Newton of the Principia

    Caption: Isaac Newton (1643--1727) on atoms:

      It seems probable to me that God, in the beginning, formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportions to space, as most conduced to the end for which He formed them; and that these primitive particles, being solids, are incomparably harder than any porous bodies compounded of them, even so very hard as never to wear or break in pieces; no ordinary power being able to divide what God had made one in the first creation.

        ---Isaac Newton (1643--1727), Opticks, 1704, quotation from Wikiquote: Isaac Newton: Opticks, see also David Furley (1922--2010), The Greek Cosmologists, 1987, p. 123.

    Not much progress on atoms here ∼ 2150 years after Leucippus (first half of 5th century BCE) and Democritus (c. 460--c. 370 BCE).

    Credit/Permission: © David Jeffery, 2003 / Own work.
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