Leucippus (Leukippos)

(ca. 490 BC. -?)
The founder of atomism, teacher and friend of Democritus. The life L. unknown. Mention his compositions "Big diakosmos" and "mind" of a second before we heard one phrase. According to Aristotle, L. created his teaching, trying to reconcile the Eleatic school arguments about the impossibility of movement with the data of sensory experience. He admitted the existence of nothingness, ie. voids separating the smallest particles being (atoms). Atoms, being indivisible, immutable and beskachestvennymi differ from one another only in size and shape, they are in a state of perpetual motion. Faced and concatenating with each other, the atoms form a diverse things.

Details cosmogonic concept L. Diogenes Laertius reports. Rushing into empty space, countless numbers of atoms give rise to vortices, of which there are worlds. Each vortex is surrounded by a shell as if that prevents individual atoms escape the surface. Swirling in a vortex, the atoms are separated by the principle "like tends to like": the larger of them are going in the middle and form a flat Earth, the smaller flock to the periphery. Some clusters of atoms ignited because of speed - so there are visible from our heavenly bodies. Process kosmoobrazovaniya, like everything that happens in the world, legitimate and under a necessity. The rest of the views of L. virtually inseparable from the further development of atomic theory in the writings of Democritus.

L. played an important role in the development of ancient ideas about the cosmos. In his honor named minor planet 5950 Leukippos and Lunar Crater Leucippus.

Literature:
1. Leucippus. / / Philosophical Encyclopedic Dictionary.

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