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Gravity's Engines
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From Simons Science News (find original story here).
For most of recorded history, no one accepted the existence atoms, even though Democritus, Lucretius and other ancient philosophers described them. Aristotle claimed matter was infinitely divisible and his view dominated for 2,000 years.
Imagine you lived 1,000 years ago. What evidence could you provide to attest to the existence of atoms? How could you combine simple observations and mathematical thinking to resolve the question, without any modern equipment?
Notes:
I want to thank the Hicksville Gregory Museum and the RISD Nature Lab for access to some of the specimens shown.
Richard Feynman’s exact statement:
If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis that all things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.
From “The Feynman Lectures on Physics,” 1964.
Related:
More videos from the Mathematical Impressions series.
Reprinted with permission from Simons Science News, an editorially-independent division of SimonsFoundation.org whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the computational, physical and life sciences.
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4 Comments
Add CommentThe most important question is why? did we disavow the concept of atoms?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't think it was anything to do with science; I think it is a human flaw. We always fall to change; good or bad, it is change that rules us humans.
If there is any explanation as to why we stumble in the quest to understand, it is that change must rule.
"Imagine you lived 1,000 years ago. What evidence could you provide to attest to the existence of atoms? How could you combine simple observations and mathematical thinking to resolve the question, without any modern equipment?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt always seems simple looking back into history. How is it possible that the ancient geniuses did not derive an atomic theory? Why did it take so long? How was it that Newton or Huygens or da Vinci missed it? Well actually Nicolas Steno did notice the repeating crystal angles and their uniqueness to different minerals in 1669 but the concept of unique "little particles that move around in perpetual motion" was not well accepted or even conceived of. Also between Democritus and Antoine Lavoisier and John Dalton knowledge was discovered, lost and rediscovered. Before anyone condemns Christianity for the Dark Ages please remember the monks who were instrumental in rediscovering and preserving that knowledge. Then a tradition of observation, experimentation and interpretation had to be developed. Our knowledge today is precisely because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Feynman is right. It would be hard to “attest to the existence of atoms” by observations of naturally occurring crystals alone without that sentence or at least without the instruments, knowledge, and experimental techniques used by Lavoisier and Dalton.
Very informative article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe: "...[C]rystals actually have...the power to enlighten us about the existence of atoms too small to see.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCompare that partial transcript from the video with a December 1, 2009 web page that contains the following claim:
"Scientists have imaged single atoms before..."
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-shape-of-atoms
Yet, the phrases, "could elucidate," "still largely unknown," "suspect that" and "could become" (in the final paragraph containing less than 40 words) doesn't seem to me to be particularly convincing.