Early Greek Philosophy, Volume VII: Later Ionian and Athenian Thinkers, Part 2 (Loeb Classical Library)

This seventh volume of the Loeb Classical Library's collection of Presocratic Greek philosophy is entirely dedicated to the original Atomists, Leucippus and Democritus. Practically, this means it's all Democritus, given that even among the ancients there was doubt whether or not Leucippus even existed; scholars today still debate this.

Regardless, Democritus's theory of Atomism is the closest the ancients got to our contemporary Western cosmology. His great innovation was to accept the Parmenidean challenge to the reliability of our senses by theorizing reality as a vast void filled with eternally moving particles, alternately bouncing off each other or catching hold of each other to generate gigantic aggregates that we sense show more (incorrectly) as the real world.

Democritus had no conception of atomic forces of attraction and repulsion, which gave the Aristotelians ground to bury his innovations beneath incisive criticisms of his inability to explain why anything happens. However, it's fascinating that despite the significant differences between ancient Atomism and modern physics, much of what Democritus wrote on the basis of sheer reason still resonates with our current conception of physical reality. His thought spawned the Epicureanism of the Hellenistic and Roman periods, as well as a vast pseudepigraphical literature; and his moral and political aphorisms still entertain 2,400 years after his death. There's ample reason to given over an entire volume solely to the remains of his writing. show less