3 ms·
Eh. 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 pur
by gwern 3y ago
Eh. 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.