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ATOM IN MODERN SCIENCE 13 Parmenides, changed for the first time from monism to a kind of pluralism He assumed four basic elements, Earth, Water, Air and Fire Each of these were everlasting but they could be mixed together in different proportions and separated to form the varieties of things and thus produce the changing ,complex substances that we find in the world Here
for the first time the idea is expressed that the mixture and separation of a few substances, which
are fundamentally different, explains the infinite - vanety of things and events
According to these views, the soil, for example, was a combination of earth substance and water substIance closely mixed atom by atom A plant growing
from the soil combined earth and water atoms with the fire atoms coming from the rays of the sun to form composite molecules of wood substance The buming of dry wood from which the water element was gone, was viewed as decomposition or breaking up of wood molecule into the original fire atoms, which escape in the same and the carth atoms which remain as the ashes
Anaxagoras (462-422 BC) a contemporary of Empedocles look the next sich towards the concept of alom He assumed an infinile variety of infinitely small sccds (not the four clements or Empedocles but innumerably many different seeds) which were mired togeiher and separatcd again to create multiplicity of ilungs the seeds may change in number and in relative position All seeds were in everything only the proportions mighi change from onc thung to another
TIL ATOMISTS The faunders of tomim sure the LEUCIPPUS
