The tradition of the particle concept goes back to traditional metaphysicsand ancient philosophy. The idea that matter is made up of microscopicconstituent parts stems from ancient atomism. At the very beginnings ofmodern physics, it was taken up by Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. Newtonthought that there are atoms of matter and light, but with the methods ofNewtonian mechanics and optics they were beyond the reach of experiments.In the 19th century, the wave theory of light succeeded and electrodynamics,thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and the kinetic theory of heat weredeveloped. Two hundred years after Newton’s Principia, the experimentersdiscovered cathode rays, X rays, and radioactivity, and began to investigatethe atomic and subatomic structure of matter. At the same time, however,the empiricist Ernst Mach still doubted the existence of the unobservablemicroscopic constituent parts of matter and asked for more natural ideasabout the structure of matter.

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