"At the beginning God created matter in
the form of a hard, massy, impermeable,
moveable particles (...) And that primary
particles are such a hard bodies that they
never wear and never crumble (...)"
- Isaac Newton
| Galileusz Galileo Galilei, (1564-1642) was the scientist who laid the foundation for an experimental research of nature. Among other things he did, he also researched an atom. Thanks to him, ideas of Democritus reappeared. Galileo was of the opinions that matter and light consisted of point particles. He imagined that world consisted of countless atoms separated by quantitatively infinite vacuum. In his work - "Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo" he included (among the other problems) his opinion on study of atom. As some historians of science say, Galileo's vision of atom described the particle as an indivisible formation but without a shape and also without dimensions at all. So from the mathematical point of view it was an abstract. That was at variance with the theorem of Democritus that basic particles had different shapes. Galileo was the first scientist, who used experimental methods in the process of researching the world. Unfortunately experiments couldn't help him enough in forming opinions of world's microstructure. Everything he achieved in study of atom he did thanks to mental experiments and logical exercises. |
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| Pierre Gassendi, (born in 1592), was another great scientist of the 16th century. He maintained that world should be researched mostly by experimenting. Nobody before him postulated that! He took most of his opinions on microstructure from Epicurus. Gassendi assent the subsistence of vacuum with atoms situated in it. Atoms were subordinated to deterministic laws of dynamics (in his theory there were no abberate at random). Atoms could bound and gather together. He also said that there was a force between atoms, thanks to which atoms could combine. He was the first real atom researcher of the contemporary times! |
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Evangelist Torricelli, (1608-1647), was Galileo's prominent disciple. By analysing problems connected with pumping water and by making experiments in which he replaced water with mercury he has proved the existence of vacuum. Notice that it is the first time we say that somebody has PROVEN something! |
| Isaac Newton, the greatest of the 17th century, lived from 1643 to 1727. Among many other achievements in physics, mathematics and astronomy, he was also researching world's microstructure. Like the earliest scientists his opinion was, that matter consisted of atoms. Their existence was to be proven only by intellectual experiments. He maintained that light was also composed of some kind of atoms. Solar rays were to be streams of particles. He perceived interaction between different bodies as interaction between atoms of these bodies. He paid much attention to the problem of action at a distance. For a long time he was considering the existence of ether, which as an ideal, amaterial medium was to penetrate whole space, making the contact between bodies possible. But ether also had to be composed of particles and that made logical contradictions. |
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The 17th century completely changed scientists' opinions on laws ruling
the universe and on microstructure of matter. That was the time of many astronomical discoveries
in astronomy and mathematical achievements . But the development in physics was the fastest.
It used new mathematics. Newton's discoveries created new ideas which,
with no important changes, remained till the beginning of the 20th
century. After one and a half thousand years Democritus's
concept of atom reappeared . The existence of vacuum was proven (Torricelli).
A new study of atom developed. But still it wasn't known whether atom existed or not;
Boyle's experiment was only an indirect proof of it. The achievements
of the 17th century atomists were mostly based on logic.. Scientists didn't have proper
equipment for reassert. It was the time of constructing first experimental instruments like the
first microscope (Leeuwenhoek).
Robert Boyle,Robert Boyle, (1627-1691), was another great scientist of the
17th century. He performed many experiments. He did the research on the effect of air
resistance, its pressure and on changes of its volume, while changing its pressure. He
discovered the law describing dependence between these two quantities (Boyle's law).
You surely remember it from school (it should be somewhere in the beginning of your
notes from lessons about thermodynamics). This law was experimentally discovered by Boyle
but formulated later by Marriotte. The experiments with pressure were quiding later
scientists, who were researching air structure. The experiments proved that air is
composed of separate, moving atoms, which stay, in quite a distance from each other. Thanks
to such structure, air can change its volume considerably. Pressure, which Boyle researched,
is caused by the movement of particles, which collide with other things influencing them
with some force. When air's volume is smaller, there are more collisions in each square
centimetre of surface (what 