Democritus, Chrysippus, and the cone problem

Abstract

To the problem posed by Democritus, whether two sides of a cut through a cone are equal or not, Chrysippus provided an answer that they are neither equal not unequal. The paper discusses various interpretations of the answer and proposes its own based on the assumption that although the Stoics allowed for infinite divisibility of matter, Chrysippus proposed his solution in the original atomistic setting where all atom shapes are permitted and spaces between atoms are required.