Leucippus is reported in some ancient sources to have been a philosopher who
was the earliest Greek to develop the theory of atomism — the idea that
everything is composed entirely of various imperishable, indivisible
elements called atoms. The name Leucippus is often associated as master
to pupil with that of Democritus, the philosopher who was also touted as the
originator of the atomic theory. However, a brief notice in Diogenes
Laertius’s life of Epicurus says that on the testimony of Epicurus, Leucippus
never existed. As the philosophical heir of Democritus, Epicurus's word has some
weight, and indeed a controversy over this matter raged in German scholarship
for many years at the close of the 19th century. Furthermore, In his Corpus
Democriteum, Thrasyllus of Alexandria, an astrologer and writer living under
the emperor Tiberius compiled a list of writings on atomism that he attributed
to Democritus to the exclusion of Leucippus. The present consensus among
the world's historians of philosophy is that this Leucippus is historical. The
matter must remain moot unless more information is forthcoming from the
record. Leucippus was most likely born in
Miletus, although Abdera and Elea are also mentioned as possible birth-places.
Overview Leucippus was indeed a shadowy figure,
as his dates are not recorded and he is often mentioned in conjunction with his
more well-known pupil Democritus. It is therefore difficult to determine which
contributions to an atomic theory come from Democritus and which come from
Leucippus. The Leucippus of record was an Ionian
Greek. And he was a contemporary of Zeno of Elea and Empedocles. He belonged to
the same Ionian School of naturalistic philosophy as Thales, Anaximander,
Anaximenes, and he was interested in reality and not idealism as the Italic
Eleatics were. Aristotle and his student Theophrastus,
however, explicitly credit Leucippus with the invention of Atomism. In
Aristotelian terms 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 must be empty space.
However, he concludes that vacuum is identified with non-being, since
"nothing" cannot really be. According to Aristotle Leucippus differed from the
Eleatics in not being encumbered by the conceptual intermingling of being and
non-being, and Plato made the necessary distinction between grades of being and
types of negation. The most title attributed to Leucippus'
is the lost work Megas Diakosmos. Fragments and doxographical reports
about Leucippus were collected by Hermann Diels, firstly in Doxographi
Graeci and then in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Berlin, 1903, 6th ed.,
rev. by Walther Kranz Diels was the leading proponent for a historical
Leucippus. Some sources claim that around 440 or
430 BCE Leucippus founded a school at Abdera, in which his pupil, Democritus,
was closely associated. And there is mention that a Leucippus founded the
city of Metapontum, which honored this Leucippus with a coin.
See also Atomism
Democritus Epicurus
Indeterminism Notes
References A. A. Long, The Cambridge Companion to
Early Greek Philosophy Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der
Vorsokratiker [I] 67A Diogenes Laërtius, Lives and Opinions of
Eminent Philosophers, IX.30-33 External links
Leucippus entry by Sylvia Berryman in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Diogenes Laërtius, Life of Leucippus, translated by Robert Drew Hicks.
Leucippus and Democritus Fragments at demonax.info