atomist system
There is no guiding intelligence, just the blind mechanical interplay of flying and colliding atoms. The atomist system was appropriated by the prolific writer Democritus, perhaps to serve as the background to his account of the origin and development of civilization. This became a popular subject of theorizing in the mid fifth century. It quickly came to be common ground that primitive man was merely an animal, sheltering in caves and eating whatever grew wild, until gradually he developed his skills, built houses and cities, tamed animals, invented language, and so on. (Boardman, 1986)