[Potemkin]

A creative/destructive force (not to imply dualism in the Manichean heretic way).

Indeed. Creation and destruction are, of course, dialectical opposites - you cannot have one without the other. For every new world that is born, an old world has to die.... Even a revolution implies both creation and destruction - the destruction of the old society and the creation of a new one.

Potemky, which presocratic philophers do you mean: the Atomist school; or also other schools?

I was thinking more of the earlier Presocratics, particularly Heraclitus and Empedocles.

[Cookie Monster]

Indeed. Creation and destruction are, of course, dialectical opposites - you cannot have one without the other. For every new world that is born, an old world has to die.... Even a revolution implies both creation and destruction - the destruction of the old society and the creation of a new one.

One thing that I always wondered is why the word revolution is used in the social meaning (popularly understood as a dramatic split from the previous society/government). It seems such a poor choice considering the scientific meaning, which implies a very different process: to circle around another body and return to the point of departure.

I was thinking more of the earlier Presocratics, particularly Heraclitus and Empedocles.

How about Democritus?

[Potemkin]

How about Democritus?

He was the founder of the Atomists (if you ignore Leucippus's claims to precedence), and, as I said, I was thinking more of the earlier Presocratics. As Presocratic ideas developed, the earlier semi-mystical ideas of Heraclitus or Parmenides were replaced by a rather more one-sided and explicitly rationalistic form of thinking. The earlier hints at dialectical thinking that one finds in some of the more gnomic utterances of, say, Heraclitus (eg, the famous 'bow and lyre' fragment) eventually disappeared. By the time of the Atomists, Democritus was insisting that only "the atom and the void" were real, and all else was "opinion".