The idea of Democritus’s system is extremely simple: the entire universe is made up of a boundless space in which innumerable atoms run. Space is without limits; has neither an above nor a below; is without a center or a boundary. Atoms have no qualities at all, apart from their shape. They have no weight, no color, no taste. “Sweetness is opinion, bitterness is opinion; heat, cold and color are opinion: in reality only atoms, and vacuum.”5 Atoms are indivisible; they are the elementary grains of reality, which cannot be further subdivided, and everything is made of them. They move freely in
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