Dmytry comments on Angry Atoms - Less Wrong
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There's the coolest bit: they actually had very good argumentation for atomism, especially wrt mixing things up homogeneously then separating them back. And they postulated very small number of atoms; if we didn't use their word atom for chemical atom we would of probably used word atoms to mean quanta - which are the indivisible units of now. The argument for there being some small number of something indivisible, is the logic that dictates something indivisible from dissolution and re-purification, combined with occam's razor on the number of something indivisible, combined with belief in reductionism. They didn't lucky guess it any more than we did.
We also guessed quanta in same way as they guessed atoms from dissolution and purification - we had the photoelectric effect.