Category:Atom

Atoms (from the Greek: ἄτομος átomos, "the indivisible") are, according to the current understanding of matter, the smallest building blocks of the chemical elements. That they are not indivisible, contrary to their designation, which has its origins in the Greek natural philosophers of antiquity, is shown in particular by the phenomenon of radioactivity. Atoms can also decay, whereby other chemical elements are formed at the same time and high-energy radiation is produced. Today, it is assumed that atoms consist of a very small but massive nucleus of nucleons (protons and neutrons) and a comparatively light but much larger shell of electrons, which typically has a diameter in the order of 10^-10 m (= 10 picometres).

According to Rudolf Steiner, they are not to be understood structurally as material "things", but rather as ideal spatial contents. The content is the result of mutually encountering directions of forces. Force is understood here as a one-sided spatial (luciferic) revelation of the spirit.

In other words: atoms, as modern quantum theory also confirms, are not material objects in the ordinary sense but regulatively acting ideas - namely the sum of all physical laws obeyed by the forces of nature, which regulate - indeterministically - the orderly connection of all perceptible or measurable phenomena in the realm of the smallest spatially graspable units of a specific chemical element.