Further Thoughts On Science And Epicurean Philosophy

I'm passionate about physics, from Epicurus up to classical mechanics. However, I'm critical of the dominant interpretations in modern physics, which I believe are cynically promoted. This sentiment echoes my views on art: while I admire classical art, I find myself disenchanted with much of what is promoted as art today. To me, both modern physics and modern art seem to primarily exist to mock their classical predecessors. I reject that there is a scientific basis of some modern physics concepts, such as particles popping in and out of existence, the origin of the universe, or influence upon empty space, these are aligned with religious beliefs from the Talmud not with natural science. Their math is a self-referencing game and their experiments could more easily be interpreted. I seek a scientific understanding based upon empirical evidence -- Epicurus offers a tangible basis, unlike the promoted contemporary theories. I believe that a true understanding of physics supports a fulfilling life, but what is often presented as "physics" today appears to be more influenced by religious doctrine than scientific inquiry. This is sad and makes a mockery of many smart people who did not want to think religiously but were nevertheless corralled in that direction.

Einstein's theories will eventually be fully recognized as just a fashion of the elites, while the contributions of Epicurus will continue to endure.

Quote from BrainToBeing

The leaders in EpicureanFriends have devoted great time to the study of perspectives derived 2000 years ago. So, the question: How does this devotion lead you to life perspectives for today that you could not derive from similar effort to examining the world today?

This is not meant or intended to be a challenge. It is not that at all. Rather, it is a question about how the philosophical frameworks of two millennia ago are the same or different from today.

I'm listening to episode 200 of the podcasts. And, I've gotten "On The Nature of Things". And, I am ready to dive into The Letter to Menoeceus. But, before "going down the rabbit hole" I'm wondering if any of you can reflect on this issue of bringing "then" to "now". Thanks to any who wish to jump in. ( Joshua You referenced the concept of such application in Episode 200).

BrainToBeing I completely accept that you do not intend this to be a "challenge." However I think the way you are conveying this question indicates something important about the way you are approaching the entire question. Of what necessary relevance is it to the question of whether a particular idea is correct whether it is 2000 years old or 2 minutes old. If you are being frustrated by the lack of connection on your questions and answers, I think the frustration stems in part from that: philosophy does not generally base its view of whether something is correct based on how long the idea has been around.

I grant you in clinical practice times change fast, and one day's scientist is often the next day's quack. But the general definition of "what is a quack" does not change by year.

It appears to me that you have done little reading so far into either the texts themselves or to the well-reasoned commentaries (DeWitt, primarily, in this context, though I would include Austin as well).

You seem to be evaluating solely on the basis of "what is the latest science" which is totally understandable for a clinician, but is not "philosophy."

If I am in a car accident and I need surgery for broken bones, then I want the best clinician with the latest medical information that I can find.

But if I am suffering from an existential crisis of anxiety over whether I am going to hell when I die or whether a supernatural god will punish me for being "evil" or whether there are ideal absolutes by which I should live, a "clinician" is going to be of no use whatsoever. Certainly at some times certain people struggle with such issues because they have biological or chemical issues, and a clinician is needed to being their functioning ability back to "the norm." But in the general cases that we are dealing with, where bodily health issues are not in questions, a clinical approach is never going to answer the questions that we really want to know.

My strong advice is that rather than reading any of the letter or the more specific material, you get into the DeWitt book, and let him introduce you to the full spectrum of issues that Epicurus was addressing. DeWitt is exactly tuned toward addressing the "big picture" that you are looking for so you can accept or reject it.

Epicurus' starting point was that he wanted to understand how the world could have come into being from nothing, and he rejected the idea that his teachers - the "clinicians" of his day - taught him.

You may or may not personally profit from Epicurus' approach, and if you don't need it then I applaud you for being so unaffected by the deeper philosophical issues. But the clinical approach can't resolve these questions for the ordinary man on the street, and the general direction toward addressing them has to come through a philosophy that deals with issues of what "should be" (which Epicurus holds should be based on what "is"), and not on an arbitrary selection of a goal through a clinical approach that never gets to the heart of what "should be" in the first place.

I understand that there are all sorts of ways to frame questions of how to get from what "is" to what "ought to be" in our own lives. Epicurus gives us one coherent approach that we can accept and reject, but in Epicurus' case his opinions being 2000 years old are a feature - because they have stood the test of time - rather than a fault.

In my case it was the other way round. I did not decide to become an Epicurean but eventually found out that I was an Epicurean without knowing it:
Since adolescence, I explored many kinds of books for wisdom, especially plays and novels, and thought a lot on my own. Since ditching Christianism as a young adult, I read philosophical texts occasionally but without much learning from them at first. I developed my own ideas as I saw fit for the present and near future with acknowledgement of history and the epistemology of science in mind. Rather by chance, I read Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations" and found in there a lead to Epicurus for a personal issue on which I was undecided and which seemed not to have much to do with philosophy. This lead prompted me to read translations of Epicurus' extant texts. I discovered that what I had thought was my own eclectic mixture on how to understand the world and live in it was much more systematically and coherently included in Epicurus' philosophy. I had implicitly and unknowingly been an Epicurean for decades. E.g. I had developed hedonic calculus (without knowing that term at that time) as an adolescent on my own (or possibly just without recognizing from where I got the ideas for it) and had always used it to make major decisions since then.
After reading Epicurus' extant texts, I searched for discussion groups to dig deeper into Epicurus' philosophy and found and joined Cassius' groups on Facebook and here.

These last several posts deserve a thread of their own, and I think the best place for this (and the thread about what things have changed in the last 2000 years) will be the "Epicurean Philosophy vs Scientism" subforum. So moving there now....

Quote from BrainToBeing

And, it is not my intent to be a disruptive iconoclast.

I don't think that anyone here thinks you are a disruptive iconoclast. It's a pleasure and a privilege to communicate with professionals like yourself about your areas of expertise. You have already pointed up a series of important questions on which we need to be able to think through Epicurus' positions and better shape our own. If you are able to find the time to talk with us further after you read some of the core "philosophy" through DeWitt, I am sure your commentary would be even more beneficial to the forum than what you've already brought.

Quote from BrainToBeing

For example, based on beliefs extant at the time, two thousand years ago humans sacrificed other humans, and many animals, "to the gods". I think it is important that we have a different view now.

Ah, there's an important distinction. NOT ALL humans two thousand years ago sacrificed other humans, only some of them did. And there are plenty of abuses going on today that people 2000 years ago could hardly have imagined. So it's not the time element alone, or even dominantly, that is the issue.

Quote from BrainToBeing

I think it is important to consider what we have learned philosophically in the last 2000 years.

Not many people are going to agree on what, if **anything** has been learned "philosophically" in the last 2000 years. Lots of ink has been spilled for sure, but has the conversation really progressed in substance since the Greco-Roman debates of 2000 years ago? I think a considerable number of people would argue that philosophy has *regressed* since that time. And that's the kind of question that needs to be addressed. Is spilling ink and chasing rabbits really progress showing that certain things have been learned? The big questions of life seem to remain the big questions of life from age to age.

As just to be clear, I think it is very helpful that you are posing these questions in the way you do. Not everyone is going to arrive at the same answers, but these are challenges that have to be considered and dealt with for any community to have confidence in its reason for being.

Epicurus And His Philosophy : Epicurus : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Epicurus And His Philosophy

archive.org

Dewitt's book is available to read on Internet Archive.

Quote from BrainToBeing

[legend='Admin Edit','#ad1d28'

So, the question: How does this devotion lead you to life perspectives for today that you could not derive from similar effort to examining the world today?

[...] it is a question about how the philosophical frameworks of two millennia ago are the same or different from today.

For me, the answer is theology.

Regarding physics, we are all (in my not so humble opinion) already Epicureans, whether we realize it or not. As long as we carry universal miniature computers in our pockets that triangulate our positions with respect to the curvature of spacetime, and as long as we are relying on technologies like MRIs to diagnose brain disease, then, without question, we have, as a culture, adopted Indeterministic Atomism.

Regarding epistemology, I make an argument in a paper published by the Society of Friends of Epicurus that suggests that (with our without Epicurus), we would still be navigating the waters of reality with raw sensations, with sensual impressions, and with a sense of feeling. Our scientific enterprise is fundamentally grounded in Empiricism: https://epicureandatabase.wordpress.com/2020/01/17/on-…leasure-wisdom/

Regarding ethics, we might (culturally) sway between uncompromising declarations of moral purity and fleeting devotion to popular virtues, but, at the end of the day, whether it's national defense or just a consumer trying to live on a budget, we are pursuing the pleasant life. We might be influenced by Puritans, but even the Puritans had to submit to the natural will of Winter that required an ethics of Consequentialism.

Theology, however, was a chasm for me, and the teachings of Epicurus provided me with the tools I needed to cross that chasm (if you'll excuse the clunky metaphor). For most of my life, I was, first and foremost, a critic of Christianity; by extension, Abrahamic religion; and, specifically (as I came to find) a critic of the very unique proposition of an immanent, benevolent, omnipotent, omniscient creator. Overall, I identified as an atheist.

Through a study of Epicurean Philosophy, I came to acknowledge that the human impulse to practice piety is natural, and that the idealization of role models as deities is an equally natural practice that we observe in disconnected human societies. As a result, my position of atheism only really addresses the Judeo-Christian-Islamic god, but failed to engage the idea of non-Immanent, non-Creator (and other conceptions).

So, without Epicurus, I would still be a critical atheist that reduced anyone's expression of religiosity to a delusion of the mind, or an uneducated misunderstanding of psychology. Now, I accept that theism (when grounded in atomism) is a perfectly coherent and useful position.

Quote from Nate

Quote from BrainToBeing

[legend='Admin Edit','#ad1d28'

So, the question: How does this devotion lead you to life perspectives for today that you could not derive from similar effort to examining the world today?

[...] it is a question about how the philosophical frameworks of two millennia ago are the same or different from today.

For me, the answer is theology.

Regarding physics, we are all (in my not so humble opinion) already Epicureans, whether we realize it or not. As long as we carry universal miniature computers in our pockets that triangulate our positions with respect to the curvature of spacetime, and as long as we are relying on technologies like MRIs to diagnose brain disease, then, without question, we have, as a culture, adopted Indeterministic Atomism.

Regarding epistemology, I make an argument in a paper published by the Society of Friends of Epicurus that suggests that (with our without Epicurus), we would still be navigating the waters of reality with raw sensations, with sensual impressions, and with a sense of feeling. Our scientific enterprise is fundamentally grounded in Empiricism: https://epicureandatabase.wordpress.com/2020/01/17/on-…leasure-wisdom/

Regarding ethics, we might (culturally) sway between uncompromising declarations of moral purity and fleeting devotion to popular virtues, but, at the end of the day, whether it's national defense or just a consumer trying to live on a budget, we are pursuing the pleasant life. We might be influenced by Puritans, but even the Puritans had to submit to the natural will of Winter that required an ethics of Consequentialism.

Theology, however, was a chasm for me, and the teachings of Epicurus provided me with the tools I needed to cross that chasm (if you'll excuse the clunky metaphor). For most of my life, I was, first and foremost, a critic of Christianity; by extension, Abrahamic religion; and, specifically (as I came to find) a critic of the very unique proposition of an immanent, benevolent, omnipotent, omniscient creator. Overall, I identified as an atheist.

Through a study of Epicurean Philosophy, I came to acknowledge that the human impulse to practice piety is natural, and that the idealization of role models as deities is an equally natural practice that we observe in disconnected human societies. As a result, my position of atheism only really addresses the Judeo-Christian-Islamic god, but failed to engage the idea of non-Immanent, non-Creator (and other conceptions).

So, without Epicurus, I would still be a critical atheist that reduced anyone's expression of religiosity to a delusion of the mind, or an uneducated misunderstanding of psychology. Now, I accept that theism (when grounded in atomism) is a perfectly coherent and useful position.

Display More

I'm happy to see that the religious aspect of Epicureanism is taken seriously on this forum, even if not everyone subscribes to it. It was clearly important to the classical Epicureans. I remember when I was on that Epicurean email list in the late 90's, Epicurean theology was dismissed by almost all the participants as a ruse to avoid persecution and attempts to talk seriously about it mostly ran into scorn.

Quote from Eggplant Wizard

Epicurean theology was dismissed by almost all the participants as a ruse to avoid persecution and attempts to talk seriously about it mostly ran into scorn.

As long as I am administrator of this group that (attempts to talk seriously about Epicurean theology running into scorn) will not happen here! If anything gets quashed, it's going to be insistence that Epicurean theology was a cop-out, because that's an insult to Epicurus personally and that's not something that "friends of Epicurus" should stand by and accept. No doubt it will pop up now and then especially with newer people, but if a gentle reminder to cut it out isn't sufficient then stronger action will be taken.

One thing we need to be able to agree on is that we are going to take seriously what the Epicureans discussed. We don't have to agree with all, but the forum isn't going to be a place for personal ridicule on theology or images or any other issue where we might disagree with the Epicureans. You can't understand what they were thinking as a whole until you take the parts seriously. They were doing the best they could, and they succeeded a surprising amount of the time. Even when they may have been in error, there is much to be learned from their thought process in getting to their position.

Quote from Eggplant Wizard

It was clearly important to the classical Epicureans.

It absolutely was, and by ridiculing they are foreclosing themselves from the benefits of understanding the full Epicurean point of view, agree with it or not.

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

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.