The Atom in the History of Human Thought by Bernard Pullman (review)

BOOK REVIEWS The Atom in the History ofHuman Thought. ByBERNARD Pullman. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. Pp. 403. $32.50. Many years ago in college, I majored in a field called History and Science which included learning the craft of the historian, studying the history of natural philosophy and science, and becoming involved in science itself. One of the exercises in our tutorials on the craft of the historian was to trace the history of an idea through the ages, and I chose atomism. The late Bernard Pullman's book, most naturally, was of immediate interest. Bernard Pullman was Professor of Quantum Chemistry at the Sorbonne and Director of the Institute de Biologies Physico-Chimique. He died in 1996. The translation by Axel Reisinger, a physicist himself, flows beautifully and makes Pullman's points clear. The essence of early atomism was that it was the basis of physical reality, and its elementary particles were indivisible, invisible, and eternal. The book considers the well-known highways and a few fascinating byways of atomism. The book begins with the Milesian School, which thrived from about 600 to 450 bc and included Thaies, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, for whom the primordial elements were water, aperion, and air, respectively. Aperion was an invisible substance which represented a more fundamental abstraction than water and air. Shordy thereafter, Leucippus of Miletus was active. We have no writings from Leucippus, but both Aëtius and Cicero commented on his work. Aëtius wrote, "Leucippus of Miletus says that the filled and the void are principles and elements," and Cicero wrote, "Leucippus admits two principles: the filled and the void." So Leucippus speaks of not only the basic particles, but also of the space between these particles. Democritus furthered this line of thinking. The idea of a primordial substance was not tenable in this view, but this view did allow the speculation that atoms could assemble and reassemble into different arrangements in the void without altering their essential nature. It was not until the 20th century that the distinction between atoms and vacuum expounded by Democritus could no longer stand, since the vacuum has invaded the atoms and accounts for virtually all their volume. Throughout the years, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Lucretius, Aquinas, Mamonides, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Einstein, and many others—scientists as well as philosophers—entered the debate. Three very interesting chapters deal with Hindu, Arab, and medievalJewish views on atomism. Hindu atomism was very similar to the Greek, and there has been debate on which has precedence, whether Permission to reprint a book review printed in this section may be obtained only from the author. 442 I Book Reviews one influenced the other, or whether each arose independenüy. Arab atomism, accordingto Pullman,was decidedlyreligious in nature, the indivisible used to reinforce the doctrine of Islam. Jewish philosophers, including Maimonides, were, until modern times, almost unanimously opposed to atomism primarily for religious reasons. A goal of Greek atomism was to explain the mysteries of the cosmos in terms of mechanistic physics and was, in essence, nonreligious. The atomic theory subsequently played no important role in European philosophy or science for nearly 1,500 years. The Catholic Church controlled new ideas, and the atomic theory seemed to be at odds with transubstantiation and the Church's alliance with Aristotelian philosophy. The story of Galileo's problems with the Church that arose from his belief in heliocentricity and the rejection of Aristotelian science is well known. Less known is Galileo's belief in atomism, which, according to Pullman, also arose from Galileo's desire to describe natural events mathematically. Pullman reviews the contributions of Catholics to the resurgence of the atomic theory, including the ill-fated Giordano Bruno, Galileo, and Pierre Gassendi, as well as the contributions of such Protestants as Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle,John Locke, Denis Diderot, andJames Clerk Maxwell. Pullman also presents the position of the Christian antianatomists , including Rene Descartes and Gottfried Wilhelm Liebnitz. Other chapters deal with the views ofRoger Boxcovitch, a student ofNewton, George Berkeley, and Immanuel Kant. What Pullman terms "scientific atomism" emerged in the 19th and 20th centuries . Pullman points out that since the concept of atomism arose in Greece in the...