Atomism (pronounced at-uh-miz-uhm)
(1) In
philosophy, an ancient theory, developed by Democritus and expounded by
Lucretius, that the ultimate constituents of all matter in the universe are
atoms which are minute, discrete, finite, and indivisible elements; also called
atomic theory.
(2) In
psychology, a method or theory that reduces all psychological phenomena to
simple elements; that experiences and mental states are composed of elementary
units.
(3) Within
the sciences, any of a number of theories that hold that some objects or
phenomena can be explained as constructed out of a small number of distinct
types of simple indivisible entities; any theory that holds that an
understanding of the parts is logically prior to an understanding of the whole. These theories can be grouped under the
rubric of reductionism
1670–1680: The construct was atom + -ism. Atom was from the Middle English attome from the Middle French athome, from the Latin atomus (smallest particle), from the Ancient Greek ἄτομον & ἄτομος (átomos & átomon) (indivisible; uncuttable), the construct being ἀ- (a-) (not) + τέμνω (témnō) (I cut). The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done). It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).
Many English nouns to which -ism is attached are loans from Ancient Greek (mostly via Latin and French). In Late Latin, the -ismus suffix became the ordinary ending for names of religions and ecclesiastical or philosophical systems, a trend continued in Medieval Latin and from the sixteenth century, such formations became common in English although, until the eighteenth century, the use was usually restricted to either root words from Ancient Greek & Latin or proper names. By the nineteenth century, the creation of “isms” began to expand and by the twentieth, coinages took no account of previous rules and conventions. Atomism & atomist are nouns, atomistic & atomistical are adjectives and atomistically is an adverb; the noun plural is atoms.
Atoms
and voids
Atomism
was a philosophical theory which suggested the universe consisted of
indivisible, minute particles known as atoms and the idea was ancient, the
first known writings on the matter those of the Ancient Greek philosopher
Leucippus who was born during the fifth century BC but it was his better-known
pupil Democritus (circa 460-370 BC) who developed and systematized the
ideas. What emerged was the theory that
the two diametrically opposed constituents of the universe are indivisible
entities: the void and the atom.
Democritus regarded a void as being literally nothing whereas atoms were
matter and intrinsically unchangeable; an atom moving about in the void and
sometimes combining into clusters although, being separated by the void, they
cannot fuse, but instead bounce off one another when they collide. It was the origin of the understanding that
in the material world, objects are transitory because they change as their
constituent atoms shift or become detached; matter cannot be created or
destroyed, it can only be transformed into something else. To the philosopher, it meant everything we
experience in the universe is doomed; it’s a question just of when it ends and
how. That’s sometimes expressed as “nothing
lasts forever” and in a practical sense that’s correct but what was left
unanswered (though not unexplored) was (1) whether the atoms survived no matter
what and (2) whether the voids remained or became transformed into a singularity
with an undetermined future.
Helpfully
for some, the atomists’ postulation of the indivisible atom also provided a
solution to one of the paradoxes of Zeno of Elea (circa 495–430 BC): that
if magnitudes can be divided to infinity, it becomes impossible for movement to
happen because the object would have to traverse an infinite number of spaces
in a finite time. If an atom is the
point at which division is impossible, the dilemma, which admittedly occurs
only in Philosophy 101 classes, dissolves.
Other problems however persisted because there was nothing to disprove
the proposition an atom could infinitely be divided into progressively smaller
parts and obviously such a process could be described mathematically, numbers
extending infinitely in each direction from what would come to be called zero.
Atomism: Atomic Kitten, EMI promotional poster, 1999.
The notion all matter is composed of tiny, indivisible (and indestructible) particles called atoms (from a Greek form meaning “indivisible” or “uncuttable” endured well in both Western and Eastern traditions although there were those who resisted and clung to the model of continuous matter, something which would have seemed compelling obvious based on observation. What the thinkers from Antiquity left however was something speculative and, given the technology of the time, wholly unsupported by empirical evidence but with the advances which followed the Enlightenment, there was renewed interest in what was at the time known variously as “modern” or “revival” atomism and the first structured theories emerged in the early 1800s. Indeed, the diagrams and explanations which became widely available early in the twentieth century really made the atomic structure understandable (at least conceptually) even to those with no background which was fine until the shock of quantum mechanics, papers and discussions about which began to circulate in the 1920s. Quite a jump in the understanding of atoms and sub-atomic particles, quantum theory did not describe atoms as solid, billiard ball-like objects but rather as probabilistic entities with wave-like properties, the most challenging implication of that being that such a thing could simultaneously be in two places (points in space) at the same time (points in time). For those brought up on the neat little diagrams of the atom, it was quite a challenge to visualize those two points in space being possibly on opposite sides of the universe.
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