As we have seen, Democritus had proposed that matter consisted of atoms two thousand years before Newton. His ideas had been elaborated on and introduced into western Europe by Pierre Gassendi, a Provençal priest. Newton had built on this but despite all the innovations he had made, his view of the universe and the atoms within it did not include the concept of change or evolution. As much as he had improved our understanding of the solar system, the idea that it might have a history was beyond him.
