Metaphysics & Epistemology

Different ones of us took different views of how to explain this underlying reality. Leucippus, along with Democritus, was the leader of the group of philosophers who became known as "the atomists." They saw the world as composed of material bodies themselves composed of groups of "atoms," meaning something indivisible, something that cannot be divided into a smaller component. Leucippus explained how the indivisible atoms could come together to form the world we see around us--the atoms move in the void, collide, and interlock to form larger aggregates which we can then see with our senses (Luce 74).

The theory developed by Leucippus and Democritus was not itself formed from nothing but built on what had gone before, notably the works of Empedocles and Anaxagoras. Where these earlier philosophers

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e challenged by asking of the criterion itself is evident. Look around and see that there are disputes about everything that cannot be observed. This shows that it is not obvious what criteria should be adopted to settle these disputes. The dogmatist has to beg the question by using a questionable criterion to establish the standard of what is true or must find a criterion for judging his criterion, and so on. Our metaphysics is a metaphysics based on what we can observe--reality is what we see it to be. We do not deny that reality can be perceived at all, for to assume that would be to make an assumption that what we observe is not real. All we can really know is that what we observe is real. I suppose this does not mean that it is, but for all practical purposes we accept it as being real and base our actions accordingly. To doubt its reality is to leave us with no reality at all, for if we cannot observe it, we have no criteria at all for judging it. The only criterion we have now is that we can observe it. The hidden things of the world must remain hidden, for we can never have knowledge of them because we have no standards by which to judge our knowledge of them or their reality. We could only evaluate them throug
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Approximate Word count = 3827
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)

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