9 - The Final Cut: Democritus and Leucippus
Posted on 16 January 2011
In this episode Peter discusses the Atomists Democritus and Leucippus, and how they were responding to the ideas of Parmenides and his followers.
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Further Reading:
D. Furley, “Two Studies in the Greek Atomists,” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967).
P.S. Hasper, “The Foundations of Presocratic Atomism,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 17 (1999), 1-14.
D. Konstan, “Atomism and its Heritage: Minimal Parts,” in Ancient Philosophy, 2 (1982), 60-75.
T. O’Keefe, “The Ontological Status of Sensible Qualities for Democritus and Epicurus,” Ancient Philosophy 17 (1997), 119-34.
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Periodic tables and abstract thinking
Before anything I'd like to thank you for your consistent work, which I find interesting to the point of being addictive.
I simply mean to add a remark about the method involved in the designing of the periodic table, with some correlation to what you say, towards the end of this podcast, about scientific theories being an extensions of our everyday experience.
When Mendeleïev first desgined the periodic table, he did it with great emphasis on method. According to the structure of the table, there should have been a given and relatively small number of observable chemical elements in the universe. But one of those elements was missing, there was no empirical evidence of its existence. Instead of dismissing his table, Mendeleiev took the bold step of sticking with his theory, and said that the table told us the missing element must exist, albeit still unobserved. This element, named Gallium, was discovered years, or even decades later. Mendeleiev had actually managed to predict the existence of an element with a sheer theoretical argument.
I find this to be quite reminding of Parmenides's way of thinking in some way: if the senses won't tell you the truth, you should rely on the mind only. But like Parmenides had the Way of Opinion besides the way of Truth, Mendeleiev had built his table on empirical datas before making it a distinctly structural tool.