| Two factors weighed against any widespread acceptance of the classical version of atomism. |
| There are natural alliances between Entity Realism and metaphysical atomism, and between Structural Realism and the Great-Field metaphysic. |
| Moreover, Descartes's mechanical philosophy was ultimately no different from all other forms of atomism. |
| Many contemporary philosophers see the ultimate triumph of atomism as a victory for realism over positivism. |
| Greeks like Aristotle, who opposed atomism, equated it with a blind desire to abnegate the governance of Nature in favour of pure chance. |
| The principal one, a child of its times, was molecular associationism, a metaphoric extension of the atomism of nineteenth-century physics. |
