atoms in combination as sufficient to account for the
multitude of differences among the objects in the world that appears to us. Aristotle cites an
analogy to the letters of the alphabet, which can produce a multitude of different words from a
few elements in combinations; the differences all stem from the shape (schêma) of the letters, as
A differs from N; by their arrangement (taxis), as AN differs from NA; and by their positional
orientation (thesis), as N differs from Z (DK 67A6). These terms are Aristotle's interpretation of
Democritus' own terminology, which has a more dynamic sense (Mourelatos 2004). This passage
omits differences of size, perhaps because it is focused on the analogy to letters of the alphabet:
it is quite clear from other texts that Democritus thinks that atoms also differ in size.

He famously denies that perceptible qualities other than shape and size (and, perhaps, weight)
really exist in the atoms themselves: one direct quotation surviving from Democritus claims that
‘by convention sweet and by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by
convention color; but in reality atoms and void’ (DK 68B9, trans. Taylor 1999a). As Furley
argues, the translation ‘convention’ should not be taken to suggest that there is anything
arbitrary about the perception of certain colors, say: the same configuration of atoms may be
regularly associated with a given color. The contrast here is intended to be that between real and
unreal properties (Furley 1993; cf. Barnes 1982, pp. 370–7). What Democritus rejects as ‘merely
conventional’ is, perhaps, the imputation of the qualities in question to the atoms, or perhaps
even to macroscopic bodies.

While several reports of Democritus' view, apparently direct quotations, mention exclusively
sensible qualities as being unreal, a report of Plutarch includes in the list of things that exist only
by convention the notion of ‘combination’ or sunkrisis. If this report is genuinely Democritean, it
would broaden the scope of the claim considerably: the idea that any combination—by which he
presumably means any cluster of atoms—is ‘unreal’ or merely ‘conventional’ suggests that
Democritus is drawing a more radical distinction than that between sensible and nonsensible
qualities. The implication would be that anything perceived, because it is a perception of
combinations of atoms and not atoms themselves, would count as ‘unreal,’ not merely the qualia
experienced by means of individual sense organs. One report indeed attributes to Democritus a
denial that two things could become one, or vice versa (DK 68A42), thus suggesting that
combinations are regarded as conventional.

Commentators differ as to the authenticity of Plutarch's report. As the word sunkrisis does not
occur in other reports, Furley (following Sandbach) suggests that it is most likely an error for
pikron, ‘bitter’ which occurs instead in another report. However, Furley concedes that Plutarch
at least understands the earliest atomists to be committed to the view that all combinations of
atoms, as much as sensible qualities, should be understood as conventional rather than real
(Furley 1993 pp. 76–7n7). This would suggest that everything at the macroscopic level—or,
strictly, everything available to perception—is regarded as unreal. The ontological status of
arrangement or combination of atoms for Democritus is a vexed question, that affects our
understanding of his metaphysics, his historical relationship to Melissus, and the similarity of his
views to the modern primary-secondary quality distinction (Wardy 1988; Curd 1998; Lee 2005;
Mourelatos 2005; Pasnau 2007). If we take the ‘conventionality’ thesis to be restricted to
sensible qualities, there is still an open question about Democritus' reason for denying their
‘reality’ (Wardy 1988; O'Keefe 1997; Ganson 1999).

3. Theory of Perception
Democritus' theory of perception depends on the claim that eidôla or images, thin layers of
atoms, are constantly sloughed off from the surfaces of macroscopic bodies and carried through
the air. Later atomists cite as evidence for this the gradual erosion of bodies over time. These
films of atoms shrink and expand; only those that shrink sufficiently can enter the eye. It is the
impact of these on our sense organs that enables us to perceive. Visible properties of
macroscopic objects, like their size and shape, are conveyed to us by these films, which tend to
be distorted as they pass through greater distances in the air, since they are subject to more
collisions with air atoms. A different or complementary account claims that the object seen
impresses the air by the eidôla, and the compacted air thus conveys the image to the eye (DK
68A135; Baldes 1975). The properties perceived by other senses are also conveyed by contact of
some kind. Democritus' theory of taste, for example, shows how different taste sensations are
regularly produced by contact with different shapes of atoms: some atoms are jagged and tear the
tongue, creating bitter sensations, or are smooth and thus roll easily over the tongue, causing
sensations of sweetness.

Theophrastus, who gives us the most thorough report of Democritus' theory, criticizes it for
raising the expectation that the same kinds of atoms would always cause similar appearances.
However, it may be that most explanations are directed towards the normal case of a typical
observer, and that a different account is given as to the perceptions of a nontypical observer, such
as someone who is ill. Democritus' account why honey sometimes tastes bitter to people who are
ill depends on two factors, neither of which undercut the notion that certain atomic shapes
regularly affect us in a given way. One is that a given substance like honey is not quite
homogeneous, but contains atoms of different shapes. While it takes its normal character from
the predominant type of atom present, there are other atom-types present within. The other is that
our sense-organs need to be suitably harmonized to admit a given atom-type, and the disposition
of our passageways can be affected by illness or other conditions. Thus someone who is ill may
become unusually receptive to an atom-type that is only a small part of honey's overall
constitution.

Other observed effects, however, require a theory whereby the same atoms can produce different
effects without supposing that the observer has changed. The change must then occur in the
object seen. The explanation of color seems to be of this variety: Aristotle reports that things
acquire their color by ‘turning,’ tropê (GC 1.2, 315b34). This is the Democritean term that
Aristotle had translated as ‘position,’ thesis, i.e. one of the three fundamental ways in which
atoms can appear differently to us. Aristotle gives this as the reason why color is not ascribed to
the atoms themselves. Lucretius' account of why color cannot belong to atoms may help clarify
the point here. We are told that if the sea's atoms were really blue, they could not undergo some
change and look white (DRN 2.774–5), as when we observe the sea's surface changing from blue
to white. This seems to assume that, while an appearance of a property P can be produced by
something that is neither P nor not-P, nonetheless something P cannot appear not-P. Since atoms
do not change their intrinsic properties, it seems that change in a relational property, such as the
relative position of atoms, is most likely to be the cause of differing perceptions. In the shifting
surface of the sea or the flutter of the pigeon with its irridescent neck, it is evident that the parts
of the object are moving and shifting in their positional relations.

By ascribing the causes of sensible qualities to relational properties of atoms, Democritus forfeits
the prima facie plausibility of claiming that things seem P because they are P. Much of
Theophrastus' report seems to focus on the need to make it plausible that a composite can
produce an appearance of properties it does not have. Democritus is flying in the face of at least
one strand of commonsense when he claims that textures produce the appearance of hot or cold,
impacts cause colour sensations. The lists of examples offered, drawing on commonsense
associations or anecdotal experience, are attempts to make such claims persuasive. Heat is said to
be caused by spherical atoms, because these move freely: the commonsense association of quick
movement with heating is employed. The jagged atoms associated with bitter taste are also said
to be heat-producing: there, the association of heat with friction is invoked. It is not so much the
specific intrinsic qualities—smooth or jagged shape—as the motion of those shapes that provides
the explanation.

Aristotle sometimes criticizes Democritus for claiming that visible, audible, olfactory and
gustatory sensations are all caused by touch (DK 68A119). Quite how this affects the account of
perception is not clear, as the sources tells us little about how touch is thought to work.
Democritus does not, however, seem to distinguish between touch and contact, and may take it to
be unproblematic that bodies communicate their size, shape and surface texture by physical
impact.

4. The Soul and the Nature of Living Things

In common with other early ancient theories of living things, Democritus seems to have used the
term psychê to refer to that distinctive feature of living things that accounts for their ability to
perform their life-functions. According to Aristotle, Democritus regarded the soul as composed
of one kind of atom, in particular fire atoms. This seems to have been because of the association
of life with heat, and because spherical fire atoms are readily mobile, and the soul is regarded as
causing motion. Democritus seems to have considered thought to be caused by physical
movements of atoms also. This is sometimes taken as evidence that Democritus denied the
survival of a personal soul after death, although the reports are not univocal on this.

One difficulty faced by materialist theories of living things is to account for the existence and
regular reproduction of functionally adapted forms in the natural world. Although the atomists
have considerable success in making it plausible that a simple ontology of atoms and void, with
the minimal properties of the former, can account for a wide variety of differences in the objects
in the perceptible world, and also that a number of apparently orderly effects can be produced as
a byproduct of disorderly atomic collisions, the kind of functional organization found in
organisms is much harder to explain.

Democritus seems to have developed a view of reproduction according to which all parts of the
body contribute to the seed from which the new animal grows, and that both parents contribute
seed (DK 68A141; 143). The theory seems to presuppose that the presence of some material
from each organ in the seed accounts for the development of that organ in the new organism.
Parental characteristics are inherited when the contribution of one or other parent predominates
in supplying the appropriate part. The offspring is male or female according to which of the two
seeds predominates in contributing material from the genitals. In an atomist cosmos, the
existence of particular species is not considered to be eternal. Like some other early materialist
accounts, Democritus held that human beings arose from the earth (DK 68A139), although the
reports give little detail.

5. Theory of Knowledge
One report credits Democritus and Leucippus with the view that thought as well as sensation are
caused by images impinging on the body from outside, and that thought as much as perception
depends on images (DK 67A30). Thought as well as perception are described as changes in the
body. Democritus apparently recognized that his view gives rise to an epistemological problem:
it takes our knowledge of the world to be derived from our sense experience, but the senses
themselves not to be in direct contact with the nature of things, thus leaving room for omission or
error. A famous fragment may be responding to such a skeptical line of thought by accusing the
mind of overthrowing the senses, though those are its only access to the truth (DK68B125).
Other passages talk of a gap between what we can perceive and what really exists (DK 68B6–10;
117). But the fact that atoms are not perceptible means that our knowledge of their properties is
always based on analogy from the things of the visible world. Moreover, the senses report
properties that the atoms don't really possess, like colors and tastes. Thus the potential for doubt
about our knowledge of the external world looms large.

Later philosophers adapted a Democritean phrase ou mallon or ‘no more’ in the argument that
something that seems both P and not-P is ‘no more’ P than not-P. Arguments of this form were
used for sceptical purposes, citing the conflicting evidence of the senses in order to raise concern
about our knowledge of the world (de Lacy 1958). Democritus does not seem to be pursuing a
consistently skeptical program, although he does express concern about the basis for our
knowledge.

The idea that our knowledge is based on the reception of images from outside us is employed in
Democritus' discussion of the gods, wherein it is clear that our knowledge of the gods comes
from eidôla or giant films of atoms with the characteristics we attribute to the gods, although
Democritus denies that they are immortal. Some scholars take this to be a deflationary attack on
traditional theology as based on mere images (Barnes 1982, pp. 456–61), but others suppose that
the theory posits that these eidôla are really living beings (Taylor 1999a, pp. 211–6). Although
atomism is often identified as an atheist doctrine in later times, it is not clear whether this is
really Democritus' view.
6. Indivisibility and Mathematics
The reasons for supposing that there are indivisible magnitudes apparently stem from the
problems posed by Zeno of Elea. Some of Zeno's paradoxes concern the difficulty of crossing a
finite magnitude if it is understood to be infinitely divisible, i.e. composed of an infinite number
of parts. The atomists may have sought to avoid these paradoxes by supposing that there is a
limit to divisibility.

It is not clear, however, in what sense the atoms are said to be indivisible, and how the need for
smallest magnitudes is related to the claim that atoms are indivisible. Furley suggests that the
atomists may not have distinguished between physical and theoretical indivisibility of the atoms
(Furley 1967, p. 94). The physical indivisibility of the atoms seems to be independent of the
argument for indivisible magnitudes, since the solidity of atoms—the fact that there is no void
within them—is said to be the reason why they cannot be split. The existence of void space
between atoms is cited as the reason why they can be separated: one late source, Philoponus,
even suggests that atoms could never actually touch, lest they fuse (DK 67A7). Whether or not
Democritus himself saw this consequence, it seems that atoms are taken to be indivisible
whatever their size. Presumably, though, there is a smallest size of atom, and this is thought to be
enough to avoid the paradoxes of infinite divisibility.

A reductio ad absurdum argument reported by Aristotle suggests that the atomists argued from
the assumption that, if a magnitude is infinitely divisible, nothing prevents it actually having
been divided at every point. The atomist then asks what would remain: if the answer is some
extended particles, such as dust, then the hypothesized division has not yet been completed. If
the answer is nothing or points, then the question is how an extended magnitude could be
composed from what does not have extension (DK 68A48b, 123).

Democritus is also said to have contributed to mathematics, and to have posed a problem about
the nature of the cone. He argues that if a cone is sliced anywhere parallel to its base, the two
faces thus produced must either be the same in size or different. If they are the same, however,
the cone would seem to be a cylinder; but if they are different, the cone would turn out to have
step-like rather than continuous sides. Although it is not clear from Plutarch's report how (or if)
Democritus solved the problem, it does seem that he was conscious of questions about the
relationship between atomism as a physical theory and the nature of mathematical objects.

7. Ethics
The reports concerning Democritus' ethical views pose a number of interpretative problems,
including the difficulty of deciding which fragments are genuinely Democritean (see above,
section 1). In contrast to the evidence for his physical theories, many of the ethical fragments are
lists of sayings quoted without context, rather than critical philosophical discussions of atomist
views. Many seem like commonsense platitudes that would be consistent with quite different
philosophical positions. Thus, despite the large number of ethical sayings, it is difficult to
construct a coherent account of his ethical views. Annas notes the Socratic character of a number
of the sayings, and thinks there is a consistent theme about the role of one's own intellect in
happiness (Annas 2002). The sayings contain elements that can be seen as anticipating the more
developed ethical views of Epicurus (Warren 2002).

It is also a matter of controversy whether any conceptual link can be found between atomist
physics and the ethical commitments attributed to Democritus. Vlastos argued that a number of
features of Democritus' naturalistic ethics can be traced to his materialist account of the soul and
his rejection of a supernatural grounding for ethics (Vlastos 1975). Taylor is more sceptical
about the closeness of the connection between Democritus' ethical views and his atomist physics
(Taylor 1999a, pp. 232–4).

The reports indicate that Democritus was committed to a kind of enlightened hedonism, in which
the good was held to be an internal state of mind rather than something external to it. The good is
given many names, amongst them euthymia or cheerfulness, as well as privative terms, e.g. for
the absence of fear. Some fragments suggest that moderation and mindfulness in one's pursuit of
pleasures is beneficial; others focus on the need to free oneself from dependence on fortune by
moderating desire. Several passages focus on the human ability to act on nature by means of
teaching and art, and on a notion of balance and moderation that suggests that ethics is conceived
as an art of caring for the soul analogous to medicine's care for the body (Vlastos 1975, pp. 386–
94). Others discuss political community, suggesting that there is a natural tendency to form
communities.

8. Anthropology
Although the evidence is not certain, Democritus may be the originator of an ancient theory
about the historical development of human communities. In contrast to the Hesiodic view that
the human past included a golden age from which the present day is a decline, an alternative
tradition that may derive from Democritus suggests that human life was originally like that of
animals; it describes the gradual development of human communities for purposes of mutual aid,
the origin of language, crafts and agriculture. Although the text in question does not mention
Democritus by name, he is the most plausible source (Cole 1967; Cartledge 1997).

If Democritus is the source for this theory, it suggests that he took seriously the need to account
for the origin of all aspects of the world of our experience. Human institutions could not be
assumed to be permanent features or divine gifts. The explanations offered suggest that human
culture developed as a response to necessity and the hardships of our environment. It has been
suggested that the sheer infinite size of the atomist universe and thus the number of possible
combinations and arrangements that would occur by chance alone are important in the
development of an account that can show how human institutions arise without assuming
teleological or theological origins (Cole 1967). Although here, as on other questions, the
evidence is less than certain, it is plausible that Democritus developed a powerful and consistent
explanation of much of the natural world from a very few fundamentals.

For the reception and subsequent history of Democritean atomism, see the related entry on
ancient atomism.
Bibliography
Texts

The standard scholarly edition of the ancient evidence concerning the views of the Presocratic
philosophers is Diels-Kranz’ work (cited as DK): H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der
Vorsokratiker, 6th edition, Berlin: Weidmann, 1951. A fuller presentation of the evidence for
Democritus, with commentary in Russian: Solomon Luria, Demokrit, Leningrad, 1970. English
translation and commentary (cited as Taylor 1999a): C.C.W. Taylor, The Atomists: Leucippus
and Democritus. Fragments, A Text and Translation with Commentary, Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1999a. See also the report on Democritus in: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent
Philosophers (Loeb Classical Library), R.D. Hicks (trans.), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1925, book 9.34–49.

Overviews

 Barnes, Jonathan, 1982, The Presocratic Philosophers, rev. ed., London and New York:
Routledge.
 Cartledge, Paul, 1997, Democritus (The Great Philosophers), London: Routledge.
 Curd, Patricia, 1998, The Legacy of Parmenides: Eleatic Monism and Later Presocratic
Thought, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
 Furley, David J., 1987, The Greek Cosmologists vol 1: The Formation of the Atomic
Theory and its Earliest Critics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 Kirk, G.S., J.E. Raven and Malcolm Schofield, 1957, The Presocratic Philosophers,
second edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 McKirahan, Jr., Richard D., 1994, Philosophy Before Socrates: An Introduction with
Texts and Commentary, Indianapolis: Hackett.
 Taylor, C.C.W., 1999b, ‘The atomists,’ in A.A. Long (ed.), The Cambridge Companion
to Early Greek Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 181–204.

Secondary Sources

 Annas, Julia, 2002, ‘Democritus and Eudaimonism,’ in V. Caston and D. Graham (eds.),
Presocratic Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Alexander Mourelatos, London: Ashgate,
pp. 169–82.
 Baldes, Richard W., 1975, ‘Democritus on Visual Perception: Two Theories or One?,’
Phronesis, 20: 93–105.
 Balme, David, 1941, ‘Greek Science and Mechanism II. The Atomists,’ Classical
Quarterly, 35: 23–8.
 Benakis, Linos G. (ed.)., 1984, Proceedings of the Ist International Congress on
Democritus, Xanthi.
 Berryman, Sylvia, 2002, ‘Democritus and the explanatory power of the void,’ in V.
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Ancient Atomism
First published Tue Aug 23, 2005; substantive revision Fri Nov 18, 2011

A number of important theorists in ancient Greek natural philosophy held that the universe is
composed of physical ‘atoms’, literally ‘uncuttables’. Some of these figures are treated in more
depth in other articles in this encyclopedia: the reader is encouraged to consult individual entries
on Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius. These philosophers developed a systematic
and comprehensive natural philosophy accounting for the origins of everything from the
interaction of indivisible bodies, as these atoms—which have only a few intrinsic properties like
size and shape—strike against one another, rebound and interlock in an infinite void. This
atomist natural philosophy eschewed teleological explanation and denied divine intervention or
design, regarding every composite of atoms as produced purely by material interactions of
bodies, and accounting for the perceived properties of macroscopic bodies as produced by these
same atomic interactions. Atomists formulated views on ethics, theology, political philosophy
and epistemology consistent with this physical system. This powerful and consistent materialism,
somewhat modified from its original form by Epicurus, was regarded by Aristotle as a chief
competitor to teleological natural philosophy.

Since the Greek adjective atomos means, literally, ‘uncuttable,’ the history of ancient atomism is
not only the history of a theory about the nature of matter, but also the history of the idea that
there are indivisible parts in any kind of magnitude—geometrical extension, time, etc. Although
the term ‘atomism’ is most often identified with the systems of natural philosophy mentioned
above, scholars have also identified commitments to indivisibles in a number of lesser known
figures. Often these are formulated in response to paradoxes like those of Zeno of Elea (early 5 th
c. BCE) about infinite divisibility of magnitudes. Some of these identifications of other kinds of
atomism outside the main tradition are controversial and based on slight evidence.

 1. Atomism before Leucippus?

 2. Leucippus and Democritus
 3. Plato and Platonists
 4. Xenocrates
 5. Minima Naturalia in Aristotle
 6. Diodorus Cronus
 7. Epicurean Atomism
  8. Atomism and Particle Theories in the Sciences
 Bibliography
 Academic Tools
 Other Internet Resources
 Related Entries

1. Atomism before Leucippus?

Leucippus (5th c. BCE) is the earliest figure whose commitment to atomism is well attested. He
is usually credited with inventing atomism. According to a passing remark by the geographer
Strabo, Posidonius (1st c. BCE Stoic philosopher) reported that ancient Greek atomism can be
traced back to a figure known as Moschus or Mochus of Sidon, who lived at the time of the
Trojan wars. This report was given credence in the seventeenth century: the Cambridge Platonist
Henry More traced the origins of ancient atomism back, via Pythagoras and Moschus, to Moses.
This theologically motivated view does not seem to claim much historical evidence, however.

In 1877, Tannéry argued that Zeno of Elea's arguments about divisibility must have been
formulated in response to some early Pythagoreans. Tannéry's view, which was widely accepted
in the early twentieth century, is based on the claim that one of Zeno's paradoxes about the
possibility of motion would best make sense if it were attacking an atomist thesis, and thus that
the Pythagoreans, who are reported to have talked of monads or unit numbers, must have been
atomists of a sort. Tannery's thesis has been thoroughly challenged since then: most scholars
instead consider atomism to be one of a number of positions formulated in response to the
arguments of Parmenides and Zeno (first half of the fifth century). A fourth-century
Pythagorean, Ecphantus, interpreted the Pythagorean monads as indivisible bodies: he is reported
to have been sympathetic to atomism of a kind similar to Democritus'. Plato's discussion of the
composition of solids from plane surfaces is thought to be based on fourth-century Pythagorean
theories.

2. Leucippus and Democritus

Leucippus and Democritus are widely regarded as the first atomists in the Greek tradition. Little
is known about Leucippus, while the ideas of his student Democritus—who is said to have taken
over and systematized his teacher's theory—are known from a large number of reports. These
ancient atomists theorized that the two fundamental and oppositely characterized constituents of
the natural world are indivisible bodies—atoms—and void. The latter is described simply as
nothing, or the negation of body. Atoms are by their nature intrinsically unchangeable; they can
only move about in the void and combine into different clusters. Since the atoms are separated
by void, they cannot fuse, but must rather bounce off one another when they collide. Because all
macroscopic objects are in fact combinations of atoms, everything in the macroscopic world is
subject to change, as their constituent atoms shift or move away. Thus, while the atoms
themselves persist through all time, everything in the world of our experience is transitory and
subject to dissolution.
According to Aristotle's presentation (On Generation and Corruption I 8), the motivation for the
first postulation of indivisible bodies is to answer a metaphysical puzzle about the possibility of
change and multiplicity. Parmenides had argued that any differentiation or change in Being
implies that ‘what is not’ either is or comes to be. Although there are problems in interpreting
Parmenides' precise meaning, he was understood to have raised a problem about how change can
be possible without something coming from nothing. Several Presocratics formulated, in
response, philosophical systems in which change is not considered to require something coming
into being from complete nonexistence, but rather the arrangement of preexisting elements into
new combinations. The atomists held that, like Being, as conceived by Parmenides, the atoms are
unchangeable and contain no internal differentiation of a sort that would allow for division. But
there are many Beings, not just one, which are separated from another by nothing, i.e. by void.

By positing indivisible bodies, the atomists were also thought to be answering Zeno's paradoxes
about the impossibility of motion. Zeno had argued that, if magnitudes can be divided to infinity,
it would be impossible for motion to occur. The problem seems to be that a body moving would
have to traverse an infinite number of spaces in a finite time. By supposing that the atoms form
the lowest limit to division, the atomists escape from this dilemma: a total space traversed has
only a finite number of parts. As it is unclear whether the earliest atomists understood the atoms
to be physically or theoretically indivisible, they may not have made the distinction.

The changes in the world of macroscopic objects are caused by rearrangements of the atomic
clusters. Atoms can differ in size, shape, order and position (the way they are turned); they move
about in the void, and—depending on their shape—some can temporarily bond with one another
by means of tiny hooks and barbs on their surfaces. Thus the shape of individual atoms affects
the macroscopic texture of clusters of atoms, which may be fluid and yielding or firm and
resistant, depending on the amount of void space between and the coalescence of the atomic
shapes. The texture of surfaces and the relative density and fragility of different materials are
also accounted for by the same means.

The atomists accounted for perception by means of films of atoms sloughed off from their
surfaces by external objects, and entering and impacting the sense organs. They tried to account
for all sensible effects by means of contact, and regarded all sense perceptions as caused by the
properties of the atoms making up the films acting on the atoms of animals' sense organs.
Perceptions of color are caused by the ‘turning’ or position of the atoms; tastes are caused by the
texture of atoms on the tongue, e.g., bitter tastes by the tearing caused by sharp atoms; feelings
of heat are ascribed to friction. Democritus was taken by Aristotle to have considered thought to
be a material process involving the local rearrangement of bodies, just as much as is perception.

A famous quotation from Democritus distinguishes between perceived properties like colors and
tastes, which exist only ‘by convention,’ in contrast to the reality, which is atoms and void.
However, he apparently recognized an epistemological problem for an empiricist philosophy that
nonetheless regards the objects of sense as unreal. In another famous quotation, the senses accuse
the mind of overthrowing them, although mind is dependent on the senses. The accusation is
that, by developing an atomist theory that undermines the basis for confidence in sense
perception, thought has in effect undercut its own foundation on knowledge gained through the
senses. Democritus sometimes seems to doubt or deny the possibility of knowledge.
The early atomists try to account for the formation of the natural world by means of their simple
ontology of atoms and void alone. Leucippus held that there are an infinite number of atoms
moving for all time in an infinite void, and that these can form into cosmic systems or kosmoi by
means of a whirling motion which randomly establishes itself in a large enough cluster of atoms.
It is controversial whether atoms are thought to have weight as an intrinsic property, causing
them all to fall in some given direction, or whether weight is simply a tendency for atoms (which
otherwise move in any and every direction, except when struck) to move towards the centre of a
system, created by the whirling of the cosmic vortices. When a vortex is formed, it creates a
membrane of atoms at its outer edge, and the outer band of atoms catches fire, forming a sun and
stars. These kosmoi are impermanent, and are not accounted for by purpose or design. The earth
is described as a flat cylindrical drum at the center of our cosmos.

Species are not regarded as permanent abstract forms, but as the result of chance combinations of
atoms. Living things are regarded as having a psychê or principle of life; this is identified with
fiery atoms. Organisms are thought to reproduce by means of seed: Democritus seems to have
held that both parents produce seeds composed of fragments from each organ of their body.
Whichever of the parts drawn from the relevant organ of the parents predominates in the new
mixture determines which characteristics are inherited by the offspring. Democritus is reported
to have given an account of the origin of human beings from the earth. He is also said to be the
founder of a kind of cultural anthropology, since his account of the origin of the cosmos includes
an account of the origin of human institutions, including language and social and political
organization.

A large group of reports about Democritus' views concern ethical maxims: some scholars have
tried to regard these as systematic or dependent on atomist physics, while others doubt the
closeness of the connection. Because several maxims stress the value of ‘cheerfulness,’
Democritus is sometimes portrayed as ‘the laughing philosopher.’

3. Plato and Platonists

Although the Greek term atomos is most commonly associated with the philosophical system
developed by Leucippus and Democritus, involving solid and impenetrable bodies, Plato's
Timaeus presents a different kind of physical theory based on indivisibles. The dialogue
elaborates an account of the world wherein the four different basic kinds of matter—earth, air,
fire, and water—are regular solids composed from plane figures: isoceles and scalene right-
angled triangles. Because the same triangles can form into different regular solids, the theory
thus explains how some of the elements can transform into one another, as was widely believed.

In this theory, it is the elemental triangles composing the solids that are regarded as indivisible,
not the solids themselves. When Aristotle discusses the hypothesis that the natural world is
composed of indivisibles, the two views he considers are Plato's and Democritus', although he
seems to have more respect for the latter view. Aristotle criticizes both Plato's and the fourth-
century Pythagorean attempts to construct natural bodies possessing weight from indivisible
mathematical abstractions, whether plane surfaces or numbers.
It has been suggested that Plato accepted time atoms, i.e., indivisible minima in time, but this is
controversial. A report by Aristotle suggests that the belief of Plato's student Xenocrates in the
existence of indivisible lines was also shared by Plato; other testimony suggests that points are
really what Plato refers to as indivisible.

In late antiquity, the Neoplatonist Proclus defended Plato's account against Aristotle's objections;
these arguments are preserved in Simplicius' commentary on Aristotle's On the Heavens.
Simplicius credits the Pythagoreans as well as Plato with a theory composing bodies from plane
surfaces. Simplicius also compares Pythagorean views to Democritean atomism, inasmuch as
both theories posit a cause for hot and cold, rather than taking these to be fundamental principles,
as the Aristotelians do.

4. Xenocrates
A treatise in the Aristotelian corpus probably not by Aristotle himself (On Indivisible Lines)
addresses and refutes a number of arguments offered for the existence of indivisible lines,
without naming their author. Plato's student Xenocrates (396–314 BCE), third head of the
Academy, is reported to believe in indivisible lines, and he may well be the target of the
Aristotelian treatise.

One of the arguments attacked addresses a Zenonian problem about traversing or touching in
succession an infinite series of parts. The idea that there are indivisible lines offers an alternative
to the view that any extended magnitude must be divisible to infinity. Another argument
concerns Platonic Forms, and would only apply to those who accepted their existence. It argues
that the Form of a triangle presupposes the existence of a Form of a line, and adds that this ideal
line cannot have parts, presumably because parts are taken to be prior to the whole they compose
and Forms need to have a kind of primacy to be explanatory. A distinct argument also depends
on the idea of priority: it is argued that if the physical elements composing a body are regarded
as the ultimate parts prior to a whole, they cannot be further divisible. Although this does not
argue for indivisible lines per se, it is used to suggest that the objects of sense as well as those of
thought must include things without parts.

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

5. Minima Naturalia in Aristotle

An argument in Aristotle (Physics 1.4, 187b14–21) is sometimes taken by later writers as
evidence that Aristotle allowed for the existence of minima in natural things. Aristotle writes that
there is a smallest size of material substrate on which it is possible for 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 these material components
present before the form of blood or bone can occur. This doctrine, while it is surely compatible
with the view that the material components are nonetheless infinitely divisible, is sometimes
read, by some Neoplatonist commentators and later sources interested in atomist theory, as
evidence that Aristotle endorsed the existence of minimal physical parts. In late antiquity, this
debate seems to have moved away from the radical solution of positing minimal physical parts or
atoms—a view that seems to have had few advocates—into a puzzle about the possibilities of
‘bottom up’ explanation or the need to regard emergent properties as ‘supervening’ and not mere
products of the necessary material base.

6. Diodorus Cronus
Diodorus Cronus (late 4th c. BCE), a member of the supposed Dialectical School, is reported to
have offered new arguments that there must be partless bodies or magnitudes. Most reports
suggest that his focus was on logical arguments rather than on physical theory: he used
arguments that depend on positing mutually exhaustive alternatives.

Perhaps drawing on an argument of Aristotle's (Sens. 7, 449a20–31]), Diodorus apparently used

the idea that there is a smallest size at which an object at a given distance is visible as the basis
for an argument that there are indivisible magnitudes. His argument begins from the idea that
there is a difference in size between the smallest size at which a given object is visible—
presumably from a given distance—and the largest size at which it is invisible. Unless we
concede that, at some magnitude, a body is both invisible and visible (or neither), there cannot be
any other magnitude intermediate between these two magnitudes. Magnitudes must increase by
discrete units.

Sextus Empiricus (AM 10.48ff) reports an argument of Diodorus' also concluding that
magnitudes have discrete intervals. It also denies the existence of moving bodies, insisting that
bodies move neither when they are in the place where they are, nor when they are in the place
where they are not. Since these alternatives are presented as exhaustive, the conclusion must be
that bodies are never moving. However, rather than assert that everything is static, Diodorus took
the view that bodies must have moved without ever being in motion: they are simply at one place
at one moment, and at another place at another moment.

As well as postulating the existence of indivisible smallest bodies and magnitudes, Diodorus
seems to have supposed that there are indivisible smallest units of time. The argument about
motion does not quite make it explicit that this is what he is committed to, but it is a reasonable
inference: given his insistence that bodies are always at one place or another at any given time,
he might well suppose that infinite divisibility of time would open up the threatening possibility
of indeterminacy as to whether the change of place has taken place.

For those who posit indivisibles as a way to escape paradoxes about infinite divisibility, parallel
arguments might equally well have been applied to the problem of completing tasks in an
infinitely divisible time. Sextus Empiricus reports that the Aristotelian Strato of Lampsacus (d.
268/70 BCE) argued for time atoms, although this is contradicted by other sources. Sorabji 1983
suggests that Strato merely countenanced the possibility that time could be discrete while space
and motion are continuous, without endorsing this position.

7. Epicurean Atomism
Democritus' atomism was revived in the early Hellenistic period, and an atomist school founded
in Athens about 306, by Epicurus (341–270 BCE). The Epicureans formed more of a closed
community than other schools, and promoted a philosophy of a simple, pleasant life lived with
friends. The community included women, and some of its members raised children. The works
of the founder were revered and some of them were memorized, a practice that may have
discouraged philosophical innovation by later members of the school.

Epicurus seems to have learned of atomist doctrine through Democritus' follower Nausiphanes.
Because Epicurus made some significant changes in atomist theory, it is often thought that his
reformulation of the physical theory is an attempt to respond to Aristotle's criticisms of
Democritus. Even more significant, however, is the increasing centrality of ethical concerns to
Epicurus' atomism, and the importance of the view that belief in an atomist physical theory helps
us live better lives.

Epicurus takes to heart a problem Democritus himself recognized (see 2. above), which is that
atomist theory threatens to undermine itself if it removes any trust we can place in the evidence
of the senses, by claiming that colors, etc. are unreal. He notoriously said that ‘all perception is
true,’ apparently distinguishing between the causal processes which impact our senses, all of
which originate with the films of atoms sloughed off by objects, and the judgments we make on
the basis of them, which may be false. Reasoning to truths about things that are not apparent—
like the existence of atoms—depends on the evidence of the senses, which is always true in that
it consists of impacts from actually existing films. For particular phenomena, like meteorological
events, Epicurus endorses the existence of multiple valid explanations, acknowledging that we
may have no evidence for preferring one explanation over another.

It may be that Epicurus was less troubled by any such epistemological uncertainties because of
his emphasis on the value of atomist theory for teaching us how to live the untroubled and
tranquil life. Denying any divine sanction for morality, and holding that the experience of
pleasure and pain are the source of all value, Epicurus thought we can learn from atomist
philosophy that pursuing natural and necessary pleasures—rather than the misleading desires
inculcated by society—will make pleasure readily attainable. At the same time, we will avoid the
pains brought on by pursuing unnatural and unnecessary pleasures. Understanding, on the basis
of the atomist theory, that our fears of the gods and of death are groundless will free us from our
chief mental pains.

Epicurus made significant changes to atomist physical theory, and some of these have been
traced to Aristotle's criticisms of Democritus. It seems that Democritus did not properly
distinguish between the thesis of the physical uncuttability of atoms and that of their conceptual
indivisibility: this raises a problem about how atoms can have parts, as evidenced by their
variations in shape or their ability to compose a magnitude, touching one another in a series on
different sides. Epicurus distinguished the two, holding that uncuttable atoms did have
conceptually distinct parts, but that there was a lowest limit to these.

Epicurus' view of the motion of atoms also differs from Democritus'. Rather than talking of a
motion towards the center of a given cosmos, possibly created by the cosmic vortex, Epicurus
grants to atoms an innate tendency to downward motion through the infinite cosmos. The
downward direction is simply the original direction of atomic fall . This may be in response to
Aristotelian criticisms that Democritus does not show why atomic motion exists, merely saying
that it is eternal and that it is perpetuated by collisions. Moreover, although this is not attested in
the surviving writings of Epicurus, authoritative later sources attribute to him the idea that it
belongs to the nature of atoms occasionally to exhibit a slight, otherwise uncaused swerve from
their downward path. This is thought to explain why atoms have from infinite time entered into
collisions instead of falling in parallel paths: it is also said, by Lucretius, to enter into the account
of action and responsibility. Scholars have proposed a number of alternative interpretations as to
how this is thought to work.

Epicurus seems to have taken a different view on the nature of properties, denying Democritus'
claim that perceived properties only exist ‘by convention’. His successor Polystratus further
defended and elaborated a claim about the reality of properties, including relational properties.
Moreover, with the recovery of new papyrological evidence, controversy has arisen about the
extent to which Epicurus rejected Democritus' attempt to account for all causal processes by the
properties of the atoms and void alone. Although Epicurus' ideas have long been known from
three surviving letters preserved in the biography by Diogenes Laertius, no copy of his longer
work On Nature had been available. However, following excavation of the Epicurean library at
Herculaneum that was buried by a volcanic eruption, some parts of this work are being
recovered. Many of the scrolls found are badly damaged, however, and interpretation of this
newly recovered material is ongoing.

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

Although Epicurus' doctrines teach the value of a quiet life in a specially constructed Epicurean
community and decry the search for fame, atomist theory is also regarded as a cure for the
troubles afflicting others outside the community, and there are certainly Epicurean texts written
for a wider audience. Besides the letters by Epicurus himself summarizing his doctrines, the
Epicurean philosopher Lucretius (d. c. 50 BCE) wrote a long Latin poem advocating Epicurus'
ideas to Roman audiences. Lucretius makes clear his close allegiance to Epicurus' own views,
and provides more detail on some topics than has survived from Epicurus' own work, such as an
extended account of the origins of human society and institutions. A less sympathetic
contemporary of Lucretius, Cicero, also wrote a number of Latin works in which an Epicurean
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. Excavation of
these since the nineteenth century has also produced new texts, aimed at converting passersby to
Epicurean theory. Smith 1993, in his latest edition of the text of the inscriptions, dates them to
the early second century CE.

8. Atomism and Particle Theories in the Sciences

Some figures concerned with the natural sciences, especially medicine, are thought to have
regarded organic bodies as made of some kind of particles. The details of these views are often
obscure. Galen, in On the Natural Faculties, divides medical theorists into two groups, following
the division of natural philosophers. On the one side are continuum theorists, who hold that all
matter is infinitely divisible but that all the matter in things subject to generation and corruption
is susceptible to qualitative alteration. On the other are those who suppose that matter is
composed of tiny, unchangeable particles separated by void spaces, and explain qualitative
change as produced only in compound bodies, by rearrangement of the particles alone. In Galen's
view, qualitative alteration is needed to produce the powers whereby beneficent Nature directs
change: Galen credits the first group with asserting the priority of Nature and its beneficent
order, and the latter with denying this.

Although ancient natural philosophers tend to fall on either side of Galen's divide—continuum
theory plus beneficent teleology, vs. atomism plus blind necessity— there is a danger in taking
this dichotomy to be exhaustive or exclusive of possible natural philosophies. Inasmuch as the
view Plato develops in Timaeus is atomistic and also endorses teleological explanation, for
example, his position complicates the picture, and other theories of natural philosophy in the
Hellenistic period do not divide so neatly onto one side or the other. Galen has polemical
interests in discrediting those who deny the need for qualitatively irreducible faculties or powers
employed by Nature to produce beneficial results. In cases where we have only scattered reports
and secondhand information, it is difficult to know which views should be counted as atomistic.
A prevailing tendency in modern scholarship to identify atomist tendencies with ‘mechanistic’
thinking is not characteristic of ancient Greek atomism: the identification was made in the work
of Henry More and Robert Boyle in the 17th century. Galen elsewhere explicitly contrasts
atomist thought with the schools who appeal to ideas from mechanics.

The theories of Heracleides of Pontus (4th c. BCE) and Asclepiades of Bythnia (2nd c. BCE) are
sometimes likened to atomism. Both—a pupil of Plato, and a medical theorist—are said to have
posited the existence of corpuscles they call anarmoi onkoi, i.e. some kind of ‘masses’, but the
precise meaning is disputed. Although the theories of Asclepiades in particular are often
assimilated to atomism, there is reason to think that Galen's identification of his view as
atomistic is polemical, and that Asclepiades' particles are capable of division into infinitely many
pieces. Erasistratus of Ceos, one of the great anatomists of the third century BCE, is another of
those whom Galen suggests may have been on the atomist side, despite his acceptance of design
in nature. Erasistratus had posited that the tissues of the body are composed of a triple braid of
vein, artery and nerve: Galen reports that even the tissue of the nerve is made up of this tiny
braid. He claims that the Erasistrateans are divided as to whether the elemental nerve tissue is a
continuous mass or is composed of small particles like those of the atomists.
One of the most prominent writers on mechanics in antiquity, Hero of Alexandria (1st c. CE), is
often regarded as an atomist. In the introduction to his Pneumatica, he describes matter as made
up of particles with spaces between them. However, Hero's account of pneumatic effects
involving the compression of air—discovered by Ctesibius—seems to depend on the
deformation of elastic particles which can be compressed artificially but will spring back to their
original shape quite vehemently. If so, his account denies a fundamental tenet of classical
atomism, that atoms do not change in their intrinsic properties like shape.

Bibliography
The sections of this Bibliography correspond to the sections of the entry.

For works on Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius, see the relevant articles in this
encyclopedia. This bibliography focuses on sources relevant to other figures mentioned in this
article:

A. General

 Furley, David J. Two Studies in the Greek Atomists, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1967.
 Furley, David J. The Greek Cosmologists vol 1: The Formation of the Atomic Theory and
its Earliest Critics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
 Hasper, Pieter Sjoerd. ‘Aristotle's Diagnosis of Atomism,’ Apeiron 39 (2006), 121–56.
 Konstan, David. ‘Atomism and its Heritage: Minimal Parts,’ Ancient Philosophy 2
(1982), 60–75.
 Makin, Stephen. Indifference Arguments, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993.
 Pyle, Andrew. Atomism and Its Critics: From Democritus to Newton, Bristol: Thoemmes
Press, 1997.
 Sorabji, Richard. Time, Creation and the Continuum: Theories in Antiquity and the Early
Middle Ages, London and Ithaca, NY: Duckworth and Cornell University Press, 1983.

B. Atomism before Leucippus

 Cornford, F.M. Plato and Parmenides: Parmenides' Way of Truth and Plato's
Parmenides translated with an introduction and a running commentary, London:
Routledge, 1939.
 Guthrie, W.K.C. A History of Greek Philosophy vol. 1: The Earlier Presocratics and the
Pythagoreans, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967.
 Heidel, W.A. ‘The Pythagoreans and Greek Mathematics,’ American Journal of
Philology 61 (1940), 1–33.
 More, Henry. Conjectura Cabbalistica, London: J. Flesher, 1653.
 Owen, G.E.L. ‘Zeno and the mathematicians,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 58
(1957–8), 199–222.
 Tannéry, Paul. L'Histoire de la science héllène, Paris: Georg Olms, 1887.
C. & D. Plato, Platonists and Xenocrates:

 Dillon, John. The Heirs of Plato: A Study of the Old Academy (347–274 BC), Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 2003.
 Konstan, David. ‘Points, Lines, and Infinity: Aristotle's Physics Zeta and Hellenistic
Philosophy,’ in John J. Cleary (ed.), Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in
Ancient Philosophy 3 (1988), 1–32.
 Mueller, Ian, ‘Plato's Geometrical Chemistry and Its Exegesis in Antiquity,’, 159–76 in
P. Suppes, J. Moravcsik and H. Mendell (eds.), Ancient and Medieval Traditions in the
Exact Sciences: Essays in Memory of Wilbur Knorr, Stanford: CSLI Publications, 2000.
 Sambursky, S. The Physical World of Late Antiquity, London: Routledge, 1962.
 Sedley, David. ‘On Generation and Corruption 1.2,’ 65–89 in Frans de Haas and Jaap
Mansfeld (eds), Aristotle: On Generation and Corruption, Book 1: Symposium
Aristotelicum, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004.
 Siorvanes, Lucas. Proclus: Neo-Platonic Philosophy and Science, Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 1996.
 Strang, Colin and K.W. Mills, ‘Plato and the Instant,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society suppl. vol. 48 (1974), 63–96.

E. Minima Naturalia

 Glasner, Ruth. ‘Ibn Rushd's Theory of Minima Naturalia,’ Arabic Sciences and
Philosophy 11 (2001), 9–26.
 Murdoch, John E. ‘The Medieval and Renaissance Tradition of Minima Naturalia,’ 91–
132 in Christoph Lüthy, John E. Murdoch and William R. Newman (eds), Late Medieval
and Early Modern Corpuscular Matter Theories, Leiden: Brill, 2001.

F. Diodorus Cronus

 Denyer, Nicholas. ‘The Atomism of Diodorus Cronus,’ Prudentia 13 (1981), 33–45.

 Sedley, David. ‘Diodorus Cronus and Hellenistic Philosophy,’ Proceedings of the
Cambridge Philological Society n.s. 23 (1977), 74–120.

G. Followers of Democritus and Epicurus

 Clay, Diskin. Paradosis and Survival: Three Chapters in the History of Epicurean
Philosophy, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998.
 Frischer, B. The Sculpted Word: Epicureanism and Philosophical Recruitment in Ancient
Greece, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
 Gigante, Marcello. Philodemus in Italy: The Books from Herculaneum, translated by Dirk
Obbink, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995.
 Smith, Martin Ferguson. Diogenes of Oinoanda: The Epicurean Inscription, Edited with
Introduction, Translation and Notes, Naples: Bibliopolis, 1993.
 Warren, James. Epicurus and Democritean Ethics: An Archaeology of Ataraxia,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
H. Atomism and Particle Theories in the Sciences

 Berryman, Sylvia. The Mechanical Hypothesis in Ancient Greek Natural Philosophy,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
 Berryman, Sylvia. ‘The Evidence for Strato of Lampsacus in Hero of Alexandria,’ in
Marie-Laurence Desclos and W.W. Fortenbaugh (eds.), Strato of Lampsacus, New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2011.
 Drachmann, A. G. Ktesibios, Philon and Heron: A Study in Ancient Pneumatics,
Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1948.
 Gottschalk, Hans. Heracleides of Pontus, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980.
 Vallance, J.T. The Lost Theory of Asclepiades of Bithynia, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1990.
 Von Staden, Heinrich. ‘Teleology and Mechanism: Aristotelian Biology and Early
Hellenistic Medicine,’ 183–208 in Wolfgang Kullmann and Sabine Föllinger (eds),
Aristotelische Biologie: Intentionen, Methoden, Ergebnisse, Stuttgart: F. Steiner Verlag,
1997.

I. Atomism in other traditions

Atomist theories are also found in classical Islamic and Indian philosophy:

 Dhanani, Alnoor. The Physical Theory of Kalam, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994.
 Ganeri, Jonardo. Philosophy in Classical India, London: Routledge 2001.
 McGinnis, Jon. ‘The Topology of Time: An Analysis of Medieval Islamic Accounts of
Discrete and Continuous Time,’ The Modern Schoolman, 81, (2003), 5–25.
 Pines, Shlomo. Studies in Islamic Atomism, trans. Michael Schwartz, ed. Tzvi
Langermann, Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1997.
 Potter, Karl H. Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies vol. 2: Indian Metaphysics and
Epistemology, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.
 Rashed, Marwan. ‘Natural philosophy,’ 287–307 in Peter Adamson and Richard C.
Taylor (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge
University press, 2005.

Epicurus
First published Mon Jan 10, 2005; substantive revision Wed Feb 18, 2009

The philosophy of Epicurus (341–270 B.C.) was a complete and interdependent system,
involving a view of the goal of human life (happiness, resulting from absence of physical pain
and mental disturbance), an empiricist theory of knowledge (sensations, including the perception
of pleasure and pain, are infallible criteria), a description of nature based on atomistic
materialism, and a naturalistic account of evolution, from the formation of the world to the
emergence of human societies. Epicurus believed that, on the basis of a radical materialism
which dispensed with transcendent entities such as the Platonic Ideas or Forms, he could
disprove the possibility of the soul's survival after death, and hence the prospect of punishment
in the afterlife. He regarded the unacknowledged fear of death and punishment as the primary
cause of anxiety among human beings, and anxiety in turn as the source of extreme and irrational
desires. The elimination of the fears and corresponding desires would leave people free to pursue
the pleasures, both physical and mental, to which they are naturally drawn, and to enjoy the
peace of mind that is consequent upon their regularly expected and achieved satisfaction. It
remained to explain how irrational fears arose in the first place: hence the importance of an
account of social evolution. Epicurus was aware that deeply ingrained habits of thought are not
easily corrected, and thus he proposed various exercises to assist the novice. His system included
advice on the proper attitude toward politics (avoid it where possible) and the gods (do not
imagine that they concern themselves about human beings and their behavior), the role of sex
(dubious), marriage (also dubious) and friendship (essential), reflections on the nature of various
meteorological and planetary phenomena, about which it was best to keep an open mind in the
absence of decisive verification, and explanations of such processes as gravity and magnetism,
which posed considerable challenges to the ingenuity of the earlier atomists. Although the
overall structure of Epicureanism was designed to hang together and to serve its principal ethical
goals, there was room for a great deal of intriguing philosophical argument concerning every
aspect of the system, from the speed of atoms in a void to the origin of optical illusions.

 1. Sources
 2. Life
 3. Physical Theory
 4. Psychology and Ethics
 5. Social Theory
 6. The Epicurean Life
 Bibliography
 Other Internet Resources
 Related Entries

1. Sources
The major source for Epicurean doctrine is Diogenes Laertius' third-century A.D. Lives of
Eminent Philosophers, a compilation of information on the lives and doctrines of the
philosophers of classical Greece (see “Doxography of Ancient Philosophy”). In the tenth and
final book, devoted to Epicureanism, Diogenes preserves three of Epicurus' letters to his
disciples, in which he presents his basic views in a concise and handy form. The Letter to
Herodotus summarizes Epicurus' physical theory, the Letter to Menoeceus offers a précis of
Epicurean ethics, and the Letter to Pythocles treats astronomical and meteorological matters.
(There is some doubt about whether the last is by Epicurus himself or a follower, but there seems
to be sufficient reason to attribute it to the founder himself.) Diogenes also quotes a collection of
brief sayings, called the “Principal Beliefs” or “Principal Doctrines” (Kuriai Doxai), excerpted
from the writings of Epicurus or, in some cases, of his close associates; another such collection,
partially overlapping with the first, survives in an independent manuscript and is conventionally
called the Vatican Sayings. The purpose of both sets, like that of the Letters, was to make the
core doctrines easy to remember. Diogenes also fills in topics not covered in the Letters, and
provides a list of Epicurus' writings and other biographical information.

Short citations of Epicurus' works appear in other writers (e.g., Plutarch, Sextus Empiricus, and
the Greek commentators on Aristotle), often taken out of context or presented in a polemical and
distorted fashion. (The standard edition of Epicurus' works in Greek is Arrighetti 1973; the
fullest collection of fragments and testimonies is still Usener 1887; for translations, see
Bibliography: Editions, Translations, Commentaries). In addition, several works of Epicurus,
including parts of his major treatise, On Nature (Peri phuseôs) — a series of lectures running to
37 papyrus rolls — have been recovered in damaged condition from the library of a villa in the
town of Herculaneum, which was buried in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. The library
almost certainly contained the working collection of Philodemus, an Epicurean philosopher from
Syria who studied in Athens and moved to Italy in the first century B.C. Many of the rolls consist
of Philodemus' own writings, and provide valuable information about later issues in the history
of Epicureanism. One must be cautious about ascribing these views to the founder himself,
although the school was notoriously conservative and later thinkers were careful not to depart
materially from Epicurus' own teachings. New editions and translations are now making these
difficult texts available to a wider readership.

More or less contemporary with Philodemus is Lucretius (first century B.C.), who composed in
Latin De rerum natura (“On the Nature of Things”; the title, if it is Lucretius' own, is an
adaptation of “On Nature”) in six books of hexameter verse, the meter characteristic of epic and
didactic poetry. As a dedicated Epicurean, passionate to promulgate the message of the founder,
Lucretius reproduced Epicurean doctrine faithfully (Sedley 1998; Clay 1983 allows Lucretius
more originality). His poem concentrates principally on the physical and psychological or
epistemological aspects of Epicureanism, and to a great extent omits the ethical. From a hostile
point of view, Cicero rehearsed and criticized Epicurus' ideas, especially concerning ethics, in
several of his philosophical works, including On Moral Ends (De finibus) and the Tusculan
Disputations. Still later, in the second century A.D., another Diogenes erected a large inscription,
to this day only partially excavated, in the city of Oenoanda (in southwestern Turkey), which
contained the basic tenets of Epicureanism (authoritative edition by Smith 1993; see also Gordon
1996).

2. Life
“Epicurus, the son of Neocles and Chaerestrata, was an Athenian from the deme of Gargettus
and the lineage of the Philaïdes, as Metrodorus says in his On Noble Families. Heraclides,
among others, in his epitome of Sotion, says that he was raised in Samos, since the Athenians
were given parcels of land there, but came to Athens when he was eighteen, when Xenocrates
was head of the Academy and Aristotle was still in Chalcis” (where he died in 322). So begins
the account by Diogenes Laertius (10.1). The dates for Epicurus' birth and first move to Athens
are thus 341 B.C. and 323 respectively. Diogenes adds that after the death of Alexander (323),
when the Athenians were expelled from Samos, Epicurus left Athens and joined his father in
Colophon (in 321), on the coast of what is now Turkey. Here he studied philosophy under the
tutelage of Nausiphanes, a Democritean philosopher with skeptical leanings, and author of a
work called the Tripod, on which Epicurus reportedly drew for his Canon, his principal work on
epistemology; in ethics, Nausiphanes substituted the term akataplêxia (“undauntability”) for
Democritus' athambiê, “fearlessness,” as crucial to the good life, which invites comparison with
Epicurus' ataraxia or “imperturbability,” though Epicurus is said to have denied having been
influenced by him (On Nausiphanes' role in transmitting elements of Democritean doctrine to
Epicurus, see Warren 2002: 160–92.)

Ten years later, Epicurus moved to Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, and soon proceeded to
Lampsacus on the nearby mainland; in both cities he taught and gathered followers before
returning again to Athens in 307/06, where he remained until his death in 270, at the age of
seventy or seventy-one. In Athens, he purchased the property that became known as the
“Garden” (later used as a name for his school itself) and began to develop his own school in
earnest. Diogenes reports a number of slanderous stories that were circulated by Epicurus'
opponents, despite which he affirms that Epicurus was of an extraordinarily humane disposition;
this was the prevailing view, shared even by hostile witnesses to Epicureanism. Diogenes also
records Epicurus' will (10.16–21), in which, among other things, he made provisions for the
children of his friends and appointed a successor.

3. Physical Theory
Epicurus held that the elementary constituents of nature are undifferentiated matter, in the form
of discrete, solid and indivisible particles (“atoms”) below the threshold of perception, plus
empty space. In its broad outline, Epicurus inherited this scheme from the earlier atomists, above
all Democritus. But Democritus' version had been the object of critiques by later thinkers,
especially Aristotle, in part for incoherencies in the notion of an infinite void, in part for
problems attaching to his idea of minima, or entities of the smallest conceivable size (see
especially Physics Book 6). First, freestanding entities of minimal size could have no edges, and
so no shapes, or rather would be all edge: thus, if two minima touched, they would wholly
overlap. (The same argument applies to points in a line, which is why a line contains points but is
not composed of them, according to Aristotle.) Further, if atoms really are conceptually
indivisible, and not just physically unsplittable, then when two atoms pass by each other it is
impossible that they should at any time be only partway past, for this would imply a point
partway along the length of the atom, which contradicts the premise that it is a minimum.
Although Aristotle does not state the argument precisely in this form, it is apparent that a strict
conception of minimal-sized atoms entails that motion too must consist of discontinuous quanta;
and if motion, then time. Atoms must, then, Aristotle inferred, move in discrete hops (kinêmata),
each one occupying a single temporal minimum — and hence, all atoms must move at a uniform
speed. An infinite void, with atoms distributed throughout it, led to problems of its own, for it
permits no intrinsic spatial orientation and hence no account of why things fall, as they are
observed to do.

The problem for Epicurus was to find a way of explaining the natural phenomena of bodily
movement while responding to the challenges posed by Aristotle's criticisms of Democritus'
theory. Epicurus rose to the challenge, although one cannot be certain that he was responding
directly to Aristotle's critique. (It is unclear whether or how much philosophers of Epicurus'
generation who were not members of Aristotle's own school had access to Aristotle's treatises.)
First, he distinguished between the atom, which by its nature cannot be broken apart, and the
minimum conceivable expanse of matter: atoms have such minima as parts, but are not minima
themselves — there can be no free-standing entity one minimum expanse in size. This resolves
the problem of atomic edges, and also that of how atoms can come in different shapes and sizes
(though never large enough to be seen): to have the hooks and crevices needed to form
compounds, they can scarcely be theoretically partless. Second, Epicurus agreed that time too is
discontinuous, as is motion: Simplicius (p. 934.23–30 Diels; translation in Konstan 1989) quotes
him as affirming that it is untrue to say that an atom is moving over a minimum interval, but only
that it has moved. What is more, as Aristotle had argued must be the case, atoms all move at the
same velocity (the principle of isotakheia). This last claim entailed difficulties of its own, such as
how atoms ever overtake each other, if they are moving in the same direction. (Lucretius invoked
the idea of a random swerve to solve this one; see below.) But it also provided a solution to
another problem, that of entropy: for since atoms can never slow down, the universe can never
come to a halt (in modern terms, there is no loss of energy). As for gravity, Epicurus may have
had a solution to this too, and in a novel form. If an atom just on its own cannot slow down or
alter its direction of motion, then an atom that is rising or moving in an oblique direction cannot
at some point begin to tilt or fall, unless something blocks its progress and forces it to do so. If,
however, after a collision atoms tended to emerge in a statistically favored direction — that is, if
the motions of all atoms after collisions did not cancel each other out but on average produced a
vector, however small, in a given direction, then that direction would by definition be down. The
absence of a global orientation in the universe was thus immaterial. Due to this vector, any given
world will, like our own, be similarly oriented in respect to gravitation. (Given the infinite
expanse of the universe on Epicurean theory — see below — we must expect there to be a
plurality of worlds, some like ours, some — within limits — different.)

Macroscopic objects, of course, do not move at a uniform and very great speed; the atoms within
them do, but their motions are restricted and deflected by neighboring atoms, and so they vibrate.
In the case of compound objects that are completely at rest, the resultant of internal atomic
motions is zero, relative, at least, to the earth, which may have an average motion of its own. If
so, and if for some reason the earth's motion is slower in a downward direction than that of
objects on or near its surface — because, say, the earth is disk-shaped, as Epicurus held, and
hence sinks more slowly in the surrounding atomic medium, like a falling leaf — then Epicurus
could explain as well why things like stones tend to fall to the earth's surface when let go.

Epicurus operated with a highly limited number of elementary principles in nature — he did not
know the concept of force, for example, or the associated ideas of attraction and repulsion among
atoms, not to mention more arcane properties — and for all his efforts to account for all the
physical features of the world on the basis of this theory, paradoxes remained. An excellent one
is posed by Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists = M 10.144–48), which at the same time
gives an idea of how Epicurean atoms were understood to behave. Sextus imagined two atoms
separated by a distance of nine minima, traveling at the same speed (as atoms must) toward each
other; after four temporal minima, the atoms would be one spatial minimum apart. Then what?
They cannot meet in the middle of the remaining distance, by the very concept of a minimum.
Nor can one cross the interval before the other, without violating the rule of equal velocity. But
how, then, can they meet at all? We do not know an Epicurean reply to this conundrum. Perhaps
atoms are always an even number of minimal spaces apart from one another. Or else, minima are
always bundled in such large quantities that it is meaningless to speak of an odd or even number
of minima between atoms; the Stoics, at all events, held that whether the number of stars, for
example, is odd or even is absolutely or naturally non-evident (kathapax adela, Sextus Empiricus
PH 2.97, M 8.147; physei adela, M 8.317–18). But Epicurus believed that motion at the atomic
level obeyed different laws from those that appear to operate at the level of macroscopic objects
(that atomic motion is discontinuous is an example). Perhaps, then, he regarded the possibility of
a collision under such circumstances as a consequence of this difference. Finally, it possible that
he discounted such a puzzle as a purely mathematical paradox, since it is recorded that he had
little interest in mathematics as a separate science from physics and believed it to be irrelevant to
the proper study of physics.

Fascinating as these questions are in their own right, Epicurus himself does not proceed by
creating an abstract model, exploring its internal coherence, and determining its applicability to
phenomena, in the ideal manner of modern science. Rather, he begins with the testimony of the
senses, which he thinks are always reliable. These provide a basis on which to draw conclusions
either with respect to things that still await confirmation or those that are by nature imperceptible
(Letter to Herodotus = LH 38). Thus, in beginning his account of the physical world in this
Letter, he argues that things cannot arise out of nothing, since otherwise there would be no need
of specific seeds for specific plants and animals, and anything whatsoever could be generated out
of just any types of material elements. Since this is not seen to happen, but reproduction in things
we can observe with our senses is in fact orderly and determinate, spontaneous generation at any
level is ruled out. The logic is what Epicurus calls counterwitnessing: a hypothetical premise
(here, that things sometimes arise out of nothing) is eliminated because experience tells against
its conclusion (here, that the coming into being of visible objects does not require determinate
seeds or materials). More simply, if A then B; but not B, hence not A. One might, of course,
challenge the implication: something might arise from nothing, even if there are no cases of
chickens giving birth to horses. The important point, however, is that Epicurus invokes the data
of perception to testify for or against the nature of elementary phenomena; he assumes a
certainty uniformity of nature at all levels. So too with his next postulate: things are not
destroyed into what is not, since in that case everything would cease to exist (and would have
ceased to exist before now, given infinite past time — recall that nothing is created out of
nothing); but things do exist, hence the premise is false.

As for body and void as the basic physical principles, the senses, Epicurus affirms, testify to the
existence of bodies, and by calculation on the basis of the senses we infer the nature of what is
invisible, for example the atoms (LH 39). Here the reasoning is based on analogy: what is
evident to our senses must be true on the microscopic level as well, at least in some respects.
Void must exist, in turn, if bodies are to be able to move, as they are seen to do. Thus motion is
the counterwitness to the non-existence of void — an indirect argument is required since one
cannot perceive empty space. What is more, since body, being “full,” offers resistance and void,
being empty, offers no resistance, they complement each other and exhaust the possibilities;
hence it is impossible to conceive of anything besides these two principles, apart from things that
are accidents of them — accidents that arise from unions of elementary bodies in the void.
(Inconceivability is another tool in Epicurus' method of demonstration.) These elementary
bodies, then, are the atoms, which are indivisible and inalterable, if things are not to dissolve into
nothingness. The Letter to Herodotus is an epitome of Epicurean doctrine, and the arguments are
crisp and abbreviated, but the reasoning is clear, and is confirmed by the more detailed treatment
in Lucretius, which almost certainly follows Epicurus' On Nature. Epicurus appeals to some
elementary intuitions concerning bodies and their movement through space in order to establish
the structure of imperceptibly small things; he concludes that these must be inalterable if nature
is not to dissolve into nothing (creation back out of nothing having already been eliminated by
the argument cited above from regularity in generation); and the basic features of the atomic
system are then in place. A similar appeal to the senses establishes the infinity of the universe,
since what is finite must have an edge, and an edge is conceived in reference to something
beyond it. But the universe — in Greek, the “all” — contains everything, and so there is nothing
outside it by which to conceive an edge. Hence, it is infinite. And if the all is infinite, so is the
void and the number of atoms as well, for otherwise atoms would be too widely dispersed ever to
meet (LH 41–42).

Epicurus now has in place the fundamental constituents of his natural world, and he might have
stopped here, with atoms and void and the denial, on the grounds of inconceivability, of any
other kind of basic physical principle. All secondary properties, such as color and taste, will be
explained as epiphenomena of atomic combinations, and perception of things at a distance by the
continual emission of infinitesimally thin laminas from objects, which maintain the relevant
features of the source (in the case of vision, for example, the laminas will preserve the atomic
patterns specific to the color and shape of the object) and directly stimulate the relevant sense
organ. This is a tricky thesis, and again posed puzzles: how do the lamina or simulacra, as
Lucretius called them, of a mountain enter the eye, for example? In fragments? By somehow
shrinking? We do not know the answer to this one. A few more concepts fill in the picture of the
natural world: thus, Epicurus denies that there can be infinitely many kinds of atoms, for then all
shapes (which define the kinds) at any given magnitude would be exhausted and atoms would
have to reach visible proportions, which we know that they do not (this argument depends on the
idea of minima, discussed further below); instead, the number of kinds (i.e., shapes of various
microscopic sizes) is inconceivably large but “not strictly infinite,” whereas the number of each
kind of atom is simply infinite (LH 55–56). This condition is also invoked to explain why there
is a limit on possible types of combinations of atoms, and hence on the number of viable species
of things in the perceptible world: if there were infinitely many kinds of atoms, Epicurus
believed, they could combine to generate absolutely anything — an infinity of different sorts of
thing.

But an infinite number of solid and therefore indivisible atoms of finitely many kinds, such as
Epicurus' theory provides, are enough to avoid the possibility of the universe crumbling into
nothing. Why did Epicurus complicate matters still further with the doctrine that atoms
themselves consist of still smaller parts in the form of mathematically minimal expanses, as we
saw above that he does? Finite bodies, according to Epicurus, had to be composed of smaller
expanses, and if there were no lower limit in size to such expanses, one would have to imagine
traversing such a body in an infinite number of moves — but then, however small these
infinitesimals might be, the object that contained them, Epicurus reasoned, would have to be
infinitely large (LH 56–57). What are such minima like? Epicurus asks us to think of the smallest
perceptible thing. It differs from larger visible entities in that it has no sub-parts to be traversed
with the eye: if you do attempt to visualize such sub-parts, they simply coincide with the original
perceptible minimum. Since such minimal visible entities have no parts, they do not touch edge
to edge (edges are parts), and yet they measure out the body that contains them, larger bodies
having more such minima. By analogy with the visible, then, we conceive of the smallest part of
an atom (LH 58–59). This conception resembles the way points exist in a line, according to
Aristotle, since they too do not touch, nor can they exist independently. But Epicurean minima
differ from points in that they are physical expanses and so have extension. This looks like a
contradictory state of affairs: can we imagine, for example, an atom consisting of just two
minima? Or ten? It would be like counting up the least visible bits of a perceptible object.
Geometrical problems arise as well if we imagine shapes like cubes containing finite numbers of
minima all packed together, since diagonals are incommensurable with edges, but the minima
will not fit together in such a way as to allow such incommensurability. On the assumption that
Epicurus was aware of and cared about such puzzles, it has been suggested that he thought any
atom consists of a not strictly infinite, but inconceivably large — and so “not strictly finite” —
number of minima (see Konstan 1989a): thus, the minimum may be imagined as the inverse of
the number of kinds of atoms postulated by Epicurus, a quantity that takes on a quasi-technical
status as a special order of magnitude. But sufficient evidence for this hypothesis is lacking.

4. Psychology and Ethics

Having established the physical basis of the world, Epicurus proceeds to explain the nature of the
soul (this, at least, is the order in which Lucretius sets things out). This too, of course, consists of
atoms: first, there is nothing that is not made up of atoms and void (secondary qualities are
simply accidents of the arrangement of atoms), and second, an incorporeal entity could neither
act on nor be moved by bodies, as the soul is seen to do (e.g., it is conscious of what happens to
the body, and it initiates physical movement). Epicurus maintains that soul atoms are particularly
fine and are distributed throughout the body (LH 64), and it is by means of them that we have
sensations (aisthêseis) and the experience of pain and pleasure, which Epicurus calls pathê (a
term used by Aristotle and others to signify emotions instead). Body without soul atoms is
unconscious and inert, and when the atoms of the body are disarranged so that it can no longer
support conscious life, the soul atoms are scattered and no longer retain the capacities for
sensation (LH 65). There is also a part of the human soul that is concentrated in the chest, and is
the seat of the higher intellectual functions. The distinction is important, because it is in the
rational part that error in judgment enters in. Sensation, including that of pain and pleasure, is
incorrigible just because it is a function of the non-rational part, which does not modify a
perception — which itself is the passive and pure reception of lamina emitted from macroscopic
bodies — by the addition of opinion or belief.

The corporeal nature of the soul has two crucial consequences for Epicureanism. First, it is the
basis of Epicurus' demonstration that the soul does not survive the death of the body (other
arguments to this effect are presented in Lucretius 3.417–614). The soul's texture is too delicate
to exist independently of the body that contains it, and in any case the connection with the body
is necessary for sensation to occur. From this it follows that there can be no punishment after
death, nor any regrets for the life that has been lost. Second, the soul is responsive to physical
impressions, whether those that arrive from without in the form of laminas or simulacra, or those
that arise from internal motions of the body. No phenomena are purely mental, in the sense of
being disembodied states or objects of pure consciousness conceived as separate from
embodiment. The elementary sensations of pleasure and pain, accordingly, rather than abstract
moral principles or abstract concepts of goodness or badness, are the fundamental guides to what
is good and bad, since all sentient creatures are naturally attracted to the one and repelled by the
other. The function of the human mind — that part of the soul located in our chest — is not to
seek higher things, but to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. That is its entire objective; the
risk (a substantial one) is only that it may miscalculate, since it is subject to false beliefs and
errors in cognitive processes.

Unlike other Hellenistic schools, such as those of Aristotle and the Stoics, the Epicureans were
not greatly interested in formal logic, but they certainly needed a theory of the formation of
beliefs. As far as the ideational content of thinking — that is, the thought of something — is
concerned, Epicurus proposed a radically reductive hypothesis: just as sensations occur as a
result of thin films emitted by objects that enter the appropriate sense organ, so too some of these
simulacra are fine enough to penetrate directly to the mind (located in the chest), and that is how
we imagine such objects. This process is invoked to explain not only dream images, but any kind
of mental impression, including impressions constituting voluntary thought: the latter occurs
when we attend to one or another of the exiguous physical films that are continuously floating
through the air. (How we manage to attend voluntarily to whichever of these films we choose is
not explained in the surviving sources.) Imagining a thing is thus nothing more than picking out
the simulacra that have been emitted by it, and which may endure beyond the life of the thing
itself (hence we can imagine the dead). These mental images have no privileged status, such as
Plato gave to his noetic Ideas or Forms; they are always true, but in this do not differ from the
information provided by the senses. Mistakes occur here too when the wrong beliefs are
associated with such impressions, for example, that because we have a mental image of a dead
person it follows that he or she still exists in a ghostly form. Epicurean physics proves that this is
impossible.

A great barrier to correct thinking is language itself, which, because it has a name for death, may
suggest that death (being dead) is something a person can experience and hence deserves to be
feared. Words must be understood in their basic sense, Epicurus says, as opposed to what he
calls “empty sounds” (LH 37). The culprit in misunderstanding is always an illegitimate
inference from sensation (the latter including thoughts produced by film-like images). An
example is the belief that centaurs exist. Epicurus does not deny that the thought of a centaur
corresponds to some real stimulus in the form of simulacra: his theory of knowledge commits
him to the view that it must. But the flimsy laminas as they float through the air can become
distorted or interfere with one another, and thus the upper part of a human figure may get loosely
attached to the lower part of a horse's. We know that this is unreal because such a combination is
physically impossible: horses and human beings mature at different rates, for example, and eat
different foods (see Lucretius 5.878–91; cf. Palaephatus On Incredible Tales 20). Beliefs about
whether sensations correspond to an actually existing thing must be tested against knowledge of
the world, as informed by Epicurean theory.

The ability to reason or calculate (logismos) cannot be a function of images. It is the faculty that
lets us infer by analogy from the visible world to the invisible, and also that with which we may
recognize that not all pleasures are to be chosen at all times, since some immediate pleasures
may lead to long-term pain or harm (Letter to Menoeceus = LM 129). What is more, one must
know something about the nature of pleasure in order to pursue it rationally, and likewise for
pain. Epicurus, it appears, uses the terms pleasure and pain (hêdonê, algêdôn) strictly in
reference to physical pathê or sensations, that is, those that are experienced via the non-rational
soul that is distributed throughout the body. As for the rational part or mind, we have positive
and negative experiences through it too. Most prominent among the negative mental states is
fear, above all the fear of unreal dangers, such as death. Death, Epicurus insists, is nothing to us,
since while we exist, our death is not, and when our death occurs, we do not exist (LM 124–25);
but if one is frightened by the empty name of death, the fear will persist since we must all
eventually die. This fear is one source of perturbation (tarakhê), and is a worse curse than
physical pain itself; the absence of such fear is ataraxy, lack of perturbation, and ataraxy,
together with freedom from physical pain, is one way of specifying the goal of life, for Epicurus.

There are also positive states of mind, which Epicurus identifies by the special term khara (joy),
as opposed to hêdonê (pleasure, i.e., physical pleasure). These states too depend on belief,
whether true or false. But Epicurus does not treat khara as an end, or part of the end for living:
rather, he tends to describe the goal by negation, as freedom from bodily pain and mental
disturbance (LM 128). However, happiness (eudaimonia), according to Epicurus, is not simply a
neutral or privative condition but rather a form of pleasure in its own right — what Epicurus
called catastematic or (following Cicero's Latin translation) “static” as opposed to “kinetic”
pleasure. Although the precise nature of this distinction is debated, kinetic pleasures involve the
return to a stable or healthy state, e.g., the pleasurable elimination of hunger or thirst. As the
need is met, however, the pleasure associated with replenishment diminishes: one does not enjoy
eating for replenishment when full. To maximize this kind of pleasure, one would have to
increase rather than limit one's wants. This was the view adopted by the philosophical school
known as the Cyrenaics, who advocated increasing desires and seeking ever new ways of
gratifying them, so that the pleasure of replenishment could continue past the point where most
people would feel satiated, and be available at every moment.

Epicurus objected that such pleasures are necessarily accompanied by distress, for they depend
upon a lack that is painful (Plato had demonstrated the problematic nature of this kind of
pleasure; see Gorgias 496C–497A, Philebus 31E–32D, 46A–50C). In addition, augmenting
desires tends to intensify rather than reduce the mental agitation (a distressful state of mind) that
Epicurean philosophy sought to eliminate. Catastematic pleasure, on the contrary, is (or is taken
in) a state rather than a process: it is the pleasure that accompanies well-being as such. The
Cyrenaics and others maintained that this condition is not pleasurable but rather neutral —
neither pleasurable nor painful. In addition, there was a question concerning the relationship
between the two types of pleasure: does catastematic pleasure begin only when kinetic pleasure
ends, or does it gradually increase as the need is met, and the pleasure of replenishment
diminishes? If the latter, it would appear to involve process as well, as opposed to being a purely
stable condition. It is unclear just how the Epicureans responded to these objections.

For Epicurus, there are some fears that are perfectly legitimate (though they would not be
agitated and upsetting); so too are some desires. Epicurus offers a classification of desires into
three types: some are natural, others are empty; and natural desires are of two sorts, those that are
necessary and those that are merely natural (see Cooper 1999). Natural and necessary are those
that look to happiness, physical well-being, or life itself (LM 127). Unnecessary but natural
desires are for pleasant things like sweet odors and good-tasting food and drink (and for various
pleasurable activities of sorts other than simple smelling, touching and tasting). Empty desires
are those that have as their objects things designated by empty sounds, such as immortality,
which cannot exist for human beings and do not correspond to any genuine need. The same holds
for the desire for great wealth or for marks of fame, such as statues: they cannot provide the
security that is the genuine object of the desire. Such desires, accordingly, can never be satisfied,
any more than the corresponding fears — e.g., the fear of death — can ever be alleviated, since
neither has a genuine referent, i.e., death as something harmful (when it is present, we do not
exist) or wealth and power as salves for anxiety. Such empty fears and desires, based on what
Epicurus calls kenodoxia or empty belief, are themselves the main source of perturbation and
pain in civilized life, where more elementary dangers have been brought under control, since
they are the reason why people are forever driven to strive for limitless wealth and power,
subjecting themselves to the very dangers they imagine they are avoiding.

Although human beings, like everything else, are composed of atoms that move according to
their fixed laws, our actions are not wholly predetermined — rather than entertain such a
paralyzing doctrine, Epicurus says, it would be better to believe in the old myths, for all their
perversities (LM 134). What enables us to wrest liberty from a mechanistic universe is the
existence of a certain randomness in the motion of atoms, that takes the form of a minute swerve
in their forward course (evidence for this doctrine derives chiefly from later sources, including
Lucretius and Cicero). It is not entirely clear how the swerve operates: it may involve a small
angle of deviation from the original path, or else a slight shift sideways, perhaps by a single
minimum, with no change in direction. The idea of such a minute veering, said to occur at no
determinate time or place, is less strange in the modern age of quantum physics than it was in
Epicurus' time, and it gave rise to mocking critiques. More problematic today is how the swerve
might explain freedom of will — if indeed Epicurus' idea of the will was like our own. It did, at
all events, introduce an indeterminacy into the universe, and if soul atoms, thanks to their
fineness, were more susceptible to the effects of such deviations than coarser matter, the swerve
could at least represent a breach in any strict predestination of human behavior. And this might
have been enough for Epicurus' purposes: he may not have invoked the swerve in order to
explain voluntary action (claiming that it is action deriving, immediately or ultimately, from a
swerve or some swerves of the soul's atoms). He may have wished merely to establish the
possibility of action not deriving from the positions of the soul's constituent atoms at any time
plus the effects of collisions among them resulting from their given movements at that time.
According to Lucretius (2.225–50), the swerve was also put to use to solve a cosmological
problem: if at some (as it were) initial moment all atoms were moving uniformly in a single
direction (downward) at the same speed, it is impossible to conceive how the process of atomic
collisions could have begun, save by some such device. This seems a curious idea: given that
time, like space, was infinite according to Epicurus, he need not have imagined a time prior to
collisions. Just possibly the tendency of atoms to emerge from collisions in a preferred direction
(by definition “down”) might lead over time to local regions of parallel motion, and the swerve
could serve to reintroduce contact among them. In any event, Epicurus may have thought of
atoms moving in some uniform direction rather than in diverse ones as a default position for
physical theory (because of the simplicity of that hypothesis); thus he may have felt the need to
explain how the diversity of the atoms' motions could have arisen.

5. Social Theory
Although our main witness for Epicurus' views on the evolution of human society is Lucretius'
poem (5.925–1457), there is no doubt that Lucretius was following, in the main, the ideas of the
founder himself, as recorded in Epicurus' On Nature and other treatises. In the beginning, human
beings were solitary; they reproduced haphazardly, could not communicate verbally, had no
social institutions, and survived because they were physically hardier than their modern
descendants. With time, the race softened, thanks in part to the discovery of fire, in part too to
the emergence of the family and the gentler sentiments toward spouses and offspring to which
the family gave rise. At this stage, human beings were in a position to unite in order to fend off
natural dangers, such as wild beasts, and they developed various kinds of technical skills, such as
agriculture and the building of houses, as well as language. Epicurus explains (LH 75–76) that
names at first arose naturally, in the sense that as human beings experienced different affects
(pathê) or received various images (phantasmata) they emitted air corresponding to these stimuli;
since human physical characteristics vary somewhat from place to place, however, the sounds
people produced in response to any given stimulus similarly differed, which explains why there
are many tongues. Upon this basis, people later, nation by nation, established certain terms by
convention for the purpose of improving clarity and brevity in communication. Finally, certain
individual experts further augmented the vocabulary by the introduction of new and specialized
words, to explain the results of their theoretical investigations. Once language reached a
developed state, people began to establish alliances and friendships, which contributed further to
collective security.

This early form of social life had various advantages: among others, the relative scarcity of
goods prevented excessive competition (sharing was obligatory for survival) and thereby set
limits on those unnatural desires that at a later, richer phase of society would lead to wars and
other disturbances. It would appear too that, before language had developed fully, words more or
less conformed to their original or primitive objects, and were not yet a source of mental
confusion. But thanks to a gradual accumulation of wealth, the struggle over goods came to
infect social relations, and there emerged kings or tyrants who ruled over others not by virtue of
their physical strength but by dint of gold. These autocrats in turn were overthrown, and after a
subsequent period of violent anarchy people finally saw the wisdom of living under the rule of
law. This might seem to represent the highest attainment in political organization, but that is not
so for the Epicureans. For with law came the generalized fear of punishment that has
contaminated the blessings of life (Lucretius 5.1151; cf. [Philodemus] On Choices and
Avoidances col. XII). Lucretius at this point gives an acount of the origin of religious
superstition and dread of the gods, and although he does not relate this anxiety directly to the fear
of punishment under human law, he does state that thunder and lightning are interpreted as signs
that the gods are angry at human sins (5.1218–25). While primitive people in the presocial or
early communal stages might have been awed by such manifestations of natural power and
ascribed them to the action of the gods, they would not necessarily have explained them as
chastisement for human crimes before the concept of punishment became familiar under the
regime of law. People at an early time knew that gods exist thanks to the simulacra that they give
off, although the precise nature of the gods according to Epicurus remains obscure; but the gods,
for him, do not interest themselves in human affairs, since this would compromise their beatitude
(see Obbink 1996: 321–23).
If one does not fear the gods, what motive is there for living justly? Where law obtains, Epicurus
indicates, it is preferable not to commit crimes, even secret ones, since there will always be
anxiety over the possibility of detection, and this will disrupt the tranquillity or ataraxy that is the
chief basis of happiness in life (see Principal Beliefs = KD 34–35). Justice, for Epicurus, depends
on the capacity to make compacts neither to harm others nor be harmed by them, and consists in
such compacts; justice is nothing in itself, independent of such arrangements (KD 31–33).
According to Epicurus (LM 132, KD 5), someone who is incapable of living prudently,
honorably, and justly cannot live pleasurably, and vice versa. Moreover, prudence or wisdom
(phronêsis) is the chief of the virtues: on it depend all the rest. This again sounds calculating, as
though justice were purely a pragmatic and selfish matter of remaining unperturbed. Epicurus
does not entertain the thought experiment proposed by Plato in the Republic (359C–360D), in
which Plato asks whether a person who is absolutely secure from punishment would have reason
to be just. Did Epicurus have an answer to such a challenge? He may simply have denied that
anyone can be perfectly confident in this way. Perhaps, however, he did have a reply, but it was
derived from the domain of psychology rather than of ethics. A person who understands what is
desirable and what is to be feared would not be motivated to acquire inordinate wealth or power,
but would lead a peaceful life to the extent possible, avoiding politics and the general fray. An
Epicurean sage, accordingly, would have no motive to violate the rights of others. Whether the
sage would be virtuous is perhaps moot; what Epicurus says is that he would live virtuously, that
is prudently, honorably, and justly (the adverbial construction may be significant). He would do
so not because of an acquired disposition or hexis, as Aristotle had it, but because he knows how
to reason correctly about his needs. Hence his desires would be limited to those that are natural
(not empty), and so easily satisfied, or at least not a source of disturbance if sometimes
unsatisfied.

6. The Epicurean Life

Epicurus placed an extremely high value on friendship (or love: philia). A saying with rather a
more poetic flair than is Epicurus' custom runs: “Friendship goes dancing round the world,
announcing to all of us to wake up to happiness” (Vatican Saying = VS 52). Epicurus held that a
wise man would feel the torture of a friend no less than his own, and would die for a friend rather
than betray him, for otherwise his own life would be confounded (VS 56–57). These are
powerfully altruistic sentiments for a philosopher who posits as the unique goal in life happiness
based on freedom from physical pain and mental anxiety. Epicurus could justify such an attitude
by the same prudential calculus that he uses to argue in favor of living justly: only by living in
such a way that loyalty to friends is perceived to be a consummate value will one be able to feel
secure in one's friends, and thus maximize one's felicity. Yet this does not seem quite what
Epicurus means when he says that “friendship [or love] had its beginning as a result of utility,
but is to be chosen [or is a virtue, if we follow the manuscript reading] for its own sake” (VS 23).
The question is further complicated by the report in Cicero's On Moral Ends (1.66–70) that there
was a difference of opinion concerning friendship among later Epicureans. Since human beings
were originally asocial and only later learned to form alliances and compacts, it is possible that
Epicurus means to say that this capacity for friendship arose out of need, but that once the
capacity for such feelings was acquired, feeling them came to be valued in itself. The argument
would be similar to the modern idea that altruism could have developed as a result of natural
selection. But the evidence does not permit a firm conclusion on this matter.
When Epicurus spoke of friendship, he may have had at least partly in mind specifically the
relationship among his followers, who seem to have thought of themselves as friends. Epicureans
were encouraged to form communities and to observe certain rituals, although most of these
practices, such as the celebration each month of the day (the 20 th) on which Epicurus was born or
wearing rings bearing an image of Epicurus, may have originated after the founder's death. The
Epicureans paid attention to problems of pedagogy as well, laying out the best way to correct the
ideas of people new to the school and its community without cajoling or discouraging them. It
must be remembered that Epicurus understood the task of philosophy first and foremost as a
form of therapy for life, since philosophy that does not heal the soul is no better than medicine
that cannot cure the body (Usener 1887, frag. 221). A life free of mental anxiety and open to the
enjoyment of other pleasures was deemed equal to that of the gods. Indeed, it is from the gods
themselves, via the simulacra that reach us from their abode, that we derive our image of blessed
happiness, and prayer for the Epicureans consisted not in petitioning favors but rather in a
receptivity to this vision. (Epicurus encouraged the practice of the conventional cults.) Although
they held the gods to be immortal and indestructible (how this might work in a materialist
universe remains unclear), human pleasure might nevertheless equal divine, since pleasure,
Epicurus maintained (KD 19), is not augmented by duration (compare the idea of perfect health,
which is not more perfect for lasting longer); the catastematic pleasure experienced by a human
being completely free of mental distress and with no bodily pain to disturb him is at the absolute
top of the scale. Nor is such pleasure difficult to achieve: it is a mark precisely of those desires
that are neither natural nor necessary that they are hard to satisfy. Epicurus was famously content
with little, since on such a diet a small delicacy is as good as a feast, in addition to which it is
easier then to achieve self-sufficiency, and “the greatest benefit of self-sufficiency is freedom”
(VS 77).