- This article is about the philosopher. There was also a Greek mythological Leucippus (mythology). A genus of hummingbirds also is named Leucippus.
Leucippus or Leukippos (Greek: Λεύκιππος, first
half of 5th century BC) was among the earliest philosophers of atomism, the idea that everything is composed entirely of various imperishable, indivisible elements called
atoms. He was born at Miletus or Abdera[1]
Overview
There are no existing writings which we can attribute to Leucippus, since his writings seem to have been folded into the work
of his famous student Democritus (q.v. for more on atomism). In fact, it is virtually
impossible to identify any views about which Democritus and Leucippus disagreed.
Leucippus was a contemporary of Zeno, Empedocles and
Anaxagoras of the Ionian school of philosophy.
Leucippus was most influenced by Zeno, who possessed a great interest in the problems and paradoxes of space. He studied at the
school in Elea, but it is not certain whether this was before or after the death of Parmenides. Around 440 B.C. or 430 B.C. Leucippus found a school at Abdera, which his pupil, Democritus, was
closely associated with.[2] His fame was so
completely overshadowed by that of Democritus, who systematized his views on atoms, that Epicurus doubted his very existence, according to Diogenes Laertius
x. 7.
However Aristotle and Theophrastus explicitly credit
Leucippus with the invention of Atomism. Leucippus agreed with the Eleatic argument that true being does not admit of
vacuum. And there can be no movement in the absence of vacuum. Leucippus contended that since movement exists, there has to
be vacuum. However, he concludes that vacuum is identified with non-being, since it cannot really be. Leucippus differed from the
Eleatics in not being encumbered by the conceptual intermingling of being and non-being. Plato made the necessary distinction between grades of being and types of negation.[2]
The most famous among Leucippus' lost works were titled Megas Diakosmos (The Great Order of the Universe or
The great world-system[3]) and Peri Nou
(On mind).
Quotes
A single fragment of Leucippus survives[4]:
Nothing happens at random (maten), but everything from reason (ek logou) and by necessity.
– Leucippus, Diels-Kranz 67
B1
Footnotes
- ^ The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy, pg. xxiii. Note
that Democritus was a resident of Abdera. Some said Leucippus was from Elea, for his
philosophy is associated with the Eleatic philosophers.
- ^ a b Leucippus in The Presocratics, Philip Wheelwright ed., The
Odyssey Press, 1966, pg. 177.
- ^ Ibid., pg. xxiii.
- ^ Diels/Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker [I]
Sources
A.A. Long (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy (pgs. xxiii, 185)
Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker [I] 67A
Diogenes Laertius, Diogenes Lartius: Lives of Eminent Philosophers, IX.30-33
External links
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