Posts by Cassius

Pacatus I strongly suspect anything you write would be ok, but maybe you could send a sample to Joshua and he could share with the other moderators.

I am trying to think ahead to what implications might arise. One distant glimmer of a concern I have is just for the size of the forum data. Surely poetry would be largely text, but in the distant future I can see people wanting to share other types of art that are more space intensive (music, artwork) and for that I would encourage placing the material somewhere else and just posting links here. There are reliable websites where things can be stored (like Archive.org) and then links posted here.

In general I think we want to help "our people" share their work in whatever there interest is, and for that we can collaborate on suggestions as to how to do that.

But my first thought is as above - send the proposed material to Joshua (he is the poetry expert among our moderators), and he can share with the others.

Yes Epicurus.net was always the place I turned to first for the core text, and I regularly still use it for that since the page loads so fast. And I remember the links you refer to as to the Austrian economics. Discussion of some aspects of that would probably run against our no-politics rule but some of it would be ok as philosophical. However going too far there now would derail this thread so if someone is interested in that probably best to start a new thread in the general ethics section.

Wow. That's a good reason to develop our own summary and not refer to that one!

I gather that it would probably be more clear how all this developed if we had a more clear article on how Antiochus Epiphanies was specifically Epicurean rather than just generic Greek. And the key there would be his advisor (whose name escapes me at the moment) who was specifically Epicurean. All I have ever seen written up on this was on the Epicurus.net website on their history page under the section about the Judeans.

Epicurean History

Wow that looks right on point -

JOURNAL ARTICLE

"Know What to Answer the Epicurean": A Diachronic Study of the ʾApiqoros in Rabbinic Literature

Jenny R. Labendz

We definitely want to encourage everyone who has a particular interest in a topic or historical figure, and to assist with that we've set up a dedicated page with links to "Active Research Projects." This kind of thing lends itself particular to topics like Cyrano de Bergerac and William Shakespeare that have been suggested recently, but the list might also include other types of topics, depending on who is interested in what. Hopefully this will make it easier for those who take the lead in a project to find "helpers" who can contribute in their spare time. There's now a prominent button for this on our front page which takes you to the page.

Let's use this thread to discuss what additional topics should be listed. If you think of something that's a good candidate please add to the thread below and please include the link to the existing (or new) thread discussing the topic.

Thanks very much!

Active Research Projects - Epicureanfriends.com

www.epicureanfriends.com

Aside: I find this subject fascinating, but sometimes I too wonder if we are chasing rabbits down holes where we have no business going.

But then I look back at Epicurus saying explicitly in the letter to Pythocles that these exact subjects should be included in basic studies so as to escape from superstition, so I think we're doing the right thing.

[116] ... All these things, Pythocles, you must bear in mind; for thus you will escape in most things from superstition and will be enabled to understand what is akin to them. And most of all give yourself up to the study of the beginnings and of infinity and of the things akin to them, and also of the criteria of truth and of the feelings, and of the purpose for which we reason out these things. For these points when they are thoroughly studied will most easily enable you to understand the causes of the details. But those who have not thoroughly taken these things to heart could not rightly study them in themselves, nor have they made their own the reason for observing them.

Quote from Bryan

yet nevertheless states that there are “parts of which no one on the planet understands,”

Giving Tong (the presenter) the benefit of the doubt (that the person who suggested that part of the equation understood what he was suggesting) to me this emphasizes how necessary it is to understand the limits of the equation rather than oversell it. In the end, can you take that overall equation and actually do anything with it other than perhaps predict the output of some experiment that you've developed in parallel with the equation? It's not like being able to conceptually state the equation is equivalent to an incantation that can bring something into being from nothing. In the end you are always working from what was there already to change it, not bringing something into being from nothing.

Quote from Bryan

After all, who will choose to seek what he can never find?

This is a line that strikes me as super-important every time I read that. I remember years ago in a Facebook discussion someone made the comment "But yeah, people do that all the time," and he was probably right that they do, at least in a way. But in most cases sane people don't keep searching for things that they know they can never find, and that's where the philosophical point comes in that you have to have an opinion about whether something really exists or not before you decide to invest your life into looking for it. And it seems to me pretty important to start off at the very beginning of this discussion finding some common ground and being clear about the playing field. People like Tong and those who are persuaded by Epicurus are confident that natural answers exist which could answer the questions if we had further details, and so we go on pursuing those details. But that presumption that there is a natural answer is a big one, and can't be left to implication.

Quote from Bryan

how can the empty be represented? What then are they?... for films which are so subtle and lack the depth of a solid constitution cannot possibly possess these faculties.”

Yep. That's a visual description of the disconnect. No way that they video of the globs moving around is what most people would understand by the term "empty."

Quote from Bryan

I feel that the explanation the presenter repeats -- basically the endorsed explanation since the world wars -- simply takes pre-suppositions from other schools, which are contrary to our school, and then labors to argue that recent experiments and technological advances prove their pre-suppositions correct.

Yep. I don't see a reason why most of what is being said could not be stated in traditional "universe means everything" and "nothing means nothing" terms. It's as if somewhere along the line someone decided to intentionally shift the traditional meanings of the words explicitly to undercut the Epicurean interpretation of an eternal and infinite universe. In fact the more I think about it, what possible "good" reason was there to shift the meaning of "universe" and "nothing" *other than* to distance themselves from the ultimate conclusions?

Quote from thatchickinpa

My point is not to convince you or anyone else to accept the Big Bang as true.

This might be understood in what you are saying, but I would say that I wouldn't entertain any doubt that our "corner of the universe" came to be as a result of an explosion from a central location. To the extent that is what big bang implies, I would be fine with it as I would not challenge the idea that the data shows everything in our observation expanding. (I am not aware of anyone challenging that part.)

The points in dispute would be whether what exploded came from nothing, and whether the universe as a whole is indeed unbounded, such that these big bangs are infinite in number and going on eternally, expanding and then collapsing without end.

Quote from Don

For me, the idea that the particles that make me are ripples on a cosmic ocean, connecting me to every other thing in the universe, is awe-inspiring in the best way.

I'm not disagreeing at all, just this thought occurs to me --- does an analogy of ripples on an ocean have any different emotional impact or philosophical implication than the particles in space analogy?

What about the entire structure of the use of "atoms" as the basis for regularity in the processes of nature. We've been talking about the field theory in terms of nothing from nothing, but is it any more difficult to also construct from the field theory the basis for the regularity at which we see the world proceed without the direction of any gods?

I suspect there's no real difference, but worth a thought probably.

Happy Birthday Onenski! It's good to realize that some of us have many more to look forward to than do others like me! (that's a joke - just an age reference )

Happy Birthday to Onenski! Learn more about Onenski and say happy birthday on Onenski's timeline: Onenski

Quote from Don

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.

Just watched it and Don's summary is good. Bottom line of his talk is that the latest theories don't talk in terms of "particles" anymore but rather "fields" - though as the lecturer demonstrates, it's easy to fall back into using the word particle because of the way fields tend to clump together. But in the end whether particle or field, most fair-minded people I think would consider a field to be "something," and thus as Don says the cosmos doesn't come from nothing, but from the underlying structure of the infinite universe.

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.

To be clear again I really enjoy watching presentations like this given by people who are obviously enthusiastic about them. But there's a line between this and philosophy that makes the latter a better contender for "Queen of the Sciences."

It seems to me that Epicurus had a great respect for "science" in the way that this lecturer is pursuing it, but he also kept it in perspective as not sufficient for determining how to live one's life. That seems to me to be the right balance.

Quote from thatchickinpa

The observable universe means something different than "the universe", and the former is usually what is meant when people talk about it. Is it the former that is referred to in this essay?

To me that's the key to almost all the issues in these debates. The chasm seems to be that for most of 2000 years when people talked in educated circles about "universe" they meant "Everything" and not "what we can observe."

In this presentation around the 45 minute mark that's where this really pops up. He starts talking about "universe" and seems to be referring to "observable universe" though the terminology to a layman is still as it was 2000 years ago - universe means everything.

I don't mean to sound like Cicero criticizing Epicurus, because it's perfectly acceptable to re-define your terms if you are going to be clear about it.

But for example in Don's video, it appears to me that he's talking to an audience of educated laymen. Educated laymen don't need to be misled by suggesting to them that "everything" is 13.8 billion years old.

It seems to me that the decision to talk in one of these terms or the other is itself a huge philosophical issue and needs to be answered philosophically if you're going to be clear and dedicated to the "truth," rather than simply being caught up in the excitement of your own pleasurable exploration of the latest theories.

I am watching Don's quantum fields video and I am reminded almost immediately that:

1 - Theoretical physicists tend toward the long-winded, no matter how excitedly they talk.

2 - The allusions to all the many experts who came before him in the same room and in front of the same table is a stark reminder that all of them "proved" to be "wrong" in the eyes of him in the early 2000's. Would a layperson be wrong in concluding that this presentation proves that it is impossible to be "right" in physics? And if it is impossible to have confidence in any conclusion in physics, what does that say about confident in anything else? This is not a difficult point to see, so what is the answer that this and similar speakers expect to be understood by their listeners?

3 - Does not that every-changing series of positions on physics amount to a practical philosphical position that it is impossible to be right?

4 - Putting aside the conclusions that I presume he will eventually reach, what does that mean for the many generations of people who lived and died before him? Were the benighted and lost in ignorance and suffer wasted lives because they did not have the opportunity to hear his presentation at Cambridge?

5 - Why do I keep thinking about the movie "Agora" and the Pythagoreans plotting the movements of the stars and planets just before the religious mobs broke in to destroy the science/library buildings and kill Hypatia herself? Would Epicurus, had he lived long enough, cited Agora as an example of how it is not important that we know "everything" but rather enough to be sure that there are rational non-supernatural explanations of things that allow us to live happily? Is it not all too possible that the disconnect between theory and practicality is a continuing problem, and that the halls of Cambridge will one day suffer the same fate as the library at Alexandria?

6 - Doesn't this also ring of the story of Polyaenus, who saw Epicurus' point and turned at least a part of his attention to the important of living happily, rather than making the study of geometry (or math, or whatever it was) an end in itself?

7 - Surely as his excited voice shows, there is a lot of pleasure in studying theoretical physics, and I presume all of us here share that to at least some degree. It would be pretty weird of an internet-based forum not to appreciate science, and I think we have a healthy respect for it. But is the dogged pursuit of ever-smaller particles while leaving unexamined the impact that has on society (at the very least, ourselves and our friends) pretty much the equivalent of "sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll" in regard to its ultimate impact on our "health" if we pursue it without regard to wider issues?

8 - Can it really be true that someone like this speaker can divorce his scientific theories from the impact that they have on himself and his friends? Does get around to addressing that by the end of the presentation?

These are things that occur to me in the intervals of constant interruptions that have prevented me from finishing yet!

Quote from Don

Are you looking for Epicureans expounding ways in which they are misrepresented or misunderstood...

The other one I meant to include was Lucretius early in book one complaining about the misrepresentations of the priests about life after death. So what I am really focusing on is that the Epicureans included identified specific references to people who they not only thought were wrong, but who they thought were affirmatively trying to mislead. And I think their criticism of Socrates probably fits in that same category.

These are great questions and no I did not mean to imply that Krauss himself suggested a supernatural explanation, so I do need to clarify that. I read his book and watched his debate with Richard Dawkins on youtube so that's why his name is prominent in my mind.

Here's a list that I wanted to make for a podcast episode. If anyone can suggest more similar warnings from one of the authoritative Epicureans, please add to the list. I feel like there is something specific that could be included as to Socrates, but I don't have that at hand.

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus:

[131] When we say, then, that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality, as we are understood to do by some through ignorance, prejudice, or wilful misrepresentation.

Lucretius, Book One:

[635] Wherefore those who have thought that fire is the substance of things, and that the whole sum is composed of fire alone, are seen to fall very far from true reasoning. Heraclitus is their leader who first enters the fray, of bright fame for his dark sayings, yet rather among the empty-headed than among the Greeks of weight, who seek after the truth. For fools laud and love all things more which they can descry hidden beneath twisted sayings, and they set up for true what can tickle the ear with a pretty sound and is tricked out with a smart ring.

Torquatus, On Ends, Book One:

XIII. Those who place the Chief Good in virtue alone are beguiled by the glamour of a name, and do not understand the true demands of nature. If they will consent to listen to Epicurus, they will be delivered from the grossest error. Your school dilates on the transcendent beauty of the virtues; but were they not productive of pleasure, who would deem them either praiseworthy or desirable?

Here is an imperfect transcription of the article by Cyrano. If possible, Cyrano, can you give us more about the background of when you wrote this, etc?

BIG BANG OR BIG FARCE?

After all the blather about Big Bang, Big Bang, a burning question still consumes me: can it really have happened that way? Did the entire vast universe of pulsars and quasars, of neutron stars and supernova, of galaxies – billions and billions of galaxies each with billions and billions of stars – did all this originate from a single explosion the size of a pinpoint? No, not even a pinpoint! Not a point or a thing at all but “a tiny bubble of spacetime a billion- trillion-trillionth of a centimeter across.”

And this infinitesimal bubble “popped spontaneously into existence out of a pure vacuum as the result of a random quantum fluctuation.” That is to say our vast and immeasurable universe came from NOTHING! Well, I myself am nothing - nothing that is, in the way of a physicist, astronomer or cosmologist. But I am intensely interested in this question as a lover of truth – as a philosopher. For that is what the word philosophy means: ‘love of wisdom.’

And as such I echo Sir Arthur Eddington who said “Philosophically the notion of a beginning of the present order is repugnant to me. I simply do not believe the present order of things started off with a bang. The expanding Universe is preposterous.”

Let us make no mistake about what the big bangers are saying. Astrophysicists Fang Li Zhi and Li Shu Xian, in an article entitled “Creation of the Universe” (World Scientific, 1989) certainly make it absolutely clear: “The Time and space, they tell us, did not exist before the big bang. The universe emerged out of a “singularity” they say, a situation in which the laws of physics as we know them do not apply. None of the laws of science pertain. No, not the most fundamental law of science, the conservation of matter, the law which states that matter cannot be created nor destroyed but simply changes form incessantly. No, not even relativity is relevant, and it is relativity theory after all that big bangers employ for their mystifying hypothesis.

evolution of the universe from nothing is described by the big bang theory.”

What can this mean? The laws of science fail at the big bang and it is not possible to know what happened - or if anything at all happened - before it. Think of it: We must accept an absolute limit on our knowledge, on our understanding of how the world works. We must not question: time began with the big bang and all questions about time before the big bang - before there was time! - are pointless. We may not speak of a cause of the Big Bang – it is impossible, impermissible.

Where have we heard this before? Have not we heard theologians claim that God created the universe, and when we ask them who created God, they arrogantly answer that such questions are beyond mortal minds?

In 1981 at a cosmology conference organized in the Vatican scientists were told that it was permissible to scrutinize the progression of the universe after the big bang, but they should not look into the big bang itself because that was the instant of Creation and hence the act of God.

Yes, the Catholic Church gets a big kick out of the big bang. As far back as 1951 Pope Pius XII declared that the Big Bang confirms the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, the dogma that the universe was created out of nothing.

We rightly deplore attempts of religionists to warp the great channel of evolution into the dead end of ‘intelligent design’. And yet the big bang is just such a perverting project.

The big bang is the big daddy of intelligent design: it is creationism pure and simple. A universe created in an instant is the work of a creator. The big bang is just old religious creationism all dressed up in sophisticated scientific gear.

“What is the ultimate solution to the origin of the Universe? The answers provided by the astronomers are disconcerting and remarkable. Most remarkable of all is the fact that in science, as in the Bible, the world begins with an act of creation” - this from astronomer Robert Jastrow in Until the Sun Dies, 1977.

Cosmology today is all enmeshed with religion. Theologians, physicists, novelists, all tell us that big bang theory bears witness to a Christian creator. In the New York Times Book Review (February 1989), we are informed in a front-page article that because of the big bang scientists and novelists are reverting to God.

Does big bang creation differ from biblical creation? No, only in the number of years! The Bible claims that creation took place about 4000 years BC, and the big bang asserts that creation occurred about 15 billion years ago. The whole thing reeks of religion! They say the big bang left a background radiation. I say their Big Bang left a Big Stink: God FARTED and that was the Big Bang.

And so philosophically the big bang is not acceptable. But it is also unacceptable scientifically. It actually spells the death of science. Science is nothing unless it discovers the causes of empirical events. To nothing less than the ultimate repudiation of causality is where the big bang takes us.

The big bang is not a theory for atheists but for theists. A knowledgeable atheist is a scientific materialist: matter and energy exist forever and ever with no beginning and no end, constantly changing, moving, evolving... Why cannot the material universe exist from all eternity? Why not indeed! Because it is heresy to believe so, Augustine warned us two thousand ago. Infinity, he argued, belongs only to the deity; it is forbidden to the material universe. To say that the material universe is unlimited is to mistake the essential distinction between nature and God. It eliminates the need for God. Yes, Augustine sure knew whereof he spoke!

It would be amusing were it not so tragic that so many people have a problem with an infinite material universe but have no difficulty at all in accepting a god existing in eternity. Isn’t the one as easy to imagine as the other? No, in fact the material universe is far easier to come to terms with than futile attempts to grasp a ghost.

The philosophical objections to the big bang are colossal, but let us turn to strictly scientific objections. “The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed - inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples.” So states an “Open Letter to the Scientific Community” (signed by over 300 scientists and others) and published in New Scientist, May 22, 2004.

“The successes claimed by the theory’s supporters,” it continues, “consist of its ability to retrospectively fit observations with a steadily increasing array of adjustable parameters, just as the old Earth-centered cosmology of Ptolemy needed layer upon layer of epicycles.”

“In cosmology today doubt and dissent are not tolerated, and young scientists learn to remain silent if they have something negative to say about the standard big bang model. Those who doubt the big bang fear that saying so will cost them their funding.” The entire statement can be read at cosmologystatement.org

So vehement is opposition to anyone who criticizes the big bang that a madman reviewing Eric Lerner’s book, The Big Bang Never Happened: A Startling Refutation of the Dominant Theory of the Origin of the Universe, wrote that his work “deserves to be burned.”
For my part I will burn at the stake like Bruno but I will uphold as he did the concept of an infinite material universe. I will reverse Pascal’s Wager: I’ll bet my life on materialism. I will shout with Shakespeare in the thunderous tones of King Lear “Nothing will come of nothing!”

Something always comes from something. Where did the superclusters of galaxies come from? The moon orbits the earth, the earth orbits the sun, the sun travels around the Milky Way galaxy. Our galaxy circles around in a neighborhood of galaxies called a cluster, and a bunch of clusters rotate as a unit in a supercluster. A number of superclusters form a unit which in turn moves around its hub and this apparently goes on forever. In any case, supercluster complexes have been observed - huge sheets of galaxies called ‘great walls’ stretching over a billion light-years of space. They take hundreds of billions of years to form. But the pathetic big bang is only 15 billion years old. There is more in heaven and earth, dear big banger, than is dreamt of in your philosophy!

Yes, new objects are discovered constantly, larger and larger and further away, with absolutely no end in sight. Yet man, unable (or unwilling!) to comprehend a never-ending material universe will not take 'infinite' for an answer but must impose his ‘final limit’ on everything.

It is utter gibberish to chatter about the “creation of matter” – nonsense to talk about the “beginning of time.” Matter can neither be created nor destroyed and it exists through and only through time, space, and motion. The universe exists through all eternity, forever changing, moving, evolving... Matter and energy, energy and matter forever! A ‘beginning’ or an ‘end’ to the material universe? Every effort to find one will foolishly fail. And the big bang theory will fall before our earth makes ten more trips around the sun.

Quote from Novem

I'm not a physicist so I am not able to comment, but I can say that theoretical physics is very hard to understand, and very theoretical indeed.

Yes, very true, and we need people who really want to dig into these issues to help discuss them intelligently and persuasively.

But in the meantime, I am not going to let the Lawrence Krausses of the world bother me by injecting doubt as to the existence of a possible supernatural factor into my day to day life.

Am I supposed to believe that just maybe some miracle happened with no explanation at all, and that I need to rely on some quantum physicist about whom I know nothing personally and whose good faith and integrity I have no way to judge (and considerable reason to doubt) to tell me how to think about the ultimate issues of nature? I think not.