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Brownian Motion April 24, 2008

Posted by voidobsequy in Epicurus, Lucretius, Philosophy.
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This was something I wanted to draw attention to in class, just cause I thought it was neat. One of Lucretius’s arguments for the existence of atoms (II.125-142) seems to be the same as the argument in Einstein’s first published paper, which (as far as I know) used Brownian motion as evidence for the existence of atoms. That’s kick-ass. Of course, Einstein included detailed mathematical calculations and also included empirical verification of some of Boltzmann’s statistical mechanical predictions.

I think he also has the Stosszahlansatz at II.85.

-Nat

Comments

1. Monte - April 25, 2008

See my comments in the Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, p. 145-6. Jean Perrin, who did the experimental work to confirm Einstein’s 1905 hypothesis, pays homage to the ancient atomists in his Nobel acceptance speech of 1926.

2. montejohnson - April 25, 2008

Also, Einstein wrote a preface to H. Diels’ German translation of Lucretius: Lukrez, Von der Natur (Berlin, 1924).


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