We may learn this
by study of his verses.
This philosopher then, as we say, has spoken of the principles
in this way, and made them of this number. Leucippus and his associate
Democritus say that the full and the empty are the elements, calling
the one being and the other non-being-the full and solid being
being, the empty non-being (whence they say being no more is than
non-being, because the solid no more is than the empty); and they make
these the material causes of things. And as those who make the
underlying substance one generate all other things by its
modifications, supposing the rare and the dense to be the sources of
the modifications, in the same way these philosophers say the
differences in the elements are the causes of all other qualities.
These differences, they say, are three-shape and order and position.
For they say the real is differentiated only by 'rhythm and
'inter-contact' and 'turning'; and of these rhythm is shape,
inter-contact is order, and turning is position; for A differs from
N in shape, AN from NA in order, M from W in position. The question of
movement-whence or how it is to belong to things-these thinkers,
like the others, lazily neglected.
Regarding the two causes, then, as we say, the inquiry seems to
have been pushed thus far by the early philosophers.
5
Contemporaneously with these philosophers and before them, the
so-called Pythagoreans, who were the first to take up mathematics, not
only advanced this study, but also having been brought up in it they
thought its principles were the principles of all things.
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