Quiz: Democritus

When was Democritus born?

• About 460 BC, Abdera, Greece.
• About 4 BC, Cordoba, Spain.
• About 470 BC, in the state of Song or Lu, China.
• 121, Rome, Italy.

When did Democritus die?

• About 370 BC.
• About 450 BC.
• About 135, Nicopolis, Greece.
• About 420 BC.

What is Democritus known for?

• Atoms and the void as the explanation of all change, and an ethics of cheerfulness.
• The Outlines of Pyrrhonism and Against the Mathematicians, the armory of skeptical argument for two thousand years.
• The doctrine that human nature tends to good as water tends downhill, and that a ruler who starves his people loses the mandate to rule.
• The orations, the letters, and philosophical works like De re publica and De officiis that taught Rome to think in Greek categories.

Which school of thought was Democritus part of?

• Atomism, developed from his teacher Leucippus.
• Eleatic school, the strict logic of being.
• Stoicism, in its Roman practical form.
• Academic skepticism, with Stoic leanings in ethics.

True or false: Greek thinker from Abdera who worked out the first full atomic theory: all things are made of indivisible atoms moving in empty void.

• True
• False