Experiments

- Democritus and his supporters did no experiments in the modern, scientific sense. Instead, they supported the basis of their 'Atomism' through abstract reasoning; thought experiments

Ex. The existence of 'void' dispute.

Parmenides (opponent of Atomism): "You say there is a void;

therefore the void is not nothing; therefore there is not the void."

(The implication being that since there can be no void, motion, then, would be an illusion.)

Democritus (and the other Atomists) disagreed on the grounds that motion was an observable fact, and since it required void, then the void must exist.