4/17/2024 0 Comments Democritus atomic theory![]() If everything consists of a single, indestructible, immutable substance, then motion and change are illusions.Īccording to Parmenides, sense perceptions are vulnerable to error, if not totally unreliable. He believed that everything is a single, permanent, immutable and indestructible substance, which he called the One, and claimed it’s related to thought. Parmenides, a native of southern Italy, flourished around 515 BC. Heraclitus and Democritus disputing metaphysics on the road from Athens Parmenides I’ll now briefly review the theories of Heraclitus and Parmenides before addressing Democritus’ and the atomists’ attempt at reconciling them. (Democritus’ life overlapped with Plato, but historians join him with the pre-Socratics because, like them, he studied the exterior world – unlike Socrates, who turned inward to study human beings.) Democritus represents not a gulf between the two schools, but rather a bridge. He saw reason and perception as partners in the quest for knowledge. However, a third philosopher, Democritus, embodied both views. Heraclitus, a nascent empiricist, trusted what he saw and so arrived at the opposite conclusion to Parmenides. Parmenides was a budding rationalist who believed the senses are deluded, and built a metaphysics using pure reason. Two philosophers of the period symbolize the fundamental dichotomy. To get a grip on this war, I decided to explore dualism in its infancy, in the pre-Socratic period. Judging from what I’ve read, a truce is still not at hand. ![]() The split sharpened in the Seventeenth Century when an intellectual war broke out between the (European) Continental Rationalists, who believed that true knowledge could only be gained through reason, and the British Empiricists, who felt that sense perceptions were necessary to validate knowledge. It manifests itself in many ways: metaphysics-physics, mind-matter, idealism-realism, subjective-objective, and so on. I’m fascinated by the faultline of dualism that runs through the entire history of philosophy – the dichotomy between the abstract and the concrete. SUBSCRIBE NOW The Other Greek Philosophers Democritus: Empirical Rationalist Chris Christensen argues that two basic philosophical opposites were harmoniously united in the thought of Democritus (460-370 BC).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |