Exploring the Roots of Materialism: The Atomists

In this episode, Daniel and Nathan delve into the philosophy of materialism by exploring the early atomists, Leucippus and Democritus.

They discuss the historical context of these philosophers, their main ideas about atoms and the void, and how these concepts form the basis of materialism. The conversation also touches on the implications of materialistic determinism, the challenges it poses for ethics and rationality, and its lasting impact on modern thought. The episode sets the stage for future discussions about Socrates and his opponents, the sophists.

00:00 Introduction

00:50 The Predominant Worldview: Materialism

01:26 Introduction to Atomists: Leucippus and Democritus

03:16 The Concept of Atoms and the Void

06:19 Mechanistic Explanations and Determinism

13:09 Challenges and Implications of Materialism

20:15 Transition to Socrates and Future Topics

 Hi again. Hey. So we are back with another wonderful episode here. Yeah. Getting really close to Socrates. Yeah, we are. I'm wondering, you know, how many people find this interesting? I think there's a small sliver of people that will probably find this stuff very interesting and like the vast majority of like, who cares about this?

I'm in that latter group. Yeah. Well, that's too bad. Just kidding. So if you're in that sliver of humanity that cares, Hey, you are our people. No, this is, yeah, this is sweet because I think as we keep going, we'll be able to see more and more how this stuff affects us because a lot of these ideas are still kind of floating around in various forms.

Wow. And I think it's flawed. Oh, okay. Those are some big claims. Yeah. Cool. I'm excited for it. A little clickbait there probably. Yeah. The predominant worldview and its flaws. Maybe that's the title. Yeah, maybe that. Okay. I think we'll just call this, uh, materialism or the beginning of materialism or materialists of different kinds.

Something like that. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay, so why don't you situate us here, who are we talking about, and why are we talking about them? We're going to be talking about a group of philosophers, and they go by the name of atomists, so A T O M, not Adam, you know, like Adam and Eve. They go by that name, but really it's the beginning of materialism, at least a fully articulated form.

And so it also gives us a way then to examine the strengths and weaknesses of materialism as a worldview. Thank you. Got you. And where are these guys located and around what time? All right. So this is a whole school and the three most influential materialists or atomists are going to be Leucippus, and he's about 500 to 430, and then Democritus, so a little bit later than that, maybe 460 to 370, and then much later, Epicurus.

We'll be talking primarily here about Leucippus and Democritus. Because they are the ones who set the ball rolling, as it were. And then Epicurus developed his own variation of this and talked more about ethics. We'll come to him in his own right later on. Got you. Okay. So where were these folks located?

Were they also in Athens? I'm not exactly sure what city Leucippus was from, and I'm not sure that there is a definitive answer. Democritus, who's probably more important for our purposes, hails from Thrace, which is a little bit north of Greece, but still part of Greek culture, as it were. So, yeah. And we're going to focus more on him, not because Leucippus is less important, but because Democritus is the one who did all the writing.

Gotcha. Gotcha. So the best we can piece together, Leucippus was the one who developed the theories we'll be talking about, but Democritus was the one who really spread them. He wrote a lot of stuff. Gotcha. And together, they are called atomists, A T O M I S T S. For the foundation of their viewpoint was that reality consists of indivisible pieces of matter that they called atoms and the void.

So reality is two things, atoms and the void or empty space. This is crazy. Why? I mean, obviously, that's where we get our English word for atoms and modern physics. Right. Now, they did not invent the atom or discover it. They had a theory that you could divide things only so far and then matter became indivisible at some point.

So that's what the word means in Greek. But they're kind of right. Yes. Which is crazy. Well, I think we think they're right. There's actually a debate about whether matter is infinitely divisible or not, or not really. Yeah. Okay. And the consensus is it's not, I don't know that there is a consensus. Really?

Okay. Yeah. It's one where, from what I understand anyway, physicists keep thinking, okay, this is the most indivisible piece of matter. And then they keep finding a new one underneath that. And so now the question is, maybe we were wrong in our assumption that there is a fundamental element that's indivisible.

Wow. Yeah. At least that's how I understand it. Expert on that, obviously. So that's theoretical physics? Yeah. Wow. So, anyway, the word atom is simply Greek for uncuttable, so it means thing you can't cut anymore. Gotcha. And then when modern physicists developed their theory of the atom and said, okay, this is something that is the basis for everything, you can't cut it.

They gave that name to it. Now, later on, we found, hey, we can cut the atom, um, but that's not Democritus fault there. Got you. So they did not discover the atom. They had this theory that reality came to a point where you couldn't cut it anymore. They gave the name atom and then modern physicists borrowed that name.

Okay. That makes sense. Thanks for helping us situate here. Yeah. Do you remember in our last episode, we talked about Empedocles? In a way, they're developing his thought in a further direction. He argued, if you remember, that reality consists of four elements, which mixed together form the objects that we experience.

So there's four physical elements. And he didn't really work out the mechanism for how they did this. He, he just said there were love and hate, but these were clearly metaphors for these forces of binding and repelling. And he didn't really give any reason why those forces existed, the love and hate forces, how exactly they worked.

It was basically a theory at a certain level using a lot of analogy. So they want to go a little bit farther. The atomists want to take that same idea, develop it a little bit further. And they want to give a thoroughly mechanistic explanation for the existence and the change and the movements of objects in this world, of reality itself.

Are they successful? Let's find out. Maybe we should define that word mechanistic. Yes, please. All right. Mechanistic, obviously, related to the word mechanical, it simply means describing something by its physical laws alone. So you're looking at something and you're explaining only the physical law part of that, why it is and why it changes.

Okay, can you give us an example of that? Yeah, actually I can. And this is not original, but I have no idea where I got it from. So, imagine that you're at home and you put a kettle on. One of the old kettles that, you know, that whistles when the water's ready, when it's boiling. And then your wife, Abby comes in and says, Hey, why is the kettle whistling?

Or maybe your son asked that, right? When he's a little bit older, why is the kettle whistling? One answer you could give him is you could explain that you have turned on the element on the stove. So the electrons in that within that element are colliding and heating up, increasing more energy, which is creating heat as an off source, creating heat as a product of that.

That heat is being transferred first to the kettle and then to the water in the kettle. When the water reaches a certain temperature, it begins to produce steam or begins to transform into steam. When the steam goes through the kettle, what do you call the kettle part? The whistle. The whistler. The whistler.

Then it makes that noise. Now, you could say that, right? Yeah, it's true. Or you could say, especially if Abby's asking, you know, why is the kettle, why is the kettle whistling? Well, I wanted to make tea. Yeah. Or coffee. Right. Or coffee. Both those answers are correct. One is a mechanistic explanation. Okay. And the other is more purposeful explanation.

So these guys are trying to give a mechanistic reason. So they're not concerned with the, let me, is this correct that they're not so much concerned with the why as much as the how? Oh, totally. Is that, that's a good summary of it? Yeah. Okay. And they want to give an explanation of the how that encompasses all reality.

So last episode, the how was just the mind. Right. Anaxagoras said, it's the mind that does it. Yeah. And these guys don't like that answer. Well, it's not, it doesn't really, it's like, he's just kind of slapping a name on something. And I mean, he probably gives more depth to it, but it, it, it left, it left us unsatisfied.

So left you disappointed like Socrates. Uh, indeed. Okay. So they're going to, they're going to give a mechanistic reason to how the elements move and change and mechanistic reason for their existence even. Okay. So what is it that they argue? All right. Come back to this idea. We already mentioned reality consists of two things, atoms and empty space or the void.

That's all that there is. The atoms are physical. They are infinitely small pieces of matter that you cannot divide. You cannot see. And yet they form together to create the objects that we do see and experience. So, quick question, are they saying that the atoms are the four elements, like there are four different kinds of atoms?

Well, they would give different answers on whether you would ask them, are the atoms alike or not? Depends on what you mean by that. Let me explain a little bit more and then we'll come back to that if we want. Here's what they would say about the atoms. They are indestructible, so they exist eternally. So they're always here and they will never go away.

So matter is eternal and uncreated and therefore is fundamental. Matter is the most fundamental thing. Now, these atoms are in constant motion. And they're bumping into each other in the void or the empty space. Why are they moving? What started the movement? What gives them the power to move? Those questions are not addressed.

But they're simply bumping into each other all the time. But as they bump into each other, something else happens. They begin to attach to each other. The atoms here are conceived of as different shapes and sizes. Some of them have hooks and projections, and when enough of them combine together, they form physical things, like a feather, or a stone, or a bird.

And when those atoms fall apart, those physical things cease to exist. So what exists are atoms and the void. Sometimes the atoms combine for a while to make things, And then they go back into lone atom status, as it were. So the million dollar question is why, right? Why do the atoms exist? Where did they come from?

And the answer Heraclitus gives is they simply are. You can't ask that question. There is no why. So he's going to be one of the first to rule out by principle, any question of causation or purpose. You cannot ask why, because there's fundamentally no answer to that question. In his whole worldview, the why question, the purpose question, doesn't exist.

So he punts. Yes. Huh. That's not fair. I think not. At least it's satisfactory to me. Okay, wait a second. So Heraclitus, you said? Yes. Is he in the same kind of school of atomists? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Democrites. Okay. For some reason, you ever have different names that are in your mind as pairs, you know, and you kind of, you get them confused sometimes?

Yeah. And I could see, especially for all these Greek kind of unfamiliar names. Yes. I'm talking about Democritus. Okay. So Democritus just kind of punts on this one. Yes. He says it's a, it's a bad question. You can't even ask it. Okay. Yeah. And there are people who say the same thing today. So Adams and their motions simply are no further questions can be asked, obviously, because no adequate answer could be given.

There is no possible way. That you could answer why if matter simply exists. Yeah. The question is, are you okay with that? Like you said, is it satisfactory? And he's going to say, I'm okay with not knowing. Yeah, he is. I'm not, but he is. Uh, he did give some sort of an answer to the question of why things occur, but it only works on a very shallow level.

He says. Nothing occurs at random, but everything occurs by reason and by necessity. So things don't just happen. They occur by reason and here probably thinking back to Anaxagoras, all things are controlled by rationality or nous, the mind, and by necessity. So in other words, things had to happen this way.

So, like, he's determinist. Yes. Okay. Very much. I think it's very difficult to be a thorough going materialist without also being a very thorough going determinist. And I think, if I'm correct, this is the first time that category of determinism is being brought up. Yeah, I think so. maybe you could argue some of the others.

It was an implication of their theory, but certainly I don't recall any other saying Everything happens by necessity. Is that one of the things that he's kind of noted for the whole school? Really? Okay. Of aism? Yeah. Wow. Mm-Hmm. . So the only explanation for the present state of reality is previous state of reality.

And then the rules of rationality are, we probably say the laws of nature today. So everything happens only because it has to. He didn't say it this way, I don't think, but I've seen other materialists say, if you could have perfect knowledge of all the conditions of the universe right now, then you would be able to infallibly predict the future.

Because the only thing that brings the future about is the present state of the universe and the physical laws of the universe alone. There is no randomness, there's no purpose, there's no intervention, that's it. It's very deterministic. like if you're hitting the cue ball into the pool balls, and you know all the physics and you know exactly where it's going to hit and, the weight of all the balls and the speed, then you can determine where all the balls are going to land.

Right. But on the big scale. Yeah. That's a good analogy, especially because on this viewpoint, basically there are no independent agents like the pool players themselves. It's almost like. The balls are hitting around randomly without, without the pool players. Yeah. So that's what's happens. And when you, when you have that, then what you have is this idea that I am a cog in the machine, my actions and my thoughts come about, not by a free choice of my own, but solely by previously existing physical causes.

I am not in control of my actions any more than the clouds control whether they rain or not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. that's very interesting. Yeah. And it's really tough to build any sort of ethic on this, right? Yeah. How do you enforce any sort of rule when people are not autonomous and not responsible because they can't control their actions just like a cloud can't control whether it's going to rain or not.

It becomes difficult. This is one of the, the great challenge of the materialistic worldview is giving an adequate basis for judging. human actions, if they could not have done otherwise, if everything really is determined because matter is all that exists. Yeah. Today we'd say matter and energy.

But really, matter and energy are two phases of the same thing, really. So philosophically, there's not an advance there. Mm hmm. Do you think that there's an element of determinism that's, that's true? I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm just thinking about it. I mean, it seems to make sense, like the illustration of the pool table.

If you know where that cue ball is going to strike and the physics of the table, you know where stuff's going to land. and so it seems, don't know, first thought, it seems reasonable that if you have perfect knowledge of everything that I am and consist of as a person, then you would be able to, understand kind of, you Well, I think it makes perfect sense if you have the premise that reality consists only of material things and that matter is eternal.

So you are excluding, therefore, by definition, the idea of someone or something outside the universe to give it a purpose or a causation, but also some sort of guidance or intervention. You are excluding the idea that humans Uh, could somehow be connected with that creation in a special way that also gives them meaningful autonomy, to not just do what they have to do or are determined to do by situation, but they have legitimate free choice.

So yeah, I think it works if you're willing to go there, but there are a lot of sacrifices you have to make once you, once you make that choice and the sacrifices being autonomy and well, one is. determinism for human actions. So, along with that, the inability then to give an adequate standard of judgment for saying some human thoughts and actions are better than others.

Why is our culture better than Nazi Germany? If both are determined, if both simply arise. from the interplay of atoms working in a physical way, it becomes really hard to answer that question. But even more than that, another cost involved, which you go down this road is rationality itself really.

here's why, because think about this. If my thoughts, which are simply the events, So if the physical organ are determined, then how can I know that they are true? You and I don't have the same thoughts, right? There's some things we're disagreeing on, and I'm right and you're wrong. But how would I know that if my thoughts are determined and your thoughts are determined both by the physical laws of the universe and physical matter alone, and yet our thoughts are different.

Our judgments are different. our values are different. How would we adjudicate between those? I can appeal to logic or reasoning, but that reasoning in itself is simply the product of previous physical causes. So materialism can give this expansive explanation of reality as long as you don't ask the big questions.

And as long as you are okay with this kind of self contradiction at the heart of it. one more epistemological problem, and that's a question that materialists and others are still wrestling with is this, that if my mind is solely the product of physical forces alone, then how can I trust my mind to find truth?

Another way of saying what we just talked about. I'm not, I'm saying it very well today, but. we've talked about this in the past, though. We have, yeah. Yeah, how do you, how do you, trust it if it's just the byproduct of, if it was just determined?

I don't know, saying it well enough, I think to, if, if folks have listened to some of the other, episodes and they're probably familiar with this argument you've made a couple times, but you can probably point it back to the, episode on the four great worldviews and the, especially epistemology.

So anyway, that is materialism of the atomistic sort. Yeah, I appreciate that little digression there because I'm trying to piece together the discussions we've had and trying to understand, you know, how it fits together. Yeah, reality is matter, which is eternal, but there is no explanation for why it exists, where it came from.

There's no explanation for what it's here for. There's no, by definition, ideas of purpose are ruled out. And you also have problematic concepts of, morality and judgment. in some ways, this is an intellectual advance on what's gone before, but at the same time, it's an advance that shows, perhaps, at least to me.

The weakness of the whole path. Gotcha. Of trying to understand reality based upon human autonomy alone. Gotcha. So we've been talking about how these guys are stepping stones up to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Yeah. And this is going to be a little bit of an exception to that because this idea of materialism, maybe not the atomistic theory itself, but this idea of materialism, that matter is eternal and it's all that's here.

I think they're inspired by it. Yeah. But there are other currents as well. I mean, it's, it's goes hand in hand with a rejection of the supernatural rejection of revelation. So yeah, they're inspired by it, it's not like they're like, Oh yeah, this, this is. So it's another, iteration of the same kind of ideas in time.

I think so. Like the, author of Ecclesiastes says, there's nothing new under the sun. Yeah. In some sense, that's true, I suppose. Anyway, this is, super fascinating. And especially the way that the language of Adams, the uncutterable. Thing is used today in physics and all that. So super fascinating.

So where are we going next? We're going to talk about Socrates finally. Okay, cool. But we may have to do it with the context of the sophists. the sophists were the great opponents of Socrates or the ones he was arguing against. So we'll probably combine those two together, the Sophis and Socrates. That may end up being two episodes, but that's where we're going next.

Well, anything else about, the atomists? No, we'll come back to Epicurus who gives, or attempts to give an ethic based upon this. I think it's, it's found wanting, but we'll, we'll talk about that. He was an atomist who lived a few centuries later. Sounds good. Well, until then. All right. See you. Thanks.