Posts by Don

New Graphics: Are You On Team Epicurus? | Comparison Chart: Epicurus vs. Other Philosophies | Chart Of Key Epicurean Quotations | Accelerating Study Of Canonics Through Philodemus' "On Methods Of Inference" | Note to all users: If you have a problem posting in any forum, please message Cassius  

  • What Would Epicurus Think of the Big Bang?

    Quote from Cassius

    All of which leaves the biggest questions that Epicurus wanted to address, such as whether there is something outside of "this observable universe" that these physicists are talking about (something which implicitly might be "god") totally unanswered. That larger question is at least as important to our daily lives as it is to get a better understanding of fields.

    From my perspective, Epicurus answered the question of "is something outside of 'this observable universe'" explicitly. The answer was yes. The cosmos (kosmos ΚΟΣΜΟΣ), from everything I have read, is akin to our idea of an "observable universe." I'm going to use K kosmos instead of C cosmos because we tend to define cosmos as the "universe" colloquially, but I want to get across the idea of the ancient kosmos. The kosmos is the world-system in which we live. The Library of Congress has a wonderful article on ancient Greek cosmology:

    https://www.loc.gov/collections/finding-our-place-in-the-cosmos-with-carl-sagan/articles-and-essays/modeling-the-cosmos/ancient-greek-astronomy-and-cosmology/

    Important points:

    • From the 5th c BCE, it was known we live on a sphere.
    • "In this system the entire universe was part of a great sphere. This sphere was split into two sections, an outer celestial realm and an inner terrestrial one. The dividing line between the two was the orbit of the moon."

    The other stars and planets were thought of as spheres, too, since even Epicurus wrote against people thinking the stars and wandering stars were gods because they were perfect spheres. So, it would have been theoretically possible to travel to other "worlds" - other spheres - without leaving our kosmos. See the diagram below...

    So, that's OUR kosmos.

    Epicurus also posited other kosmoi - other world-systems - that would be other kosmoi somewhere else in The All, the universe. Such as..

    .

    with, supposedly the gods residing in the metakosmos/intermundia/"the space between world-systems."

    That's my perspective on how Epicurus envisioned The Universe. There is plenty of space "outside our observable universe." It's just filled with other kosmoi with their own worlds, animals, humans, and even philosophers.

  • What Would Epicurus Think of the Big Bang?

    For reference, here's a thread from 2020 where we were discussing this topic:

    Thread

    Infinity and the Expanding Universe

    Recently there was some discussion of the expanding universe, heat death, the infinite (in time and space) universe and the ramifications of these ideas. I just came across an image from 1750 of the universe comprised of infinite galaxies, which made me think that it might be useful to start a thread on the topic. Just in case anybody would like their mind blown!

    epicureanfriends.com/wcf/attachment/1240/

    Here's the article that the image came from:

    …
    Godfrey
    July 23, 2020 at 4:50 PM

    It includes a link to the Dawkins/Krauss video.

    PS. I feel the need to emphasize that the Epicueans clearly conveyed that "nothing comes from nothing." But the texts may use that shorthand but elsewhere clarify that theymean "nothing comes from that which did not previously exist." Basically, everything gets recycled into something else in the infinite expanse of the universe - not just our little cosmos here but what Epicurus and others called The All in the texts, To Pan ΤΟ ΠΑΝ... Latin uses universus (From ūnus (“one”) +‎ versus (“turned”), hence literally "turned into one") with the same meaning.

    In modern physics, they're not saying "nothing comes from nothing" either. Their confusing shorthand provocative layman's "nothing" is just the quantum fields permeating all of space. The idea of the cosmos - our observable universe - coming out of a quantum fluctuation... similar to what some cosmologists posit is the ultimate fate of our cosmos (NOT the universe remember) an unimaginable number of billions and trillions of years in the future - strikes me as elegant. The new cosmos and our current one doesn't/ didn't come from nothing. It was birthed from the very existing underlying structure of the infinite universe.

  • Further Thoughts On Science And Epicurean Philosophy

    As far as ritual or religioius practices, Epicurus leaves money in his will for "the funeral offerings to my father, mother, and brothers." The word translated "funeral offerings" in τὰ ἐναγίσματα (ta enagismata) < enagisma. See:

    Chapter IV. The ritual pattern
    1. The sacrificial rituals of Greek hero-cults This study has had two aims, first of all, to establish the sacrificial rituals of Greek hero-cults in the…
    books.openedition.org
    Quote

    1.4. Destruction sacrifices

    12Destruction sacrifices at which no dining took place, covered by the terms holokautos in the inscriptions and enagizein, enagisma and enagismos in the literary texts, are rare and cannot be considered as the regular kind of ritual in hero-cults. All the terms seem to cover the same kind of ritual, the destruction of the offerings, but they have different bearings on the character of the recipient. Holokautos was more neutral, being used for both heroes and gods, while enagizein, enagisma and enagismos are particular to hero-cults and the cult of the dead. Apart from referring to a destruction sacrifice, enagizein, enagisma and enagismos also mark the recipient as being dead and therefore impure in some sense, and distinguish him, or a side of him, from the gods, who are immortal and pure. In most cases, the destruction sacrifices to heroes were performed as separate rituals and not in connection with a thysia.

    13The enagizein sacrifices seem to have been aimed at highlighting the dead and impure character of the hero. The destruction of the offerings formed part of the cult of the dead, but it is doubtful to what extent they were performed with animal victims, since the sacrifice of animals had practically disappeared from the cult of the ordinary dead already in the Archaic period, partly as a result of the funerary legislation.

    14Partial and total destructions of the victims are also found in the cult of the gods and can sometimes be viewed as a result of the character of the recipient, but perhaps more clearly as a reaction to or as a reminiscence of a particularly pressing and difficult situation. Similarly, in hero-cults the destruction sacrifices are not only a reflection of the recipient’s character, but may also be a response to the problems and stress of a particular situation or may be performed in order to avoid difficulties in the future. Seen from this angle, these rituals were used in the same manner as in the cult of the gods.

    15The evidence for the terms enagizein, enagisma and enagismos, considered to be standard terms for the sacrifices to heroes, is slight for sacrifices to heroes in the Archaic and Classical periods (no use at all is made of the terms in inscriptions before the late 2nd century BC, for example). More remarkable is the frequent use of the terms in the 1st to the 3rd centuries AD, particularly in the 2nd century AD and especially by Pausanias and Plutarch. The popularity of the terms during this period, evident also from the hapax enagisterion (attested in an inscription dating from c. AD 170), can be linked to the antiquarian tendencies of the Second Sophistic. Enagizein sacrifices seem to have been regarded as an old and venerable ritual, and the terms enagizein, enagisma, enagismos and enagisterion are predominantly used for heroes considered as being ancient, a tendency which may have originated in a desire to separate the old, traditional heroes of the epic and glorious past history from the more recently heroized, ordinary mortals of the Hellenistic and Roman periods. This link between heroes and enagizein may, in its turn, have been the reason for the almost mechanical use of enagizein in the scholia to explain and elucidate sacrifices to heroes in the Classical sources, whether or not these rituals contained any actions of the kind usually covered by enagizein. It is also interesting to note that, in the 2nd century AD and later, enagizein began to be used for sacrifices to gods, though often to divinities connected with the sphere of death and the underworld, and for sacrifices differing from regular thysiai. In this late period, the term seems gradually to have taken on the meaning “to burn completely”, no matter who was the recipient.

  • Further Thoughts On Science And Epicurean Philosophy

    Quote from BrainToBeing

    Don It would not be the first time, nor the last. Certainly, the posturing of Descartes in the first few pages of "Meditations on First Philosophy" clearly suggest he was seeking to avoid the fate of Galileo, only a few years prior.

    Oh, I don't doubt a sense of personal safety was a *part* of his decision. After all, that's one reason he taught on his own private property and not in the gymnasia or stoas. But I firmly believe Epicurus also got a great deal of pleasure, enjoyment, and satisfaction from participating the religious rites of his city. For ease of access, here are my thoughts from my perusal of On Piety:

  • Further Thoughts On Science And Epicurean Philosophy

    (raises hands in the air) Testify, Brother Cassius! Testify! Hallelujah! :D

    But on a more serious note, I also find Epicurean theology, piety, and practice an interesting topic. The point I always make is that Epicurus himself and the classical Epicureans made a correct understanding of the gods a primary point in multiple texts: The Letter to Menoikeus, Principal Doctrines, Philodemus's On Piety, the first line of the Tetrapharmakos, and so on. I, too, completely agree that the "Epicurus feigned piety to protect his skin" is an easy, lazy response to the question. The research can be a bit of a rabbit hole (as numerous threads on this forum attest!) and can be frustrating due to lack of textual sources and archeological evidence, but there's enough there to make for interesting discussions.

  • Was Shakespeare an Epicurean?

    Quote from Cassius

    Probably the whole thing could wind up pointing to a place where we discuss a table of parallel Shakespeare/Epicurean references.

    One has to be careful here. From what I've seen on this thread and elsewhere on the forum and in published texts and papers, Shakespeare definitely had allusions to Epicurean philosophy in his work, evidently primarily via Montaigne via Lucretius. However, my contention would be that one has to be careful in saying Shakespeare was genuinely citing Epicurean sources as opposed to seeing lines that "sound" Epicurean or lines that evoke Epicurean ideas that are more widespread culturally. It's merely an extension of my frustration with Dewitt's "Christianity around every Epicurean corner" issue. That sids, I genuinely find this Shakespeare angle fascinating and was completely unaware of its depth previously... So thank you all for this!

  • What If Anything Has Changed About Human Nature In the Last 2000 Years?

    This is my dilemma and something I'm still working through. When you say:

    Quote from Bryan

    It is the image that comes to mind when you think of something

    Which comes first? Did the "image" arise in the mind after you "think" of something, or did you think of something and then the image arises in the mind? Or is it simultaneous? It seems there had to be a sequence, even if almost unimaginably rapid.

    I fully agree that we are not born with innate images of dogs, pencils, towers, cows, etc. But it seems to me we are born with some natural ability to make sense of the world by detecting patterns in the world, at first rudimentary patterns, especially faces. Even an innate sense of what constitutes fairness or awe. The youngest of infants seem to be able to have their fascination captured by some phenomena. They'll stare at novel stimuli longer than ones they're accustomed to. Repeated exposure refines and expands those rudimentary inborn and evolutionarily developed abilities and "prolepseis." One's native language begins to label those patterns, but the patterns exist independently of language.

    This is where I find the thesis of the mind as a prediction engine so fascinating. According to research, we couldn't survive if we only reacted to stimuli after receiving sense data. The snake would have already bitten us if we waited for it to strike before jumping away. We would already have fallen off the cliff if we waited until our foot felt nothing under it. Our minds - our brains inside our skulls - are constantly constructing the external world from previous sensory data and predicting the next most likely scenario. It fine tunes as data flows in, correcting the prediction, keeping us alive. The more accurate the prediction, the more accurate our prolepseis if you will, the better flow we have through the world.

    This is just one of the ways I find the intersection of Epicurus's philosophy and modern science so intriguing and fascinating. The fact that I can even compare modern research with two-millennia-old theories of mind blows my mind.

  • What If Anything Has Changed About Human Nature In the Last 2000 Years?

    Bryan 's comments are spot on.

    Even more complexity comes in when one considers that Epicurus said that we have a prolepsis of justice and a prolepsis of the gods. I reconcile this with the idea that humans appear to have an innate faculty or propensity for fairness and an innate sense of awe or wonder. Both these come from research done with very young infants and toddlers, and, in the case of fairness, non-human species. Those may not have been what Epicurus necessarily had in mind, but for me it reconciles Epicurus's intuition and modern scientific research.

    That, along with the idea of an innate faculty of pattern recognition to create those "mental images" that Bryan mentions, is how I reconcile Cicero's "insitae vel potius inatae cogitiones." To me the Lewis & Short definition of "implanted by nature, inborn, innate, natural" can be reconciled with an inborn faculty or propensity, but I would agree that the mental images are reinforced and strengthened by subsequent exposure to them. In some ways, it's like a child calling every animal a "dog" until they realize "dog" refers to a specific kind of animal after repeated experiences of "dog" in their environment.

    The concept of the prolepsis is still very much a work-in-progress for me.

  • What If Anything Has Changed About Human Nature In the Last 2000 Years?

    Quote from BrainToBeing

    If that is not how the word is used here in EpicureanFriends then I'm happy to hear an alternative definition.

    Ah! Thanks for that clarification. That helps to show where you're coming from on using that. So, yes, there is an English word "prolepsis" as defined by Merriam-Webster as
    : ANTICIPATION: such as
    a: the representation or assumption of a future act or development as if presently existing or accomplished
    b: the application of an adjective to a noun in anticipation of the result of the action of the verb (as in "while yon slow oxen turn the furrowed plain")
    And the English word's etymology is from Greek prolēpsis, "from prolambanein to take beforehand, from pro- before + lambanein to take.

    However, Prolēpsis within Epicurean philosophy is used to refer to a specific faculty of the mind/body. Epicurus chose it to refer to this epistemological faculty from the words available to him and gave it a specific connotation within his philosophy. It's been variously translated into English as anticipation, preconception, and some other terms. Using it with its modern English definition within English vocabulary is going to cause a little confusion in an Epicurean philosophy forum, hence my going off on the prolepsis tangent in that prior post. It appears there may have been confusion on both our parts on the use of that word. Mea culpa.

  • What If Anything Has Changed About Human Nature In the Last 2000 Years?

    Quote from BrainToBeing

    This is, of course, unfair at a number of levels.

    BrainToBeing : First, I sincerely didn't mean any offense. My only purpose for that simile was to compare what you seemed to be doing in taking one word ("capital-T Truth") and equating it with something at a much more basic level. Likewise, I see some scientists who want to thread the needle, so to speak, wanting to be able to use the word God while referring to a more basic level of knowledge and/or practice.

    On the other points, your using "objective truth" and "opinion versus objective accuracy" and "objective data" and so on is entirely consistent with an Epicurean approach. It is possible for there to be all of those things without there being some kind of transcendent, capital-T, universal Truth...unless you want to assign, semantically, the capital-T Truth word to "the way things are" in an effort to find out what is "objectively" true in a given situation. Epicurus, and even more so Lucretius and Philodemus, advocate for acquiring observation and evidence and not taking things at face value or assigning some supernatural cause to them. This seems to align with your wanting to diagnose your patients true needs against their profession of 10/10 pain in an effort to acquire opiates.

    And, let me state explicitly, that the opioid epidemic was and continues to be a tragedy, especially in some rural communities from which I came and where I grew up. But a search for some universal Truth isn't going to make that better. The tragedy has to be addressed on a myriad of levels: personal, familial, societal, and governmental. As such, that topic probably falls outside the purview of this forum; however, as others have said, Epicurus's philosophy is a philosophy of personal responsibility, deep friendship, the support of a social contract that should have participants doing no harm and not being harmed, and the rejection of supernatural causes and the inefficacy of prayer for divine intercession (although Epicurus did say that "it is better to follow the stories of the gods" than to be fraught with the anxiety of hard determinism). You can apply those aspects of Epicurean philosophy as seems appropriate to that real-world situation.

    Quote from BrainToBeing

    Anticipating your possible question (prolepsis)

    Actually, that's not how the word prolepsis or, in Engish, "anticipation" is used in the Epicurean philosophical sense unless you were using it in a humorous way. Prolepsis is somewhat of an enigmatic word and the texts are woefully few in explaining how Epicurus and the early Epicureans used the term. Speaking for myself, the canonic faculty of the prolepseis (plural of prolepsis), seems to be a faculty of pattern recognition that sorts through all the sensory data flooding into us and is able to pick out meaningful patterns. That faculty can then apply those patterns to sense data in the future, and, over time, then builds up a "library" of patterns against which to make sense of the world. That's one reason I find the work of Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett and others in seeing the brain as a prediction machine intriguing, as it seems to align (imperfectly but pretty well) with this idea of the Epicurean prolepseis.

    As far as the gods, Epicurus famously asserted "Gods exist," but what he actually meant by that statement continues to be argued among those of us on the forum ^^ and in academic circles. What is without question is that Epicurus did not think the gods - in whatever way he meant that word - took no notice of us and did not grant favors or inflict punishment. That said, the Epicureans - especially Lucretius - had no problem whatsoever in imagining other life forms, mortal like us, inhabiting other worlds. Lucian of Samosata, who was at the very least sympathetic to Epicureanism, wrote arguably the first sci-fi story, A True Story, where there is space travel, life on other planets, etc. The use of the word "true" in light of the other topics on this thread is interesting in that Lucian says his is the only "true" story because he tells everyone at the outset that he's making it up, unlike the old myths that attempt to say what they're writing actually happened.

    A True Story - Wikipedia
    en.wikipedia.org

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