Atomism

Time is substantival, infinite, one-dimensional, continuous, linear, and uni-directional, the medium in which atoms eternally move through the void. Freedom is rated as Both because classical Democritean atomism is austere and deterministic while Epicurus introduced the swerve to preserve a real but minimal indeterminism that grounds human initiative. The grain of time is continuous in the standard reading even though the atoms themselves are discrete. The infinite past and future of the cosmos follow from the eternity and inexhaustibility of the atomic supply.

Space is substantival, infinite, three-dimensional, and locally Euclidean — the void in which atoms move. Curvature is flat as a matter of principle, and locality holds because atoms act on one another by contact during collisions. The infinity of the void is essential to the doctrine: only an unbounded space provides room for the countless worlds Epicurus and Lucretius envisage, each formed by the collisions of atoms and eventually dissolving back into them.

Matter is substantival, infinite in aggregate, three-dimensional, conserved, and local. The atoms themselves are eternal, indivisible, and unchanging in their intrinsic properties; what changes is only their arrangement and motion. Macroscopic bodies are temporary composites whose qualities depend on the kinds, configurations, and motions of their atomic constituents. Lucretius's long arguments for the conservation of matter — 'nothing comes from nothing, nothing returns to nothing' — anticipate the chemical conservation principles of the modern era.

The atomist observer is an embodied composite of atoms, situated at a single point in space and time, whose perceptions are produced by streams of atomic effluences impinging on bodily organs. Knowledge is mediated through these physical encounters and is partial because atoms move, configurations change, and memory itself is just one more material pattern liable to decay. Agency is active in the Epicurean sense: although bodies and souls are atomic, Epicurus introduced the famous swerve (clinamen) precisely to leave room for genuine initiative within an otherwise mechanical universe. Observers are plural because countless atomic composites exist in the infinite void, each living its short composite life and dispersing again into atoms.

Energy is substantival and the universe as a whole is infinite — the void is boundless and the atoms moving in it carry an inexhaustible total of motion. Conservation is built into the atomist picture from the start: atoms are eternal, indivisible, and uncreated, so the sum of motion they collectively bear cannot be increased or destroyed, only redistributed by collision. Lucretius makes the irreversibility of dispersal vivid: compound bodies form, persist for a time, and dissolve as their atoms swerve apart, and this asymmetric dissolution gives time its felt direction. The Epicurean swerve introduces a minimum of genuine indeterminacy into this otherwise mechanical economy, just enough to preserve human agency without overturning the underlying conservation of motion.

Information for the atomist is borne by the discrete configurations of atoms in the void: their kinds, shapes, sizes, and arrangements. It is substantival because atoms and their patterns are real features of the world, conserved because atoms are eternal and indestructible and the totality is preserved through every rearrangement, and discrete because the very point of the doctrine is to insist on ultimate indivisible units. The framework distinguishes scales: cosmic information is conserved in the eternity and indestructibility of the atoms themselves, while personal-identity information is non-conserved because the composite that constitutes a particular person dissolves at death and the same atoms are recombined in other configurations.