First published in Die Antike (Organ der Gesellschaft für Antike Kultur.) Vol. XIII.

Modern science has followed many trends of early Greek natural philosophy by reconsidering the problems with which that philosophy had grappled in a first attempt to understand the surrounding world. Hence it may be well worth considering which of those early ideas have retained their creative power in modern physics, and what shape they have acquired by absorbing the scientific experiences of the intervening two thousand years. There are, especially, two ideas of early Greek philosophy which today still determine the course of science, and which are therefore of special interest to us: the conviction that matter consists of minute indivisible units, the atoms, and the belief in the purposely directive power of mathematical structures.

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