SOURCE: “Ode to a Grecian Atomist,” in The Humanist, Vol. 59, No. 1, January-February, 1999, pp. 34-35.

In the following essay, Hall answers moral arguments against modern science that parallel objections made against atomism in the time of Democritus.

The ancient Greek atomism of Democritis and Leucippus was an attempt to reconcile observations of the physical world with the existing philosophical wisdom concerning change in the world. Although the methods of reasoning they used were not those of the modern scientific method, it is remarkable how close many of the properties of their atoms come to matching those of the atoms of modern science. At the very least, it seems from a modern viewpoint that atomism should have prevailed, if only as a good working hypothesis. Why was it so thoroughly rejected?

One of the most telling arguments used against the claims of the ancient Greek atomists is almost identical to...