For the motions of the atoms he had no anterior cause to offer, other than
necessity or fate. They existed, and necessarily and always had existed, in
a state of whirl; and for that which always had been he maintained that no
preceding cause could legitimately or reasonably be demanded.
Nothing, then, could come out of nothing;[1] all the visible structure of the universe had its origin in the
movements of the atoms that constituted it, and conditioned its infinite
changes. The atoms, by a useful but perhaps too convenient metaphor, he
called the seeds of all things. They were infinite in number, though
not infinite in the number, of their shapes. Many atoms were similar to each
other, and this similarity formed a basis of union among them, a warp, so to
speak, or solid foundation across which the woof of dissimilar atoms played
to constitute the differences of things.Out of this idea of an eternal eddy or whirl Democritus developed a
cosmogony. The lighter atoms he imagined flew to the outmost rim of the
eddy, there constituting the heavenly fires and the heavenly aether. The
heavier atoms gathered at the centre, forming successively air and water and
the solid earth. Not that there was only one such system or world, but
rather multitudes of them, all varying one from the other; some without sun
or moon, others with greater luminaries than those of our system, others
with a greater number. All, however, had necessarily a centre; all as
systems were necessarily spherical.
Elpenor's note
:
[1]This is a common belief in all Greek philosophy.
A History of Greek Philosophy /
THE ATOMISTS /
LEUCIPPUS AND DEMOCRITUS
