Atomism Quotes

“The history of atomism is one of reductionism – the effort to reduce all the operations of nature to a small number of laws governing a small number of primordial objects.”
― Leon M. Lederman

“The same objections lie against the doctrine of the world having originated from atoms. For on that doctrine one atom when combining with another must, as it is not made up of parts, enter into the combination with its whole extent, and as thus no increase of bulk takes place we do not get beyond the first atom If, on the other hand, you maintain that the atom enters into the combination with a part only, you offend against the assumption of the atoms having no parts.

Brahma-sûtras, 2e Adhyâya, 1er Pâda, sûtra 29”
― Adi Shankaracarya, Brahma Sutra Bhasya Of Shankaracharya

“Whoso meditates on the Omniscient, the Ancient, more minute than the atom, yet the Ruler and Upholder of all, Unimaginable, Brilliant like the Sun, beyond the reach of darkness.”
― Shri Purohit Swami, Bhagavad Gita: Annotated & Explained

“En lo que se refiere al atomismo materialista: es de las cosas mejor refutadas que existen”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“If, as must be done in this instance, the word atom be taken in its true sense of “ indivisible,” a sense which modern physicists no longer give to it, it may be said that an atom, since it cannot have parts, must also be without area ; now the sum of lements devoid of area can never form an area ; if atoms fulfil their own definition, it is then impossible for them to make up bodies. To this well-known and more-over decisive chain of reasoning, another may also be added, employed by Shankaracharya in order to refute atomism 1 : two things can come into contact with one another either by a part of themselves or by the whole ; for atoms, devoid as they are of parts, the first hypothesis is inadmissible ; thus only the second hypothesis remains, which amounts to saying that the aggregation of two atoms can only be realized by their coincidence purely and simply, whence it clearly follows that two atoms when joined occupy no more space than a single atom and so forth indefinitely: so, as before, atoms, whatever their number, will never form a body. Thus atomism represents nothing but sheer impossibility, as we pointed out when explaining the sense in which heterodoxy is to be understood ; [...]”
― René Guénon, Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines

“In the ensuing centuries, texts that contained such dangerous ideas paid a heavy price for their ‘heresy’. As has been lucidly argued by Dirk Rohmann, an academic who has produced a comprehensive and powerful account of the effect of Christianity on books, some of the greatest figures in the early Church rounded on the atomists. Augustine disliked atomism for precisely the same reason that atomists liked it: it weakened mankind’s terror of divine punishment and Hell. Texts by philosophical schools that championed atomic theory suffered. The Greek philosopher Democritus had perhaps done more than anyone to popularize this theory – though not only this one. Democritus was an astonishing polymath who had written works on a breathless array of other topics. A far from complete list of his titles includes: On History; On Nature; the Science of Medicine; On the Tangents of the Circle and the Sphere; On Irrational Lines and Solids; On the Causes of Celestial Phenomena; On the Causes of Atmospheric Phenomena; On Reflected Images . . . The list goes on. Today Democritus’s most famous theory is his atomism. What did the other theories state? We have no idea: every single one of his works was lost in the ensuing centuries. As the eminent physicist Carlo Rovelli recently wrote, after citing an even longer list of the philosopher’s titles: ‘the loss of the works of Democritus in their entirety is the greatest intellectual tragedy to ensue from the collapse of the old classical civilisation’.”
― Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

“Far from mourning the loss, Christians delighted in it. As John Chrysostom crowed, the writings ‘of the Greeks have all perished and are obliterated’. He warmed to the theme in another sermon: ‘Where is Plato? Nowhere! Where Paul? In the mouths of all!’ The fifth-century writer Theodoret of Cyrrhus observed the decline of Greek literature with similar enthusiasm. ‘Those elaborately decorated fables have been utterly banned,’ he gloated. ‘Who is today’s head of the Stoic heresy? Who is safeguarding the teachings of the Peripatetics?’ No one, evidently, for Theodoret concludes this homily with the observation that ‘the whole earth under the sun has been filled with sermons’. Augustine contentedly observed the rapid decline of the atomist philosophy in the first century of Christian rule. By his time, he recorded, Epicurean and Stoic philosophy had been ‘suppressed’ – the word is his. The opinions of such philosophers ‘have been so completely eradicated and suppressed . . . that if any school of error now emerged against the truth, that is, against the Church of Christ, it would not dare to step forth for battle if it were not covered under the Christian name’.”
― Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

“The philosophy they had lived for starts to die itself. Some strands of ancient philosophy live on, preserved by the hands of some Christian philosophers – but it is not the same. Works that have to agree with the pre-ordained doctrines of a church are theology, not philosophy. Free philosophy has gone. The great destruction of classical texts gathers pace. The writings of the Greeks ‘have all perished and are obliterated’: that was what John Chrysostom had said. He hadn’t been quite right, then: but time would bring greater truth to his boast. Undefended by pagan philosophers or institutions, and disliked by many of the monks who were copying them out, these texts start to disappear. Monasteries start to erase the works of Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca and Archimedes. ‘Heretical’ – and brilliant – ideas crumble into dust. Pliny is scraped from the page. Cicero and Seneca are overwritten. Archimedes is covered over. Every single work of Democritus and his heretical ‘atomism’ vanishes. Ninety per cent of all classical literature fades away.
Centuries later, an Arab traveller would visit a town on the edge of Europe and reflect on what had happened in the Roman Empire. ‘During the early days of the empire of the Rum,’ he wrote – meaning the Roman and Byzantine Empire – ‘the sciences were honoured and enjoyed universal respect. From an already solid and grandiose foundation, they were raised to greater heights every day, until the Christian religion made its appearance among the Rum; this was a fatal blow to the edifice of learning; its traces disappeared and its pathways were effaced.”
― Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

“The void is a not-being, and no part of what is is a not-being; for what is in the strict sense of the term is an absolute plenum. This plenum, however, is not one; on the contrary, it is a many infinite in number and invisible owing to the minuteness of their bulk.
The many move in the void (for there is a void): and by coming together they produce comingto-be, while by separating they pro-duce passing-away. Moreover, they act and suffer action whenever they chance to be in contact (for there they are not one), and they generate by being put together and becoming intertwined.
From the genuinely one, on the other hand, there could never have come to be a multiplicity,
nor from the genuinely many a one: that is impossible.”
― Leucippus

“The diameters of nuclei range from 0.8 femtometers for hydrogen to 15 femtometers for uranium, where 1 femtometer equals 10-15 meter. The diameter of the hydrogen atom is about 0.11 nanometer, while that of the uranium atom is 0.35 nanometer, where 1 nanometer equals 10-9 meter. So, roughly speaking, the nucleus of the atom is a million times smaller than the atom itself. Matter is, indeed, mostly empty space.”
― Victor J. Stenger, God and the Atom

“An altogether different temporality is inherent in information. It is a phenomenon of atomized time, namely of point-time. [...]

Atomized time is a discontinuous time. There is nothing to bind events together and thus found a connection, a duration. The senses are therefore confronted with the unexpected and sudden, which, in turn, produces a diffuse feeling of anxiety. Atomization, individualization and discontinuity are also responsible for various forms of violence.”
― Byung-Chul Han, The Scent of Time: A Philosophical Essay on the Art of Lingering