![]() In the 17 th and 18 th centuries CE, several key events helped revive the theory that matter was made of small, indivisible particles. ![]() Because of Aristotle's great influence, Democritus's theory would have to wait almost 2,000 years before being rediscovered. Aristotle accepted the theory of Empedocles, adding his own (incorrect) idea that the four core elements could be transformed into one another. Ultimately, though, Aristotle and Plato, two of the best-known philosophers of Ancient Greece, rejected the theories of Democritus. This was a remarkable theory that attempted to explain the whole physical world in terms of a small number of ideas. Democritus theorized that atomos were specific to the material that they made up, meaning that the atomos of stone were unique to stone and different from the atomos of other materials, such as fur. He suggested that atomos were eternal and could not be destroyed. Democritus called these infinitesimally small pieces of matter atomos, meaning 'indivisible'. He reasoned that if you continued to cut the stone into smaller and smaller pieces, at some point you would reach a piece so tiny that it could no longer be divided. Democritus knew that if you took a stone and cut it in half, each half had the same properties as the original stone. Democritus's ideas were based on reasoning rather than science, and drew on the teachings of two Greek philosophers who came before him: Leucippus and Anaxagoras. Despite these problems, Empedocles's theory was an important development in scientific thinking because it was among the first to suggest that some substances that looked like pure materials, like stone, were actually made up of a combination of different "elements." The atom is proposedĪ few decades after Empedocles, Democritus (460 BCE - 370 BCE), who was also Greek, developed a new theory of matter that attempted to overcome the problems of his predecessor. For example, regardless of how many times you break a stone in half, the pieces never resemble any of the core elements of fire, air, water, or earth. Stone was thought to contain a high amount of earth, while a rabbit was thought to have a higher ratio of both water and fire, thus making it soft and giving it life.Įmpedocles's theory was quite popular, but it had a number of problems. The ratio of these four elements affected the properties of the matter. Empedocles argued that all matter was composed of four elements: fire, air, water, and earth. Empedocles, a Greek philosopher and scientist who lived on the south coast of Sicily between 492 BCE and 432 BCE, proposed one of the first theories that attempted to describe the things around us. ![]() ![]() Then they gave these things the names, such as "fur," "stone," or "rabbit." However, these people did not have our current understanding of the substances that made up those objects. Understanding Scientific Journals and ArticlesĮarly humans easily distinguished between materials that were used for making clothes, those that could be shaped into tools, or those that were good to eat.Using Graphs and Visual Data in Science.Scientists and the Scientific Community.Scientific Notation and Order of Magnitude.The Case of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.Santiago Ramón y Cajal and Camillo Golgi.Factors that Control Earth's Temperature.Plates, Plate Boundaries, and Driving Forces.Solutions, Solubility, and Colligative Properties.Y-Chromsome and Mitochondrial DNA Haplotypes. ![]() Absorption, Distribution, and Storage of Chemicals. ![]()
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