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It's a truth universally acknowledged that a theory in possession of the notion of atoms founds itself in the atomos theorised by Democritus et al.
For example the corpuscules of Gassendi, Hobbes and Newton.
But what about its great competitor? The notion of waves, what was the origin of this notion?
Leonardo appears to be the first to realize that moving waves involve no real motion c.1500:"It often happens that the wave flees the place of its creation, while the water does not; like the waves made in a field of grain by the wind, where we see the waves running across the field, while the grain remains in place".
A century later Galileo (and independently Mersenne) suggested that sound is a wave:"Waves are produced by the vibrations of a sonorous body, which spread through the air, bringing to the tympanum of the ear a stimulus which the mind interprets as sound". He also defined wave frequency, and showed experimentally that it correlates with pitch. Boyle did some experimental work on pressure waves c. 1660. However the first systematic physical theory involving waves, wave optics, is due to Huygens in 1678.
The theoretical foundation of the concept of waves came from the first time someone looked at a body of water. Oceans and lakes have waves lapping upon the shore. Static bodies of water get waves of ripples whenever something disturbs the surface.
Someone had to postulate a theory of atoms--the notion that there is a limit to how small things can be broken down, especially if that limit is too small for the eye to see. Waves, on the other hand, are a phenomenon as readily observable as dirt, rocks, or food. No one had to postulate the existence of waves.
