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The work of Democritus survives only in secondhand reports, some of which are unreliable or conflicting. Much of the best evidence of Democritus' theory of atomism is reported by Aristotle (384–322 BCE) in his discussions of Democritus' and Plato's contrasting views on the types of indivisibles composing the natural world. [16]
The 20th-century classicist Cyril Bailey proposed another system to differentiate the two philosophers, attributing atomism and belief in the void to Leucippus while attributing The Great Cosmology to Democritus as an application of Leucippus's philosophy. [82] Unlike Democritus, Leucippus is only known to have studied cosmology and physics. [65]
Democritus was a student of Leucippus. Early sources such as Aristotle and Theophrastus credit Leucippus with creating atomism and sharing its ideas with Democritus, but later sources credit only Democritus, making it hard to distinguish their individual contributions.
Democritus by Hendrick ter Brugghen, 1628. Democritus was known as the "laughing philosopher" [114] Leucippus and Democritus both lived in Abdera, in Thrace. They are most famous for their atomic cosmology even though their thought included many other fields of philosophy, such as ethics, mathematics, aesthetics, politics, and even embryology ...
The atomist view would allow the existence of other worlds, as the processes that created Earth may happen elsewhere as well. Although very few of their writings were preserved, it is known that early atomists Leucippus and Democritus thought that atoms should create other worlds the same way Earth was created. [4]
Leucippus's The Great World System has sometimes been attributed to Democritus, which may have been an effect of Democritus including it among his corpus as the foundation of his work.[22] Leucippus's atomism was a direct response to Eleatic philosophy.[30][31] The Eleatics believed that nothingness, or the void, cannot exist in its own right.
Leucippus, went on to develop the theory of atomism – the idea that everything is composed entirely of various imperishable, indivisible elements called atoms. This was elaborated in great detail by Democritus. [a] Similar atomist ideas emerged independently among ancient Indian philosophers of the Nyaya, Vaisesika and Buddhist schools. [11]
The first to whom we can definitively attribute the concept of innumerable worlds are the Ancient Greek Atomists, beginning with Leucippus and Democritus in the 5th century BCE, followed by Epicurus (341–270 BCE) and Lucretius (1st century BCE).