An idea · Twentieth Century (to mid-century) · first attested 1918
Logical Atomism
Reality breaks down into the simplest facts; the world is everything that is the case.
Russell's and (early) Wittgenstein's vision. Complex propositions can be analyzed into logically simple atomic ones; complex facts decompose into atomic facts. The world is the sum of these atoms. The view is the founding hypothesis of analytic philosophy. Both Russell and Wittgenstein eventually abandoned it.