Note 31 — Chapter IV · OZONE AND HYDROGEN PEROXIDE—DALTON'S LAW

Leucippus, Democritus, and especially Lucretius, in the classical ages, represented matter as made up of atoms—that is, of parts incapable of further division. The geometrical impossibility of such an admission, as well as the conclusions which were deduced by the ancient atomists from their fundamental propositions, prevented other philosophers from following them, and the atomic doctrine, like very many others, lived, without being ratified by fact, in the imaginations of its followers. Between the present atomic theory and the doctrine of the above-named ancient philosophers there is naturally a remote historical connection, as between the doctrine of Pythagoras and Copernicus, but they are essentially different. For us the atom is indivisible, not in the geometrical abstract sense, but only in a physical and chemical sense. It would be better to call the atoms indivisible individuals. The Greek atom = the Latin individual, both according to the etymology and original sense of the words, but in course of time these two words have acquired a different meaning. The individual is mechanically and geometrically divisible, and only indivisible in a special sense. The earth, the sun, a man or a fly are individuals, although geometrically divisible. Thus the ‘atoms’ of contemporary science, indivisible in a chemical sense, form those units with which we are concerned in the investigation of the natural phenomena of matter, just as a man is an indivisible unit in the investigation of social relations, or as the stars, planets, and luminaries serve as units in astronomy. The formation of the vortex hypothesis, in which, as we shall afterwards see, atoms are entire whirls mechanically complex, although physico-chemically indivisible, clearly shows that the scientific men of our time in holding to the atomic theory have only borrowed the word and form of expression from the ancient philosophers, and not the essence of their atomic doctrine. It is erroneous to imagine that the contemporary conceptions of the atomists are nothing but the repetition of the metaphysical reasonings of the ancients. To show the true meaning of the atomism of the ancient philosophers, and the profound difference between their points of argument and those of contemporary men of science, I cite the following fundamental propositions of Democritus (B.C. 470–380) as the best expounder of the atomic doctrine of the ancients:—(1) Nothing can proceed from nothing, nothing that exists can disappear or be destroyed (and hence matter), and every change only consists of a combination or separation. (2) Nothing is accidental, there is a reason and necessity for everything. (3) All except atoms and vacua is reason and not existence. (4) The atoms, which are infinite in number and form, constitute the visible universe by their motion, impact, and consequent revolving motion. (5) The variety of objects depends only upon a difference in the number, form, and order of the atoms of which they are formed, and not upon a qualitative difference of their atoms, which only act upon each other by pressure and impact. (6) The spirit, like fire, consists of minute, spherical, smooth, and very mobile and all-penetrating atoms, whose motion forms the phenomenon of life. These Democritian, chiefly metaphysical, principles of atomism are so essentially different from the principles of the present atomic doctrine, which is exclusively applied to explaining the phenomena of the external world, that it may be useful to mention the essence of the atomic propositions of Boscovitch, a Slav who lived in the middle of the eighteenth century, and who is regarded as the founder of the modern atomic doctrines which, however, did not take hold upon the minds of scientific men, and were rarely applied prior to Dalton—i.e. until the beginning of the nineteenth century. The doctrine of Boscovitch was enunciated by him in 1758–1764 in his ‘Philosophiæ naturalis theoria reducta ad unicam legem virium in natura existentium.’ Boscovitch considers matter to be composed of atoms, and the atoms to be the points or centres of forces (just as the stars and planets may be considered as points of space), acting between bodies and their parts. These forces vary with the distance, so that beyond a certain very small distance all atoms, and hence also their aggregates, are attracted according to Newton's law, but at less distances, there alternate wave-like spheres of gradually decreasing attraction and increasing (as the distance decreases) repulsion, until at last at a minimum distance only the repellent action remains. Atoms, therefore, cannot merge into each other. Consequently, the atoms are held at a certain distance from each other, and therefore occupy space. Boscovitch compares the sphere of repulsion surrounding the atoms to the spheres of action of firing of a detachment of soldiers. According to his doctrine, atoms are indestructible, do not merge into each other, have mass, are everlasting and mobile under the action of the forces proper to them. Maxwell rightly calls this hypothesis the ‘extreme’ among those existing to explain matter, but many aspects of Boscovitch's doctrine repeat themselves in the views of our day, with this essential difference, that instead of a mathematical point furnished with the properties of mass, the atoms are endowed with a corporality, just as the stars and planets are corporal, although in certain aspects of their interaction they may be regarded as mathematical points. In my opinion, the atomism of our day must first of all be regarded merely as a convenient method for the investigation of ponderable matter. As a geometrician in reasoning about curves represents them as formed of a succession of right lines, because such a method enables him to analyse the subject under investigation, so the scientific man applies the atomic theory as a method of analysing the phenomena of nature. Naturally there are people now, as in ancient times, and as there always will be, who apply reality to imagination, and therefore there are to be found atomists of extreme views; but it is not in their spirit that we should acknowledge the great services rendered by the atomic doctrine to all science, which, while it has been essentially independently developed, is, if it be desired to reduce all ideas to the doctrines of the ancients, a union of the ancient dynamical and atomic doctrines.