Example Sentences

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More than 2,000 years ago, a debate raged between atomist philosophers—who thought the cosmos comprised infinite atoms, arranged into infinite worlds, some inhabited like ours—and those who believed Earth was unique.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 23, 2026

He evokes successive world views as crucibles for the evolving theories of geniuses, from atomist Leucippus through Enlightenment revolutionaries such as Isaac Newton to Albert Einstein, John Wheeler and fellow architects of the twentieth-century watershed.

From Nature • Jun. 27, 2017

The young atomist, accordingly, tells the British Cabinet about his findings, and its members, absolutely unable to think of anything to do about it, offer to put him in jail.

From Time Magazine Archive

Thomas Hobbes, although he was not an atomist, had developed a materialist, Epicurean philosophy which was universally understood to be hostile to religion.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton

Democritus, who further developed his master’s atomist theories, also had his own pet cosmology, including a Thalian throwback to a flat-disk earth, floating in air.

From "Circumference" by Nicholas Nicastro