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Home > 4. Chemistry and Physics > Greek Ideas About Matter
Podcast: 4. Chemistry and Physics
Episode:

Greek Ideas About Matter
Category: Science & Medicine
Duration: 00:01:01
Publish Date: 2011-07-13 18:55:00
Description: Transcript: Over two thousand years ago the Greeks speculated that the diversity of material in the natural world might conceal a basic simplicity. Democritus came up with the idea of atoms, reasoning that if you subdivided a particle over and over this process could not continue forever. These fundamental entities, invisibly small, had no primary characteristics. All the characteristics of color, smell, were secondary characteristics. Empedocles went further and speculated that the entire natural world was made up of four basic elements: earth, air, fire, and water. While these ideas seem a little naïve in retrospect, in other ways they are strikingly modern. However the Greek had no evidence as to the nature of atoms or the fundamental nature of matter. Such evidence would take another two thousand years to acquire.
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