Democritus of Abdera is the Pre-Socratic philosopher who, with his teacher Leucippus, developed the atomist doctrine that all things consist of indivisible atoms moving through void — the substantial framework that Epicurus would later inherit and that twentieth-century physics would substantially vindicate in modified form.
democritus
The Pre-Socratic philosopher who developed atomism with his teacher Leucippus, producing the substantial framework that the substantial Hellenistic Epicurean tradition would inherit and that substantial twentieth-century physics would vindicate in modified form.
Birth around 460 BCE in Abdera (Thrace); death around 370 BCE. Dates approximate.
Introduction
Democritus of Abdera is the Pre-Socratic philosopher who, with his teacher Leucippus, developed the atomist doctrine that all things consist of indivisible atoms moving through void. The atomist framework was the late Pre-Socratic response to the Parmenidean denial of change and plurality: by treating the atoms as eternal, indivisible, and unchanging (and so satisfying the Parmenidean constraints) while existing in infinite plurality and motion in the void, atomism preserved the Parmenidean rigor while recovering the plurality and change that ordinary experience requires.
The atomist framework Democritus and Leucippus developed had limited contemporary influence (the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition dominated the fourth century and beyond) but was inherited and modified by Epicurus in the late fourth and early third centuries BCE; the Roman transmission through Lucretius made atomism one of the major ancient philosophical traditions; the seventeenth-century revival through Pierre Gassendi and the scientific atomism that descends from Dalton's chemical atomism (1808) make Democritus the ancient precursor of modern physical theory.
Life and biography
Democritus was born around 460 BCE in Abdera, a Greek colony on the Thracian coast of the northern Aegean. The biographical record is but shaped by later legend; Democritus was widely traveled (the reports include periods in Egypt, Babylon, Persia, and possibly India), was independently wealthy (he spent portions of his inheritance on his travels), and lived to old age (the reports give ages from ninety to over a hundred).
Democritus was a polymath whose surviving titles (preserved by Diogenes Laertius) cover physics, mathematics, ethics, music, agriculture, medicine, military strategy, and topics across the range of contemporary inquiry. Almost none of his corpus survives directly; the doxographical tradition (especially through Aristotle and Theophrastus) preserves portions of his doctrines.
The relationship with Leucippus is debated. The ancient sources treat Leucippus as Democritus's teacher and as the originator of atomism; portions of the atomist framework are credited specifically to Leucippus, others to Democritus, and others jointly. Some modern scholars (especially in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) doubted whether Leucippus existed at all; the contemporary consensus accepts the historical existence of Leucippus while acknowledging the difficulty of separating his contributions from those of Democritus.
The atomist doctrine
The atomist doctrine has structural features. The cosmos consists of atoms (indivisible particles; the Greek atomos literally means uncuttable) and the void (empty space in which the atoms move). The atoms are eternal, indestructible, unchanging, and infinite in number; they differ from each other in shape, size, and arrangement but not in qualitative content (they have no colors, no sounds, no tastes — these qualities are produced by the interaction of the atoms with sense organs).
The macroscopic objects of ordinary experience are temporary configurations of atoms in motion. Their generation is the coming-together of atoms; their destruction is the dispersal of atoms. The qualitative phenomena we observe (the colors of objects, the sounds we hear, the tastes we taste) are not intrinsic properties of things but effects produced by the atomic configurations on human sensory organs.
The atomist framework satisfies the Parmenidean constraints. The atoms, like the Parmenidean being, are ungenerated, indestructible, unchanging, and homogeneous in qualitative content. The void allows the atoms to move and to combine, recovering the plurality and change that the Parmenidean denial had eliminated. The framework was more satisfactory than the alternative responses to Parmenides (Empedocles's four-element framework, Anaxagoras's doctrine of everything in everything) and deserved the subsequent influence it eventually received.
Ethics
Democritus's ethical work is in extent (the doxographical reports list ethical treatises) but less well preserved than the physical work. The preserved fragments suggest a framework organized around euthumia (cheerfulness or contentment) as the human good — a position closer to Epicurean ataraxia than to the Platonic-Aristotelian focus on virtue.
The Democritean fragments include maxims on practical wisdom, moderation, the dangers of excess, the value of friendship and community, and the relation between pleasure and happiness. The framework anticipates features of the subsequent Hellenistic ethics, especially the Epicurean framework that Epicurus would develop from Democritean foundations.
The reception
The immediate reception of Democritus was within philosophical circles but dominated by the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition that eclipsed atomism through the fourth century. Plato is reported to have wished to burn Democritus's writings (a story whose historical accuracy is contested but which captures the conflict between the Platonic and Democritean frameworks). Aristotle, by contrast, engaged Democritus throughout his work and is the principal source for the atomist doctrines.
The Hellenistic Epicurean tradition inherited the Democritean atomism and modified it (especially through the Epicurean doctrine of the swerve that Epicurus added to the Democritean framework). The Roman Epicurean tradition through Lucretius's De Rerum Natura preserved and transmitted the atomist framework into the Renaissance and modern periods.
The seventeenth-century revival through Pierre Gassendi established atomism as one of the major early modern philosophical traditions. The scientific atomism that descends from John Dalton's chemical atomism (1808) and through the twentieth-century physics of atomic and subatomic particles vindicates the Democritean framework in modified form. twentieth-century physicists from Werner Heisenberg to Richard Feynman acknowledged the Democritean precedent.
Continuing engagement
Major recent scholarly work includes the treatments in Kirk, Raven, and Schofield's The Presocratic Philosophers (1983), C. C. W. Taylor's The Atomists: Leucippus and Democritus (1999), Sylvia Berryman's work on Democritus's natural philosophy, the new Loeb Classical Library edition of the early Greek philosophers by André Laks and Glenn Most (2016), and the Democritus: Science, the Arts, and the Care of the Soul (Aldo Brancacci and Pierre-Marie Morel, eds., 2007). Active scholarly debates concern the separation of Democritean from Leucippean contributions, the interpretation of the Democritean ethical fragments, and the relation between Democritean atomism and twentieth-century physics.
Further reading
- Pre-Socratic — the tradition Democritus helped shape
- Parmenides — the predecessor whose constraints atomism was designed to satisfy
- Epicurus — the successor who inherited and modified the atomist framework
- Lucretius — the Roman expositor whose De Rerum Natura preserved the atomist framework
- Aristotle — the source for portions of the Democritean doctrine
The Pre-Socratic philosopher who developed atomism with his teacher Leucippus, producing the framework that Epicurus inherited and that modern physics vindicated in modified form.