Plato and Aristotle were familiar with Democritus’s ideas and fought against them. They did so on behalf of other ideas, some of which were later, for centuries, to create obstacles to the growth of knowledge. Both insisted on rejecting Democritus’s naturalistic explanations in favor of trying to understand the world in finalistic terms—believing, that is, that everything that happens has a purpose, a way of thinking that would reveal itself to be very misleading for understanding the ways of nature—or in terms of good and evil, confusing human issues with matters that do not relate to us.
