Metrodorus of Chios

Metrodorus of Chios ( ancient Greek: Μητρόδωρος ο Χίος, also: Metra; approximately 5th to 4th century BC) was a Greek philosopher of the atomistic school and pupil of Democritus.

From his extensive work only fragments have survived. Because of the extant thanks to Cicero beginning his work Peri Physeos ( On the Nature ), " none of us knows anything, not even just that, whether we know or do not know ," he is sometimes described as a pioneer of Pyrrhonian skepticism. His physics is strongly oriented to Democritus: he claims the immobility of the cosmos as a whole, recognizes only atoms and the void as basic units of matter, postulated the infinite number of atoms in an infinitely wide space in an infinite number of worlds. In addition, he worked as a historian and meteorologist. Especially his meteorological writings differ from Democritus: he contradicts the view that the stars are optical illusions, arising from the reflection of the sun rays in the clouds.

Editions

• Hermann Diels, Walther Kranz: The fragments of the Presocratics, Weidmann, Zurich 1996 (3 vols, Repr d Ed Berlin 1952). ISBN 3-296-12202-8, Volume 2 p 231-234.