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The difference is that the Romans had no way of telling if their theory was right, it was based on guesses. Plato considered whether matter was continuous or di

The difference is that the Romans had no way of telling if their theory was right, it was based on guesses. Plato considered whether matter was continuous or discontinuous 400 years earlier and he settled on discontinuous, and the properties of the "atoms" as he called them were what gave macroscopic matter its properties. But the Greeks had no way of detecting atoms. But when the microscope was discovered in the 17th century people looked at microorganisms and found that the grosser the sample the more microorganisms you could find. That was material to work with, and the germ theory followed in due course.

thaumasiotes 6y ago
> The difference is that the Romans had no way of telling if their theory was right, it was based on guesses. That's true, but it doesn't stop people from doing things that are "correct" based on the theory. > But the Greeks had no way of detecting atoms. There's an experiment in which you pour oil over water with a movable constraint on one side. As you enlarge the area available to the oil, it will eventually become unable to cover the water, suggesting that it is not infinitely divisible. This is well within the means of the Ancient Greeks. Oil molecules are gargantuan monstrosities, not atoms, but I think it's similar enough to count.
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  You can explain away the oil monolayer experiment with surface tension. Anyway, this experiment works best if the oil is dissolved in a large quantity of petrol and it's fairly certain that the Greeks did not know distillation. More compelling would be Brownian motion. Glass was known in the Hellenistic era, and the Romans were expert stonecutters. The principles of optics were known to the Ancient Greeks, and some guy could have made lenses and assembled them into a microscope. Unfortunately that path was not taken until the 1600s, but the technology was all there.

thaumasiotes 6y ago

> The difference is that the Romans had no way of telling if their theory was right, it was based on guesses. That's true, but it doesn't stop people from doing things that are "correct" based on the theory. > But the Greeks had no way of detecting atoms. There's an experiment in which you pour oil over water with a movable constraint on one side. As you enlarge the area available to the oil, it will eventually become unable to cover the water, suggesting that it is not infinitely divisible. This is well within the means of the Ancient Greeks. Oil molecules are gargantuan monstrosities, not atoms, but I think it's similar enough to count.

HarryHirsch 6y ago
You can explain away the oil monolayer experiment with surface tension. Anyway, this experiment works best if the oil is dissolved in a large quantity of petrol and it's fairly certain that the Greeks did not know distillation. More compelling would be Brownian motion. Glass was known in the Hellenistic era, and the Romans were expert stonecutters. The principles of optics were known to the Ancient Greeks, and some guy could have made lenses and assembled them into a microscope. Unfortunately that path was not taken until the 1600s, but the technology was all there.