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On
Atomism
by Leucippus
Leucippus thought he had a theory which was in
harmony with sense-perception, and did not do away
with coming into being and passing away, nor
motion, nor the multiplicity of things. He made
this concession to experience, while he conceded,
on the other hand, to those who invented the One
that motion was impossible without the void, that
the void was not real, and that nothing of what was
real was not real. "For," said he, "that which is,
strictly speaking, real is an absolute plenum: but
the plenum is not one. On the contrary, there are
an infinite number of them, and they are invisible
owing to the smallness of their bulk. They move in
the void (for there is a void); and by their coming
together they effect coming into being; by their
separation, passing away."
He says that the worlds arise when many bodies
are collected together into the mighty void from
the surrounding space and rush together. They come
into collision, and those which are of similar
shape and like form become entangled, and from
their entanglement the heavenly bodies arise.
Excerpted from Early Greek
Philosophy, ed. and tr. by John Burnet
(1930).
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The
Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy,
edited by A. A. Long
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