Metrodorus of Chios (; fl. 4th century BC) was a Greek philosopher, belonging to the school of Democritus.
He is an important forerunner of Pyrrhonism and Epicureanism.
Metrodorus was a pupil of Nessos of Chios, or, as some accounts prefer, of Democritus himself.Diogenes Laërtius, ix.
58 He is said to have taught Diogenes of Smyrna, who, in turn, taught Anaxarchus.
Pyrrho was Anaxarchus' student.
Like Pyrrho, Metrodorus was a sceptic.
According to CiceroCicero, Academica, ii.
23 § 73; Cf.
Diogenes Laërtius, ix.
58 he said, “None of us knows anything, not even this, whether we know or we do not know; nor do we know what ‘to not know’ or ‘to know’ are, nor on the whole, whether anything is or is not.”
Metrodorus maintained that everything is to each person only what it appears to him to be.
He is especially interesting as a forerunner of Anaxarchus and as a connecting link between atomism and Pyrrhonism.
Metrodorus accepted the Democritean theory of atoms and void and the plurality of worlds.
Includes references.
He also held a theory of his own that the stars are formed from day to day by the moisture in the air under the heat of the Sun.
Metrodorus also said, "A single ear of wheat in a large field is as strange as a single world in infinite space."
Aëtius, Placita Philosophorum i.5.4 References
