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(Quote from Elayne) And, just to emphasize, Epicurus did not posit *any* responsibility for the "gods" (however he conceived of them or we understand his conception of the "divine") in the creation or administration of the cosmos. Atoms composing things and void through which the atoms can move: That's it. However the cosmos exists, it exists as a physical, material thing governed by knowable physical processes.

Thank you, Cassius , for putting that post together. There's a LOT to unpack there. Here are some initial thoughts. Cosmos, world, universe. The English words here obscure and obfuscate what Epicurus actually said. There's an interesting excerpt from the Letter to Pythokles: (Quote) The "world" here is [kosmos] http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/h…257:book=10:chapter=1&i=1 The "universe" is [ouranos] the "vault or firmament of heaven" http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/h…=10:chapter=1&i=1#lexicon It almost …

One caveat off the top of my head: We have to be careful about calling what Epicurus and the ancient Greeks did "science." They wrote and thought about things that we would group under the heading of "science" but they weren't "doing science." They called their pursuits "physiology" (to anglicize their term) - the study of nature writ large, φύσις (physis) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physis?wprov=sfla1. They observed and thought about how the natural world works - including the whole cosmos - …

(Quote) Happiness is such a vague concept even among positive psychology researchers. Like the proverbial obscenity: "I know it when I see it." It's used to translate any number of words in the original texts, sometimes it seems arbitrarily. Here it's the same word from PD1 translated "blessed" there.

(Quote from Elayne) Modern atoms would not - do not - fit the concept of ancient atoms. That's exactly my point. I'm sure Epicurus didn't know about radioactive decay, so I'll side step that. Epicurus's and Lucretius's atoms/seeds/particles are fundamental building blocks of the cosmos in their system. They come together in novel ways to make everything. The seeds remain unchanged. My suggestion is that it's easier to think about their "Atomoi" more like our "elements" - carbon "atoms", hydrogen…