 The term ‘atomism’ is sometimes understood to refer to theories explaining changes in the material world by the rearrangements of minute particles of matter, or to the idea that any kind of magnitude—geometrical extension, time and space—is composed of indivisible parts. Theories of mathematical minima were formulated in response to paradoxes like those of Zeno of Elea (early 5th c. BCE) about infinite divisibility of magnitudes. However, theories of smallest parts could be introduced for reasons quite distinct from mathematical problems about divisibility: atomism in classical Indian philosophy seems to have been motivated by the desire to reflect the categories used in analysis of the metaphysical structure of reality shown in language (Carpenter 2021). While in the Greek tradition, atoms were held to be eternal and indestructible particles that persist through changes in the visible world of experience, that is not always a feature of ancient atomist theories. Some Indian philosophical systems held that atoms are created and subject to transformation or destruction, or that they are only momentary features of experience. Atomists from monotheistic schools—including medieval Islamic kalām philosophers and seventeenth century figures like Pierre Gassendi—adapted atomist theories to allow for the creation and destruction of atoms by God. Some scholars (Pyle 1997) treat a particular strand of atomist thought as an ideal type, yet the diversity of atomist thought seems to belie this stricture (Lüthy, Murdoch and Newman 2001).