Real progress toward the modern concept of the atom could not occur without the modern notion of chemical element. The Italian mathematician Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), the English physicist Isaac Newton (1642-1727), and the Anglo-Irish physicist Robert Boyle (1627-1691) all advocated the existence of atoms. Scientific and philosophical interest in the atomic hypothesis revived in the Renaissance. To advocate that matter was an aggregate of unchanging atoms became heretical and therefore dangerous, at least in Christian Europe. In the twelfth century the Italian Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) adopted the metaphysics of substance and form to explain the sacraments of the Catholic Church, and theologians introduced the term transubstantiation to describe the transformation of the substance, but not the form or appearance, of the bread and wine used in the Mass. His student Aristotle (384-322 b.c.) dismissed this idea in favor of a metaphysics in which the form of objects was imposed on an underlying continuous substance.Īlthough the ideas of Aristotle were at first regarded with suspicion by church authorities, they were eventually embraced as consistent with Christian belief. 428-348 b.c.) accepted the existence of atoms and tried to explain the properties of the four classical elements-air, earth, fire, and water-in terms of the shapes of their atoms. A century later, another Greek, Epicurus (341-270 b.c.), adopted the idea to his philosophical system, which argued against an active role for God or gods in determining the course of events in the world and denied the possibility of life after death.
460-370 b.c.), a Greek philosopher writing in the fifth century b.c., although the idea was not entirely new with him. The atomic hypothesis, that all matter is composed of tiny indestructible particles, is generally attributed to Democritus (c. It meant one thing to the ancient Greek matter theorists, another to the Epicurean philosophers, something else to early modern scientific thinkers, yet another things to nineteenth century chemists, and means something a bit different again to contemporary atomic physicists. How is it then, that less than 100 years before, the very existence of atoms could be disputed with some vehemence?Īlthough the notion of atoms has been around for a long time-over 2,500 years-it is important to note that it has meant different things in different epochs and to different thinkers. His answer that the single most important scientific fact is that all matter is composed of atoms, now seems completely reasonable.
Viewpoint: No, many pre-twentieth-century scientists, lacking any direct evidence of the existence of atoms, concluded that atoms are not real.Īt the start of his Lectures in Physics, the 1965 Nobel Laureate in Physics Richard Feynman asks what one piece of scientific knowledge the human race ought to try to preserve for future generations if all the other knowledge were to be destroyed in some inevitable cataclysm. Viewpoint: Yes, atoms are real, and science has developed to the point that atoms can not only be seen, but can also be individually manipulated. PHYSICAL SCIENCE Historic Dispute : Are atoms real?