Answer:
Leucippus of Miletus (5th century BCE) is thought to have originated the atomic philosophy. His famous disciple, Democritus of Abdera, named the building blocks of matter atomos, meaning literally “indivisible,” about 430 BCE. Democritus believed that atoms were uniform, solid, hard, incompressible, and indestructible and that they moved in infinite numbers through empty space until stopped. Differences in atomic shape and size determined the various properties of matter. In Democritus’s philosophy, atoms existed not only for matter but also for such qualities as perception and the human soul. For example, sourness was caused by needle-shaped atoms, while the colour white was composed of smooth-surfaced atoms. The atoms of the soul were considered to be particularly fine. Democritus developed his atomic philosophy as a middle ground between two opposing Greek theories about reality and the illusion of change.
