Atoms

By this it appears that the physical forces inhering in the atoms of matter are possessors of position, on account of the possibility of sensible pointing to them, their locus being matter, which is a possessor of position — and this especially on the modern theory, which makes matter a form among the forms of the force latent in the atoms, more stable;

We mentioned in the foregoing investigations that the modern theory says that force is not separate from matter, but is latent in the atoms of matter and follows, in its activity and its weakness, upon the dissolution of matter and the diffusion of its atoms;

Modern philosophy, like the ancient, reckons matter to be compounded of indivisible particles (*al-jawāhir al-fardah*) at the utmost limit of smallness, called “atoms.

Those bodies which he calls atoms — that is, particles indivisible by reason of their solidity — he holds to be carried through the infinite void, in which there is nothing highest nor lowest, nothing middle, last, or outermost, in such a way that by their collisions they cling together, and from this are produced all the things that exist and are perceived;

the atoms, the void, the images which they call eidola, by whose impact we not only see but also think;

and second, that same turbulent collision of atoms (in which Democritus too is stuck) will not be able to produce this ordered beauty of the world.

In this immensity, then, of breadths, lengths, and heights there flits an infinite force of countless atoms, which, despite the void between them, yet cohere among themselves and, catching hold one of another, are continued;

For those scandalous notions of Democritus, or even before him of Leucippus, that there are certain particles, some smooth, some rough, some round, some angular and hooked, some curved and as it were bent inward, and that of these were made the sky and the earth, with no nature compelling but by a kind of chance concourse — this opinion, Gaius Velleius, you have prolonged down to our own age, and …

I will grant, then, that all things consist of indivisible particles;

Procreant atoms, matter, seeds of things,

Thus primal bodies are solid, without a void.

So primal germs have solid singleness