Posts by Martin

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Why does Diogenes of Oenoanda want to help those who are "well-constituted"? Doesn't that mean helping those who don't need help? Shouldn't he want to help those who are badly constituted? Or does he want to help the rich to lead good lives, such that their examples might spread, and their wealth/power not be abused?

I guess that "well-constituted" refers to people who are still willing to learn and adapt as they see fit if they encounter ideas which are new for them or which they have neglected in the past.

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Likewise, energy and forces are best thought of as falling under "atoms" since as Epicurus meant the term it was simply indivisible particle

Energy is not indivisible except for transition energies between states of matter. Likewise, forces are not indivisible either. It is good to be aware that forces at a distance (fields) and energy are not covered by Epicurus' and would need to be added as new items to update Epicurean physics.

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Does this all have to do with Planck units?

Yes, in particular with the Planck length.

If someone wants a meaning for one's life, they are free to create it.

I thought about meaning of life during adolescence and the subsequent years because I read and heard from others about it but never felt that need for a meaning of life, so for me personally, there is no such crisis. However, as Nietzsche anticipated, the meaning crisis might be relevant for many people.

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that there is a smallest unit of length

A smallest unit of length has so far only been suggested but its existence is not proven. Epicurus did not claim the existence of a smallest unit of length either, possibly later Epicureans did that. A smallest unit of length (in terms of an exact number instead of something vague like quantum indeterminacy) would create big conceptual problems, both in Epicurus' metaphysics and in modern physics.

We should read Elli's claims as analogies, and not as identical ideas to modern science. The text would be a lot more complicated and less impressive if it was formulated in every sentence as analogy. Similarly, scientists mostly refer to reality instead of models because it would make their papers even less intelligible if they would explicitly include the model character of their theories in every sentence.

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Welcome Eric!

Welcome Patrick!

Beetlemoses imagines how it may happen:

The ancients were certainly aware, that a piece of solid material could be ground such that the piece becomes smaller and the removed specs would still have color if visible or they were not visible, and that water evaporated without that they could see into what. It was straight forward to infer for Epicurus that the smallest spec still visible was not an atom and that atoms were smaller than to be seen with bare eyes. Moreover, his atoms did not have color, which adds to the impossibility to see them.

I would be in for Karaoke. After practicing at bit more, I hope to find a group of Karaoke fans in Bangkok, irrespective of philosophy or religion.

Elayne found a way to enjoy earworms instead of being annoyed by them; maybe it is somewhere on this forum. If a song which I like follows me as an earworm for a day, I enjoy it, too, but not if I do not like the song.

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So...maybe time to get started on the Epicurean songbook!

Here it is:

Music With Epicurean Philosophical Themes - Epicureanfriends.com

Some ideas of Epicurus are impressively compatible with, or analogous too, modern knowledge. However, from an experimental perspective, Asimov's statement that "these are all twentieth-century discoveries" is mostly correct.

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In Asia, it is common to tell the age based on the year, irrespective of the day. This may have been common practice in Ancient Greece, too.

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Dialectic is a thing of closed logic, of minor and major premises leading inexorably toward irrefutable conclusions.

This seems to be nonsense and disqualifies Higgins as worth to read. Irrefutable conclusions exist only in logic but not in dialectic. The straight-forward logical description of dialectic contains contradictions of the type "A and not A". Whereas dialectic as derived from dialogue and used by Plato may sometimes be useful, the way Hegel's dialectic mimics logic is rather an unintended parody of logic and invalid.

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Do we all agree that "to desire sth" is an "atom of experience" just like "feels warm" is, too, meaning both are indivisible and not made up of smaller, lower-level, more fine-grained units of experience?

I agree, at least in the sense that I am not aware of a meaningful way to compose a desire of smaller units.