The New International Encyclopædia/Divisibility

DIVISIBILITY; (from Lat. divisibilis, divisible, from dividere, to divide). That property of quantity, matter, or extension, through which it is either actually or potentially separable into parts. Whether matter is or is not indefinitely divisible, is a question which has occupied the minds of philosophers since very early times. The diffusion of odors through the air for long periods from odoriferous bodies without their suffering any sensible change of weight, and the tinging of great quantities of fluid by very minute portions of coloring matter, are cases commonly appealed to in proof of the great divisibility of substances. On the other hand, abstractly speaking, matter must be conceived as infinitely divisible for the reason that the division of matter is necessarily the division of the space it occupies: and the infinite divisibility of space may be demonstrated geometrically. All this does not prove, however, that matter is capable of undergoing indefinite subdivision by processes actually taking place in nature. In fact, the atomic hypothesis, which seems to be the only one capable of correlating and explaining a great variety of facts brought to light by the physical sciences, indicates that there is a definite limit to the divisibility of matter: that a substance could not be divided into smaller parts than its molecules without losing its essential properties, and that by no natural process at present known could a substance be divided into smaller parts than the atoms of its component elements. See Gases, Properties of; Matter, Genaral Properties of; and Molecules—Molecular Weights.