PHL 550 Study Guide - Final Guide: Atomism
10 Apr 2017
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Document Summary
Democritus is perhaps the best known of the second wave of materialists, who were called atomists. He proposed a view of the world that was still conspicuously materialist ( that is, only matter exists), but that allowed for both flux and constancy to co-exist. All matter consists of simple, indestructible parts called atoms ( from the greek atomos, meaning can"t be cut ), which themselves have no parts. All change- the flux- consists of rearrangements or re- combinations of atoms. Atoms are continually reshuffled, entering into new arrangements with each other. If all change consists of rearranging parts, and atoms have no parts, then the atoms can not change; they persist and are indestructible. But change, when it is viewed as a reshuffling of parts, requires that the parts move, which requires space in which the parts can move. For this reason, democritus insisted that there must be regions of nothing - the void must also be real.
