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CHAPTER 1
Atom in Modern Science
INTRODUCTORY
The world is composed of a multitude of things - animate and inanimate. But the two orders of existence known in the modern times as physical and psychical, were not clearly distinguished by the early naive and primitive thought in the West. The recognition of the psychical as an order of existence distinct from the physical belongs to a later stage of intellectual development.
The concept of matter has undergone a great number of changes in the history of human thinking. Different interpretations have been given in different philosophical systems. All these different meanings of the word are still present in our time as the word ʼmatter'.
The problem of atom, the smallest indivisible unit of matter, is one of the earliest as well as one of the most persistent in the whole range of philosophy of nature, as well as experimental sciences. When experimental sciences, which deal directly with material substances and their properties, investigate the problem, it can do so only through a study of the infinite variety and mutability of the forms of matter. Its fundamental task is the discovery of descriptive formulae which assist depiction and calculations of various processes and finding some natural laws. The philosophy of nature, on the other hand, does not deal with the particular facts amassed by experiment but with the hypothesis used by experimental science for the co-ordination of those facts. The goal of experimental science is the description of the facts while the goal of philosophy is their interpretation. The difference of aim is, however, not ultimate.
