Democritus had connections with Miletus but came from a fascinating colony of Clazomenae—Abdera, in the far northern Aegean on the Thracian coast, where we earlier encountered the patient who had undergone skull surgery. Democritus’s ideas were of incalculable importance to ancient science and to the philosophical school of Epicureanism. Unlike Anaxagoras, he dispensed with the idea that the universe had any purpose or governing principle to which its material constituents were subordinated. He was the first known scientist to argue that everything is constituted by tiny indivisible and
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