“Now since such [an infinitely divisible] body is everywhere divisible, let it be divided. What, then, will be left? A magnitude? But that cannot be. For there will be something that has not been divided, whereas we supposed that it was everywhere divisible. But if there is no body or magnitude left and yet the division will take place, either <the original body> will consist of points and its components will be without magnitude, or it will be nothing at all so that even if it were to come to be out of nothing and be composed of nothing, the whole thing would then be nothing but appearance.”
On Generation and Corruption, Aristotle [1]
Was the atom morose? One can imagine its birth at the Big Bang, its naïve propulsion into the something that was, just a few moments ago, nothing at all; its existential dread (“What am I?”) amidst the infantile universe’s crying; its pause as upon the complete rejection singularity had shown it. But – was it morose? If nothing existed a millisecond or nanosecond ago, how could it be sad? Sadness, it – everything – did not exist. But now they did.
There is said to be another atom. His name is Adam. But God was kind enough to create existence before He molded him from the clay. And He gave Adam companions and a lover. He may have thrown it all away, but at least his Creation was lovely and gratifying. I, like the atom, dislike Adam, though I am descended (supposedly) from his itchy loins.
Meanwhile, the atom is flummoxed by its spontaneous creation by, well, nothing.
It is well known that Democritus proposed the idea of the atom. In fact, the word ‘atom’ comes from the Greek átomos. Leucippus and Democritus used átomos because it means ‘indivisible.’ They thought that the atom was the point where matter no longer could be divided because if division can go on infinitely then nothing would exist. The world would be the mirage of fumes intangible and therefore nonexistent. Just like Leucippus, in the words of Epicurus, did not exist.
The atom rejoiced when Democritus and the mythical Leucippus discovered it and named it aptly. It had waited for around 13 billion or so years for recognition of its fundamental place in the cosmos. (Could you wait for 13 billion years even if you were granted the time?) It had watched and watched, and even when life came it took a few more billion years for them to question. And even when they began to question it took many more years for deeper thought. The atom wafted and obeyed those laws which came from nothing and are nothing (show me the laws of nature and I will show you the definition of nonexistence). When poets ruled from Greece to Sumer, Egypt to China, the atom sank in despair amidst the fallacies of their imaginations. Homer was one of the worst, it felt. Who or what were these Muses he spoke of, and why did this Hesiod man take to them so fondly? It knew for sure that they did not exist. It would have seen them during its 13 billion year vigil. (Speaking of its vigil, Virgil also praised these Muses to its annoyance.) The atom is, after all, the indivisible, indomitable. It began to think of itself as a god, for as far as it knew it was the oldest thing in the universe. It was there at the moment of Creation – instantly existent.
What or who was this Pángǔ that this Xú Zhěng sang of in China? When did he burst from the cosmic egg born of chaos? When did he create the world in his death? Who was this Nüwā that Qū Yuán wrote about with such surety? He sang and wrote that she had made the people from yellow clay and repaired the damaged heavens by melting down five colored stones. They were wrong. And could not these people despite their size (the atom is small yet can see all) see that the cosmos spread beyond their heaven?
Around the same time Thales claimed to the atom’s dismay that there was fundamental stuff, but he claimed it was water! It knew that water was made of several of atoms. For the atom this was an obvious fact. Next appeared Anaximander, who dared posit that the fundamental stuff was indefinite. He reasoned that the stuff must be boundless so that all the various outcomes of existence could be made of it. This only angered the atom because it was not indefinite; it was the definite of all definites, otherwise how could it possibly be the foundation for all Creation? Anaximenes tried to live up to the others and made a claim himself: misty air. I need not even tell you the atom’s reaction.
Needless to say, the atom disliked the opinions of the rest of the Greeks, especially Parmenides.
It waited even longer still as Democritus was overshadowed by Aristotle and the advent of Christianity, which spread like a wildfire through the Roman Empire and clasped hold not just of Europe but of its thinkers, raising Plato and Aristotle to prominence over Democritus. The atom waited and waited as the Dark Ages did nothing for it. It could only watch events unfold.
It watched as Rome fell, as eventually the Byzantine fell; the Vikings came and went; the Han Dynasties dissolved into Three Kingdoms, then the Jin, the Sui, the Tang, the Liao, the Yuan, and the Ming; the Persians, the Ottomans – Caliphate after Caliphate; the Aztec, the Maya, the Inca; India’s different stages of empire. It saw it all unfold. It saw it all and more.
Finally it was rediscovered by Rene Descartes and others (or close enough to it). No one could really understand it, it learned. Myths began to circulate about its existence and thinkers would one moment acknowledge its presence, then the next disparage its image. Francis Bacon had the gall to whittle it away piece by piece until it was no longer an atom but some principle, grotesque and arcane. Even Thomas Hobbes turned his back on it later in his life. And though Descartes and Galileo, among others, did not know the atom like it really was they were as close to it as possible. The atom had itself a chuckle when they went on about corpuscles and how they were divisible. If only they knew that it was indivisible they would be spot on, it thought. It was frustrating to have some of these people get so very close to seeing it, to realizing the truth that it had sadly wafted in the cosmos for billions of years hoping for the catharsis of acknowledgement – that it had remained since Creation the indivisible foundation for existence – the atom is existence!
It waited longer still…
And then came a man of such noble intellect that the atom nearly wept, so deeply did it love this man. John Dalton came to the world with grace unsayable. He learned his knowledge in an odd way and did not receive what we might call a formal education. But this beautiful man came with open eyes – though they were color blind – and allowed the atom to finally show itself to the tiny blue dot it had for so long hoped it might. It took Dalton time, but soon enough the atom was told to the world. And Dalton got it right! He even made it his third point that the atom is the smallest particle and is indestructible. The atom could not have been happier.
The atom enjoyed its place in the science of humankind for a time.
It heard of people with ideas that the atom was not indivisible, that soon they would find parts that made it up. The atom was fine with the division of it into electrons, neutrons, and protons. This was no revelation for it. In fact, it had noticed with annoyance how its electron(s) would occasionally be in multiple places at the same time. The people remarked that this made no sense, but the atom had witnessed it enough to not care. The protons and neutrons it considered to be the body and mind of itself, much like the people thought of themselves as being both a body and a soul – two distinct parts, yet ultimately one and the same person. It saw no problems except for the constancy of certain scientists proposing to shatter it. The atom did not like the idea of being dissected like that dumb creature called a frog (the humans had begun to teach biology in schools, noticed the atom).
The atom turned a blind eye to the various times it was split. All the better, it thought, for this way it was able to demonstrate its awesome, cataclysmic power to the blue dot. It was little effort on the atom’s part to go nuclear, yet these demonstrations’ calamity humbled the humans. Just as Dalton did not need color to behold truth, the atom did not need to heed all of the humans’ experiments upon it. It was, and always had been, the indivisible Truth.
Soon it heard of machines that scientists had used to shatter it, but the atom would not believe it. It would be sacrilegious to destroy the atom! It continued to ignore and ignore, until one day a so-called supercollider was used to shatter the atom so hard that it took immediate offense. It was about to leave the blue dot after such mistreatment, but then the people said they had found a new particle. It was named a Higgs Boson. Some called it the God Particle. The atom cried out that there is no God and that Creation just happened out of nothing, that it was the first thing out of nothing; it was their God.
But the atom was so shattered by this collider that it could not come back together. It wept as it gave in to the idea that it was, in fact, divisible. But it knew that this meant it did not exist. It was infinitely divisible, and like Leucippus and Democritus had warned, this meant the atom did no longer exist.
I then realized what I had done. You saw what happened. I destroyed the eternal atom before your very eyes! But the atom I destroyed never even existed. It would seem that this story is a monumental waste of time, a tale about nothing, and must be cursed, condemned as such! Raise your fist in the air and strike up the flames of anger. Not only is it a waste, it spoke of history and great thinkers, of humanity, in such an arrogant way. And you fell in love with the atom and its caprices. (How loveable will the Higgs Boson be in its stead?) The story must be destroyed in order to preserve the true history without hubris, in order to resurrect the atom. But then I – and therefore you, dear reader – knew that the atom was not real from the beginning. It was a word upon a page upon a table upon the earth upon the laws of nature – which are not corporeal things. If the atom never existed and therefore the story never existed then how are you so angry?
[1] Curd, Patricia. A Presocratics Reader: Selected Fragments and Testimonia. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2011. 115. Print.
The Atom | Copyright 2016
AARON RECORDS 