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Democritus: Ideas
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Democritus’ atomism was adopted and modified by Epicurus at the end of the fourth century bc. Although Epicurus’ works are ... extant only in fragments, the Latin Epicurean poet Titus Lucretius Carus put the ideas into literary form in his De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things), which has survived.
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One solution was the hypothesis of Democritus of Abdera: matter is made up from atoms. There was no real evidence for this idea (which was not completely new), but it explained why change was possible. The atoms were always moving and clustering in various, temporary combinations. Therefore, things seemed to change, but 'not being' never changed into 'being'. (It was assumed that 'not being' was a vacuum, which means that it is in fact not a 'not being' because a vacuum exists in four dimensions.) The consequence of this idea is that we are allowed to use our senses, although Democritus warns us to be careful.
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De Rerum Natura was rediscovered in 1417 (and printed in 1473, reprinted in 1486) and became the prime source (still true today) for the ideas of Leucippus and Democritus. You may ask how William of Conches knew of Democritus. Scattered about the libraries of churches in Europe were a few copies of De Rerum Natura. Stones, in his article, cites three known to have existed in William's lifetime. Other copies certainly ... existed at that time.
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