Leucippus of Miletus

Leucippus (Greek: Λεύκιππος, "Leúkippos") was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher (Milestus, Ionia) of the V a. C. founder of atomism. He moved to Elea, where he would have been a disciple of Zeno and a teacher of Democritus.

His thought came through the writings of authors such as Aristotle, Simplicio, Sextus Empiricus and Diogenes Laertius. He is credited with founding atomism by challenging "the apparently natural assumption that any piece of matter, however small, can always be broken down into even smaller pieces." He proposed that all "what is" in the world, was composed of indivisible entities called atoms, which move through empty space (Simpl., Phys. 28, 4: "that exists less than being"). The works Megas Diakosmos and Peri Nou have been attributed to him, although neither have survived.

Very little is known about his life due to few sources. The same philosopher Epicurus questioned whether he really existed. Because of this, it is not possible to attribute his doctrines to him or to his Democritus's student, or if he had an opinion contrary to his. However, the current consensus among historians is that Leucippus is a historical figure.

Biographical information

Dracma of silver from the IV to C. that shows a man with a corinthian helmet, who is believed to be from Leucipo.

Very little is known of his life. Even the philosopher Epicurus and his student Hermarcus considered the possibility that Leucippus did not exist, which gave rise to numerous debates.

It is considered that he was most likely born in Miletus, Asia Minor, although the possibilities of Abdera, Melos, Elea or Clazomenas have also been proposed. Later, he moved to Elea, where he would have been a disciple of Parmenides and of Zenón de Elea. Some sources affirm that around 440 or 430 a. C. Leucippus founded a school at Abdera, with which his student Democritus was closely associated.He belonged to the same Ionian school of naturalistic philosophy as Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. Apollodorus the Epicurean claims that Leucippus was a teacher of Democritus.

What is known of his thought is found in fragments of works by other authors, such as Aristotle, Simplicio of Cilicia or Sextus Empiricus. It is said that Democritus invented Leucippus as his teacher to gain prestige and to support his theory, since Leucippus was supposed to be a great physicist (i.e., a philosopher interested especially in what is now called physics), a disciple of Parmenides., of Zeno of Elea or of Pythagoras.

None of Leucippus's works are in possession. Strictly speaking, his doctrines of him are included in those of Democritus, making it practically impossible to distinguish the ideas of both respectively.Nevertheless, Aristotle and Theophrastus explicitly credit Leucippus with the invention of the atomist.

In Aristotelian terms, Leucippus agreed with Eleatic's argument that "true being admits no emptiness" and that there can be no movement in the absence of a vacuum. Leucippus held that since movement exists, there must be an empty space. However, he concludes that the void is identified with non-being, since & # 34;nothing & # 34; it really can't be. According to Aristotle, Leucippus differed from the Eleatics in not being hampered by "conceptual mixture" of being and non-being, and Plato made the necessary distinction between "degrees of being and types of negation". Although causality was implicit in the philosophies of Thales and Heraclitus, Leucippus is considered the first to explain that all things happen due to 'necessity', that is, their nature. Eusebius quoting Aristocles of Messene says that Leucippus was part of a line of philosophy that began with Xenophanes and culminated in Pyrrhonism.

The work Peri Nou (About the intellect) is attributed to him, although this book could have been a chapter of an earlier, longer work called Megas Diakosmos (Great Cosmology), but this title was also attributed to Democritus.

The doxographic fragments on Leucippus were collected by Hermann Diels (1848–1922), first in Doxographi Graeci (Berlin, 1879) and later in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, (Berlin, 1903). Diels was the main defender of a historical Leucippus. Michel Onfray also supports this theory. Jean-Paul Dumont hypothesized that Leucippus was actually a female philosopher.

Philosophy

Leucippus is considered by Diogenes Laertius and Aristotle as the founder of atomism, who postulated atoms as the beginning of things, although according to Sextus Empiricus he lends the invention of the atom to Mosco of Sidon, a Phoenician physiologist or natural philosopher.

Physics

He was a teacher of Democritus and the two of them are credited with founding mechanistic atomism, according to which reality is made up of both an infinite number of indivisible particles, always in motion and of various forms; atoms (from the Greek ancient ἄτομοι, "that which cannot be divided"); as by an empty space. Thus, perhaps in response to Parmenides, he affirms that there is both being and non-being: the first is represented by atoms, since "entity, in the strict sense, is absolutely full"; and the second, by a empty space or "pores" that "exists no less than being", being essential for movement to exist since "it is impossible for the full to receive something". Thus, he denies generation and corruption, forms of change that they were accepted almost unanimously among the pre-Socratic philosophers, as a form of combination or separation. Then the principles of reality are atoms, vacuum and movement. The result is the following theory:

"Vacuum is a non-being, and no part of what is a non-being; for what is in the strict sense of the term is an absolute fullness. However, this is not a unity; on the contrary, it is an infinite multiplicity in number and invisible, due to the smallness of its size; the multiplicity moves in the void (because it exists), and coming together produces the future, while separating itself forms the passing. In addition, they act and suffer the action wherever they are and casually establish contact (because here they are not one), and they occur when joining and intertwining. From genuinely One, on the other hand, could never form a multiplicity, nor from genuine Multiplicity could the One come out: it is impossible”.

Leucippus believed that all things are limitless and mutually transforming. This thought withdraws from the gods, the soul and the other worlds thus become a perceptible and concrete reality. Leucippus claimed that bodies originated from other elements that no part of the body could see, touch or perceive; they are so thin that there is no blade thin enough to cut and divide them; later, he gave them the name of atom.The differences between things can be analyzed in the end through a combination of qualities of the atoms that form them. Their weight, their shape, their speed, their direction, their respective positions give each thing its characteristic configuration. Leucippus's anatomy was taken up and popularized by his student Democritus. The weight of the atoms in both thinkers is controversial. On the one hand, it is argued that for Leucippus is an intrinsic property that makes all atoms fall in one direction. On the other hand, the weight of the atom may simply be due to the whirlwind of cosmic vortices.

He and his student replaced supernatural and teleological explanations of phenomena with natural mechanistic explanations. Leucippus stated that:

ο,δ,ν χρ substituteμα μάτιν γίνεται, ωι, ・λκ πάντα γκ όγου τε γε καίνεται, πινγκις

"Nothing comes from chance, but from reason and necessity."

Stobeo, I, 4, 7c
Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 67 B2

This need is identified with destiny, marked by the forces of atoms. Democritus and especially Epicurus added the element of chance. To the original physical and cosmological theories, this will itself add the ethical consequences that it is advisable to extract from the physics of Leucippus. However, it is possible that Leucippus also has an ethic, logically derived from his materialistic physics.

Cosmology

According to Leucippus, the universe is infinite and that some parts of it are composed of spaces full of bodies and other voids. The stars and worlds originate from atoms that fall into a vacuum and when they collide they come together or separating. The bodies, already united, rotate around their center and form a circular membrane. In this way he maintained that the Earth is shaped like a drum and revolves around its center. The stars rotate around it by the force of its atoms. The Sun is on the uppermost circumference, below the Moon, which is smaller and closer to Earth. This explains the eclipses of the Sun and Moon. The earth is also tilted, explaining the arctic regions.

Plato and Aristotle preferred Parmenides' idea of a full and continuous universe, opposing the atomists' ideas of objects separated by a vacuum. On the other hand, Descartes' cosmology was based on the doctrine of Leucippus according to Pierre Bayle and Pierre Daniel Huet.

Epistemology

According to Michel Onfray, "Leucippus reduces immanent reality and its only material dimension to men". In particular, Leucippus postulates, like Democritus, that the soul is made up of atoms plus "bright, spherical and subtle" than the components of other things; from which heat, life and thought result in man, phenomena that are different manifestations of movement, which is inherent and as essential to the atoms of a spherical shape". The arrangement of the atoms in Leucippus forms everything in the universe and produces "simulacra". These are actually small particles suspended in a vacuum that will enter the human being to provide information. The drills stimulate all five human senses. Therefore, the truth is found only in the phenomena and the simulacrum explains the apparent multiplicity. According to tradition, this philosophical idea is linked to the contemplation of a ray of light that makes the dust appear to be in suspension.

Ethics

This materialistic physics leads to a certain kind of ethics. Therefore, the gods can no longer exist, except in a material form, they do not exercise providence. This puts man before himself, under his own judgment and not that of a divinity.

Leucippus may have been a hedonist. The Greek ethicist was eudamonistic. It can be said that the term happiness is equivalent to pleasure. Bailly teaches us that the Greek words charis and hedon overlap most of the time and have the same meaning, for example, in Sophocles, in Plato (in the Gorgias and the Sophist) and in Plutarch. Homer (the Iliad), Xenophon and Plato confirm this thesis, understood in all its meanings, including the sensual and sexual ones. The hedonic and eudaemonic approaches are therefore overlapping.

Eponymy

• The lunar crater Leucippus bears this name in his memory.
• The asteroid (5950) Leukippos bears this name in his memory.