Key Citations On Atoms, Void, and Emergence

1. Diogenes of Oinoanda Fragment 5: Now Aristotle and those who hold the same Peripatetic views as Aristotle say that nothing is scientifically knowable, because things are continually in flux and, on account of the rapidity of the flux, evade our apprehension. We on the other hand acknowledge their flux, but not its being so rapid that the nature of each thing [is] at no time apprehensible by sense-perception. And indeed [in no way would the upholders of] the view under discussion have been able to say (and this is just what they do [maintain] that [at one time] this is [white] and this black, while [at another time] neither this is [white nor] that black, [if] they had not had [previous] knowledge of the nature of both white and black.

2. More to come....

Quote from Bryan

When the distinction between atoms and compounds is not significant, I wanted to highlight that Epíkouros uses the term "What is corporeal (τό Σωματικὸν)" for both together:

Thanks for pointing that out. It can definitely be confusing, especially when we start talking about accidents/events and properties/qualities. Atoms have no color but their combinations and movements generate color, and so i gather that even though atoms and combinations of atoms might both be referred to as bodies, I gather you have to get to the combinations stage before you can properly start talking about accidents/events/qualities that are perceptible to us.

I know I have been tempted to say in the past that atoms have "properties" and bodies have "qualities," but I gather it can't be neatly divided like that given the different shades of meaning of the words. At the combination level you have to start dealing with "properties or qualities that can be separated without destroying the thing" vs" properties or qualities that can't be removed without destroying the thing." (And those are scare quotes, I am not representing that that is a quote from Lucretius)

Bryan if you can think of a chart or other way to make those distinctions clear that would help a lot with that section of Lucretius talking about the Trojan War (in book one as I recall).

Those are very helpful Bryan!

since most of this is discussed by both Epicurus in Herodotus and Lucretius in his poem, can we fill in the chart with the latin equivalent at every step of the way? Perhaps you already have on Chart one, but it would be helpful on chart 2 as well.

Embarassing to say, I always find the Latin easier to relate to than the Greek

From Tau Phi's recent collection on the works of Metrodorus I want to add this here under a list of quotes relevant to emergence.

It is pretty confusingly worded, or confusingly translated, or both, but it seems to me to be pretty clearly talking about a mixture of canonics (thinking to establish their own senses by destroying those of others) and emergence (seeing that one is affected by one quality and faculty of it, and another by another.)

PLUTARCH, Against Colotes, 5, 1109 c [5]

And as for these symmetries and proportions of the pores, or little passages in the organs of the senses, about which they talk so much, and those different mixtures of seeds, which, they say, being dispersed through all savors, odors, and colors, move the senses of different persons to perceive different qualities, do they not manifestly drive them to this, that things are no more of one nature than another? For to pacify those who think the sense is deceived and lies because they see contrary events and passions in such as use the same objects, and to solve this objection, they teach,—that when almost everything was confused and mixed up together, since it has been arranged by Nature that one thing shall fit another thing, it was not the contact or the apprehension of the same quality nor were all parts affected in the same way by what was influencing them. But those only coalesced with anything to which they had a characteristic, symmetrical in a corresponding proportion; so that they are in error so obstinately to insist that a thing is either good or bad, white or not white, thinking to establish their own senses by destroying those of others; whereas they ought neither to combat the senses,—because they all touch some quality, each one drawing from this confused mixture, as from a living and large fountain, what is suitable and convenient,—nor to pronounce of the whole, by touching only the parts, nor to think that all ought to be affected after one and the same manner by the same thing, seeing that one is affected by one quality and faculty of it, and another by another. Let us investigate who those men are which bring in this opinion that things are not more of one quality than another, if they are not those who affirm that every sensible object is a mixture, compounded of all sorts of qualities, like a mixture of new wine fermenting, and who confess that all their rules are lost and their faculty of judging quite gone, if they admit any sensible object that is pure and simple, and do not make each one thing to be many?