Not really pulled, more like, each element has its natural place, and it’s essence is to find its proper place. There was no force to do the pulling or floating, it was instead an essential property of a the element itself to organize in this way.

This is really misleading, although I thoroughly agree in general about the importance of intellectual history.

The Epicurean/Atomist hypothesis has everything to do with Greek philosophy of the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, and has little bearing on 20th century physics. Platonism, Aristotelianism and specifically Averroism was much more influential on Renaissance science than Lucretius. The intellectual context of Renaissance and Enlightenment science was much more complex and pluralistic than the usual textbook narrative suggests.