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Atomism (from Greek , ''atomon'', i.e. "uncuttable", "indivisible"〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=atom&allowed_in_frame=0 )〕〔The term 'atomism' is recorded in English since 1670–80 (''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary'', 2001, "atomism").〕) is a natural philosophy that developed in several ancient traditions. The atomists theorized that nature consists of two fundamental principles: ''atom'' and ''void''. Unlike their modern scientific namesake in atomic theory, philosophical atoms come in an infinite variety of shapes and sizes, each indestructible, immutable and surrounded by a void where they collide with the others or hook together forming a cluster. Clusters of different shapes, arrangements, and positions give rise to the various macroscopic substances in the world.〔Aristotle, ''Metaphysics'' I, 4, 985b 10–15.〕〔Berryman, Sylvia, "Ancient Atomism", ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/atomism-ancient/〕 References to the concept of atomism and its atoms are found in ancient India and ancient Greece. In India the Jain,〔 〕〔 〕 Ajivika and Carvaka schools of atomism may date back to the 4th century BCE.〔Thomas McEvilley, The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies ISBN 1-58115-203-5, Allwarth Press, 2002, p. 317-321.〕 The Nyaya and Vaisheshika schools later developed theories on how atoms combined into more complex objects.〔Richard King, Indian philosophy: an introduction to Hindu and Buddhist thought, , Edinburgh University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-7486-0954-7, pp. 105-107.〕 In the West, atomism emerged in the 5th century BCE with Leucippus and Democritus.〔The atomists, Leucippus and Democritus: fragments, a text and translation with a commentary by C.C.W. Taylor, University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1999, ISBN 0-8020-4390-9, pp. 157-158.〕 Whether Indian culture influenced Greek or vice versa or whether both evolved independently is a matter of dispute. The particles of chemical matter for which chemists and other natural philosophers of the early 19th century found experimental evidence were thought to be indivisible, and therefore were given the name "atom", long used by the atomist philosophy. However, in the 20th century, the "atoms" of the chemists were found to be composed of even smaller entities: electrons, neutrons, and protons, and further experiments showed that protons and neutrons are made of quarks. Although the connection to historical atomism is at best tenuous, elementary particles have thus become a modern analog of philosophical atoms, despite the misnomer in chemistry. ==Reductionism== Philosophical atomism is a reductive argument: not only that everything is composed of atoms and void, but that nothing they compose really exists: the only things that really exist are atoms ricocheting off each other mechanistically in an otherwise empty void. Atomism stands in contrast to a substance theory wherein a prime material continuum remains qualitatively invariant under division (for example, the ratio of the four classical elements would be the same in any portion of a homogeneous material). Indian Buddhists, such as Dharmakirti and others, also developed distinctive theories of atomism, for example, involving momentary (instantaneous) atoms, that flash in and out of existence (Kalapas). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Atomism」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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