Who is leucippus and what did he do

Titus Lucretius Carus was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the epic philosophical poem on Epicureanism De rerum natura, translated into English as On the Nature of Things or "On the Nature of the Universe". According to Lucretius' Leucippus, 1st Theory of Atomism. Plato, Greek Philosopher Plato was a philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Aristotle, Greek Philosopher Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and scientist.

Epicurus, Pleasure is the Highest Good Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher as well as the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism. The reason for positing smallest indivisible magnitudes is also reported to be a response to Zeno's argument that, if every magnitude could be divided to infinity, motion would be impossible DK 29A Leucippus is reported to hold that the atoms are always in motion DK 67A Aristotle criticizes him for not offering an account that says not only why a particular atom is moving because it collided with another but why there is motion at all.

Because the atoms are indestructible and unchangeable, their properties presumably stay the same through all time. As Diogenes Laertius reports Leucippus' cosmology, worlds or kosmoi are formed when groups of atoms combine to form a cosmic whirl, which causes the atoms to separate out and sort by like kind. A sort of membrane of atoms forms out of the circling atoms, enclosing others within it, and creating pressure by whirling.

The outer membrane continually acquires other atoms from outside when it contacts them, which take fire as they revolve and form the stars, with the sun in the outermost circle. Worlds are formed, grow and perish, according to a kind of necessity DK 67A1. This has been found puzzling, since the reference to logos might seem to suggest that things are ruled by reason, an idea that Democritus' system excludes. Either Leucippus' system is different in this respect from that of Democritus, or the reference to logos here cannot be to a controlling mind.

Barnes takes there to be no grounds for preferring either interpretation Barnes , but Taylor argues that Leucippus' position is that an account or logos can be given of the causes of all occurrences Taylor , p. There is nothing in other reports to suggest that Leucippus endorsed the idea of a universal intelligence governing events. Aristotle frequently pairs Leucippus and Democritus in his reports, including his account of the motivation for positing atoms and void.

Following this lead, Graham suggests a new reading of Leucippus, wherein the distinction between atom and void is actually based on a reading of Parmenides' Doxa, his cosmological account. Rather than logical abstractions, Being and Not-being, Leucippus' atoms would in essence be based on Parmenides' cosomological contraries, night and light. If this line of interpretation is followed, Leucippus' notion of atom and void might have been rather different from Democritus', and Aristotle's tendency to refer to the two in conjunction somewhat misleading.

The standard scholarly edition of the ancient reports concerning the views of the Presocratic philosophers is Diels-Kranz' work cited as DK : H. Diels and W. For an English translation and commentary: C.

He was in a position to be able to distinguish the works of Leucippus from those of Democritus and we shall describe his views on this matter. Theophrastus claimed that the basic ideas of atomism were present in the philosophy of Leucippus according to which [ 1 ] :- Both matter and void have real existence. The constituents of matter are elements infinite in number and always in motion, with an infinite variety of shapes, completely solid in composition.

According to Diogenes Laertius , the cosmology put forward by Leucippus in The Great World System is a creation of worlds by agglomerations of atoms by chance collisions. There is then differentiation with the smaller atoms being sent off into the infinity of space while the rest form into a spherical structure with the larger atoms at the centre and the smaller atoms further away from the centre. From the treatise On the Mind we have the only quotation of the words of Leucippus which have survived.

In this work he writes see for example [ 8 ] :- Nothing happens in vain, but everything from reason and of necessity. Leucippus also contributed to the method of exhaustion. References show. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica. J Barnes, Early Greek Philosophy J Barnes, Reason and necessity in Leucippus, in Proc. First International Congress on Democritus Xanthi, , - E Craig ed.