ATOMISTIC NOTIONS IN YOUNG CHILDREN AND YOUNG CULTURES R. A. HORNE1 Radio Corporation of America, Needham Heights, Massachusetts
ZOOLOGIST^," Henri Poincar6 wrote in Science and M e t h ~ d ,"declare ~ that the embryonic development of an animal repeats in a very short period of time the whole history of its ancestors of the geological ages. It seems to be the same with the development of minds. The educator must make the child pass through all that his fathers have passed through, more rapidly, but without missing a stage. On this account the history of science must he our first guide." The world abounds with analogies and the fruitfulness with which they often can he pursued strongly tempts one t o do so. Plato and Aristotle were fond of elaborating upon the parallels between the personalities of states and of individuals, of finding the cosmos mirrored on a more convenient scale in the microcosmos of man's psyche. This is the tradition, then, in which I wish t o make a few remarks comparing the development of cosmological, particularly atomistic, notions in children with the ideas expressed by the ancient Greek philosophers who flourished when, so to speak, Western Civilization was in its childhood. The young child endures an unsophisticated state of mind very similar to that of primitive man. In the child's world, as in that of the primitive, vital forces are attributed to inanimate objects (animism) and human motivations t o natural events (anthropomorphism). While the child in a savage environment, exposed as he is to all the harsh vicissitudes of brute nature, has the leisure only to embroider feebly on his animistic-anthropomorphicview of the world, the child protected by a high degree of civilization, whose exposure t o the world is long delayed, is suffered to examine and experiment with his first philosophy. Bit by hit, especially with the recognition that his parents are not omnipotent, he discards his earlier conceptions, and as these animistic and anthropomorphic ideas dissolve, mechanical explanations of the external world slowly begin to form. Analogous processes occurred in ancient Ionia. From as early as Homeric times comes evidence of dissatisfaction with the prevailing mythological tradition. The Homeric gods share the worst of human qualities and are themselves answerable t o Fate or Necessity. But it was not until Thales of Miletus (ca. 600 B.c.) that the anthropomorphism, but not all the animism, was forsaken and natural causes sought for natural events. Apparently Miletus afforded that ' Present address:
Radio Corporation of America Material8 Advanced Development Laboratory, 64 A Street, Needham Heights 94, M a s . H. "Science and Method." tr. by F. Maitland, VOINC~RB. Dover publishing, Inc., New York, 1952,'~.127.-
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degree of security and material comfort necessary for the flourishing of speculative philosophy urhile exposure to foreign peoples and ideas (remember that Miletus was a great seaport and cosmopolitan center) provided the stimulus. Yet in Egypt, by way of contrast, isolated, stagnant, theocratic, century after century failed to provide the opportunity for the birth of natural philosophy. Of course popular religious sentiment was far from dead in Greece. Our notions of Greek achievement should be assessed, as they rarely are, against the background, not of Greek genius, but rather of t,he normal modes of existence. Greek religious life was richly varied. The Greek mind was not by nature iconoclastic; quite the contrary, it was receptive to the verge of fault, eager to enthuse about the Orphic, Bacchic, or Pythagorean mysteries or about the latest cult imported from Egypt. This receptiveness resulted in a most peculiar libhality of religious spirit-a tolerance wit,hout parallel in the ancient world. And it is t o this broad-mindedness that the credit for the nurture of Greek philosophy is in large part due. It suffered the substitution of natural for teleological causes and even countenanced severe criticism of the popular beliefs. Xenophanes of Colophon (ca. 530 BE.) and other intellectuals of the day were aware that religions belief is often a matter of geography and were scandalized by the misconduct of the traditioual Homeric deities. As the child turns from his animism and anthropomorphism, the Greek thinkers turned from that prevailing in their culture; as the child becomes disillusioned with the powers of his parent, they rejected the Olympian gods of their fathers; as the child casts about for more natural explanations of the world about him, so did the philosophers of aurient Iouia. Physics replaced the psychic, natural law replaced the caprice of divinities. In the thinking of the child, according to J. Piaget,a there occurs a "progressive evolution of artificialist4 causality into higher forms of causality.. . . These higher forms, which the child attains spontaneously, are. . . causality by identification of substance, t,he form modeled on the notions of condensation and rarefaction, and a certain primitive atomism or synthesis of the elements. . . ." Piaget reports a number of fascinating interviews with children; three, all nine years old, a PIAGET, J., "The Child's Conceptionof the World,"Harcourt, Brace & Co., New York, 1929, esp. pp. 134-3i, 267-79, 32347, 378-79, 384-87. 4 Artificialism is a form of anthropomorphism which involves the view that the objects of nature are man-made or created by processes analogous to human manufacture
JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION
insisted that stars are composed of "little bits of lightning," "little sparks which have collected together," or "little stones." While stones in turn, asserts an eleven year old, are made of "dirt. . .pressed together until it becomes heavy." Wood is made of shavings, iron of "thin iron wire," and glass of "broken bits of glass stuck together." One cannot but wonder whether children's play, in sand boxes and with blocks, might not he conducive t o the corpuscular mode of thinking. SEED HYPOTHESIS OF ANAXAGORAS
The atomism of children, it is interesting t o notice, resembles the famous "seed" hypothesis of Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (ca. 460 B.c.) much more closely than it does the true atomism of Leucippus (ca. 430 B.c.) and Democritus (ca. 420 B.c.) of Abdera.".' The subdivision of matter in Anaxagoras' view leads to a point beyond which new subdivision fails t o reveal new species. Subdivisionmay he continued indefinitely but beyond this point the parts will be homogeneous. The properties of bulk matter are determined by the type of homogeneous part, or "seed," predominating. Thus gold is composed of tiny seeds of gold; flesh, seeds of flesh; bone, of bone. In the more sophisticated view of Leucippus and Democritns the analysis of matter cannot be continued indefinitely; rather one is finally left with atoms which are literally uncuttables. Here now the properties of bulk matter are the consequence in part of certain primary qualities such as shape, size, and possibly weight, inhering in the atoms themselves, but for the most part of secondary qualities, such as color, taste, smell, which result from aggregates of atoms or from the interaction of atoms and their aggregates with the sensory organs. Anaxagoras had to explain chemical change awkwardly by saying that, for example, when bread is digested the flesh and bone seeds present in the original bread become dominant while the bread seeds become recessive. The atomists, on the other hand, explained chemical change nicely in terms of the formation and dissolution of atomic aggregates. .Not only do the conclusious of Anaxagorean physics and chemistry resemble those of children more closely than do those of the Greek Atomists, but so also do the methods by which those conclusions were reached. The corpuscular notions of the child, like the seeds of Anaxagoras, are an immediate response to the need of explaining manifest natural phenomena. 6 For expositions of the philosophies of the pre-Soerstic philosoT., "Greek phers see any of such standard texts as: GOMPERZ, Thinkers," Humanities Press, New York, 1955; BURNET,J., "Greek Philosophy," Mrtcmillen & Co., Ltd., London, 1950; or "Early Greek Philosophy," Adam & Charles Black, London, E., "Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy," 1948; ZELLER, Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., London, 1955; or such excellent specialized presentations as BAILEY,C., "The Greek Atomist and Epieurus," Oxford University Press, New York, 1928; S., "The Physical World of the Greeks," Routledge SAMBURSKY, & Kegan Paul, Ltd., London, 1956. For the extant fragments of K., "Aneilla to the Pre-Socratio their writings see FREEMAN, Philosophers,'' Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1948. Thesame wsrralso truein India. Theolder Samkhyaphilosophy resembled the "atomism" of Anaxagoras or Empedacles' theory of elements while the later Vaisesika and Jsinas philosophies embraced a true atomism (see RAY,A. P. C., "History of Chemistry in Ancient and Medieval India," Indian Chem. Soc., Calcutta, 1956, pp. 4 3 4 8 . ' H B ~ E LW. , A,, "Antecedents of Greek Corpuscular Theories," Haruard Studies in Classical Philology, 22, 111 (1911). @
VOLUME 35, NO. 10, NOVEMBER, 1958
Heidel7and others have suggested that Greek Atomism too owed its origins to the effort of explaining natural and physiological phenomena such as evaporation and condensation, respiration and nutriment assimilation. Certainly one would like t o be able to affirm that Greek Atomism, the father of modern science, was firmly based on a sound empiricism. But the evidence in the case seems otherwise. While the Atomists were obviously delighted that their philosophy provided a facile explanation for such an enormous breadth of natural phenomena, the real roots of their ideas are t o be found not in physics but in met,aphysics. The central purpose of their endeavor was to solve the antinomy between the philosophy of Heracleitus of Ephesus (ca. 500 B.c.), who maintained that all is in flux, and that of Parmenides of Elea (ca. 475 B.c.) and his disciples, who held that change is illusory. SIGNIFICANCE TO SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION
In this brief essay I have barely sketched out the general contours of the problems involved and little more than suggested the host of fascinating related studies, but I think a few remarks may be properly made on the basis of what I have written. In the first place a great deal more research needs be done into the origin and growth of scientific ideas in children. Few writers men. tion Piaget's work without feeling called upon to apologize for his methods, especially his sampling and interviewing techniques. Yet his work is of inestimable importance; it is, if you will pardon an illiteracism, nearly unique, and surely deserves corroboration and extensive expansion. Is there a counterpart of Pythagorean spatial atomism in childish thought? Do children have the same difficulty explaining chemical transformations as Anaxagoras, and call they distinguish primary and secondary qualities? Who knows what light the answers to these queries might throw upon certain obscure aspects of the history of science. In the second place and by way of conclusion, the foregoing comparisons suggest three observations relative to the topical problem of scientific education. (1) As Plato suggested of mathematirs in his Meno, scientific education may well he more a matter of evoking ideas rather than instilling them. A child's native curiosity and ingenuity should carry him a long way if only properly directed by pedagogic discipline. (2) Young children are amazingly receptive to scientific notions, and as consequence comparatively obtuse adults are likely to be led very much astray in their judgments of which types of material are too 'difficult" for a given age. Perhaps the more difficult subjectsmathematics, science, and the disciplinary languages--should be advanced to the grade school or secondary school level when receptivity is at its maximum and before the distractions of late adolescence intrude, while the more luxurious studies-philosophy, art, music, literature, and history-should be deferred until college age. (3) Undoubtedly the development of scientific knowledge in children and in cultures follows a similar natural path, suggesting a special efficacy of the historical presentation of the natural sciences. The actual historical development usually provides a more rational and systematic exposition of the sciences than does any artificial topical approach, for mankind tended to stumble upon simpler things first.
