Skip to content
Wellsprings
cosmology

Infinite Worlds

ἄπειροι κόσμοι

Ours may not be the only world: countless cosmoi are forever forming and dissolving across boundless space.

The atomists Leucippus and Democritus held that infinite worlds exist throughout an infinite void, each formed by the endless collision and arrangement of atoms. Since atoms and empty space are boundless, there is no reason why matter should coalesce into only one cosmos. These worlds arise naturally and necessarily from the mechanics of atomic motion, with no divine design or limit preventing their formation. The doctrine challenged the prevailing view of a single, ordered universe and suggested that our world, far from being unique, is merely one specimen among countless others.

The infinite worlds doctrine meant that conditions in other worlds need not match our own. Some worlds might contain the same arrangements of atoms as ours, producing familiar sights and laws of nature, while others could develop entirely different shapes and structures—some spherical, some oval, some irregular. This implied that what we observe as fundamental features of existence, from the shape of celestial bodies to the basic layout of creation, were merely local outcomes of atomic necessity rather than universal truths, making our world one example among infinite variations.

Where this idea shows up

17 Greek sources·1 Jewish-canon citation

Where to read it