Your Instant Expert on the atomic nucleus had an introduction stating that the theory of atoms as the base units of reality served us well from the pre-Socratic Greeks onwards, but implied that it no longer holds (1 October).
On the contrary, we are still bound by the Greek concept, it is just that we got a name wrong. The Greek idea that matter is made of tiny things that cannot themselves be divided, the a-tomic (which translates as "not able to be cut"), is the basis of the standard model of particle physics. The problem is that we used the word "atom" too early in the history of physics, applying it to things far too big and fragile, such as the base units of each chemical element.
What the Greeks, and Newton for that matter, would recognise in modern physics as "atoms" would be quarks, leptons and gauge ...
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