The Greek Cosmologists: Volume 1, The Formation of the Atomic Theory and its Earliest Critics

Furley’s study presents a clear picture of the opposing views of the natural world and its contents as seen by philosophers and scientists in classical antiquity. On one side were the materialists whose world was mechanistic, evolutionary, and unbounded, lacking the focus of a natural center. The other side included teleologists, whose world was purposive, non-evolutionary, finite, and centrifocal. This volume takes the reader up to the criticisms of Plato and Aristotle. The second volume will examine Plato and Aristotle’s own cosmology and follow the debate to the sixth century. Professor Furley has produced a history of the early views of the physical world whose scope makes this book of major importance.