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Epicureans were atomists (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism#Physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism#Physics), so if you explained it to him,
by gwern 3y ago
Epicureans were atomists (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism#Physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism#Physics), so if you explained it to him, he might not be nearly as shocked as most people of the era would be. Epicureans also tended to invoke extremely insubstantial 'images' composed of especially tiny gossamer arrangements of atoms as explanations for things like dreams, and you can see how well that would work as an analogy with using X-rays to look at subtle changes in the arrangement of atoms in charred scrolls. (These are covered in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_rerum_natura https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_rerum_natura - if you have some time, I highly recommend reading Stalling's rhyming translation. You'll be shocked and admire the rationality & scientificness of Epicurean materialist atomist explanations of the world, even where they get it totally wrong.)
- jacquesm 3y agoIt's a testimony to the power of mind equivalent to Einstein's 'Gedankenexperimenten'. The only reason they got some of it totally wrong is because they lacked the scientific apparatus to test their hypothesis, but they were on the right track.
- gwern 3y agoEh. The Epicurean arguments are heavily empirical; Lucretius throws in a lot of examples or familiar observations. I'm not sure how many I would describe as purely 'thought experiments'.
- jacquesm 3y agoIn the case of atoms I think it's pretty clear that they lacked direct proof, they only had indirect ways of experimentation and I think to be able to reason about the 'indivisible' at a time when nothing that you could physically look at (this was well before microscopes) was indivisible is more of a mental than an empirical thing.