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Atomism and Its Critics Description
A study of the history of the atomic theory of matter between the time of Democritus and that of Newton. The classical atomic theory, we are told, consisted of four central doctrines: a firm commitment to indivisible units of matter; a belief in the reality of the vacuum; a reductionist conception of forms and qualities and a mechanistic account of natural agency. The work provides a critical account of the arguments used for and against these four theses during three time-periods: Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the 17th century. Atomism was a minority position in Antiquity, rejected by most natural philosophers on the strength of Aristotelian objections. But Aristotle's own disciples gradually took his system apart in the Middle Ages, thus developing - albeit in a piecemeal manner - positions strikingly akin in some respects to classical atomism. So when Gassendi and others sought to revive atomism in the 17th century, the way was already prepared for them. This study is the first to emphasise the continuity of this process and the debt owed by the 17th-century "moderns" to the medieval critique of Aristotle.
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