Steve asked:

We have come to find that matter is comprised of molecules, atoms, electrons, protons, nuclei,
subatomic particles, nano thingys, etc. We have known of the existence of planets, moon and stars
and galaxies for much longer.

If we assume we are 'middle of the road', speaking of size, intelligence, development, why are we
finding more smaller things than larger things?

============

Does it really matter? Why is this issue important? How about this... we're finding smaller things right
now because it's easier to find bigger things; you just look up into the sky and there they are, right?
But for smaller you need to devise very expensive, complicated, instruments based on extremely
complex physical theories.

Steven Ravett Brown

It appears that the Ancient Greek atomists wondered about this too.

Here are two tantalizing fragments quoted by Kirk, Raven and Schofield (The Presocratic
Philosophers2nd. edn. Cambridge University Press p. 416):

"Leucippus posited an infinite number of elements in perpetual motion — the atoms — and held that
the number of their shapes was infinite, on the ground that nothing is such rather than such
(Simplicius, DK 67 A 8).

To this extent they (sc. Epicurus and Democritus) differed, that one supposed that all atoms were
very small, and on that account imperceptible; the other, Democritus, that there are some atoms that
are very large (Dionysius, DK 68 A 43)."

Arguments that appeal to the idea that, nothing is such rather than such(i.e. in the absence of an
adequate reason why alternative A should obtain rather than B) seem to have been very popular with
the Presocratic philosophers. KRS comment wryly on the second quote, "No doubt he would have
explained that very large atoms are to be found only in parts of space distant from our universe" (ibid.
P. 416).

Why are contemporary cosmologists not tempted to make a similar claim? Because, unlike Leucippus
and Democritus (and, later, Epicurus) who reasoned out their atomist philosophies their using logic
alone, cosmologists today seek the best explanation of the available evidence.

Geoffrey Klempner