Posts by Cassius

Over the next two episodes we'll be addressing Epicurus' big picture views of the universe from a practical point of view... which means: don't expect the last word in the last physics research from us. However, Epicurus had some very intelligent things to say about the universe not coming from nothing (this week) and being infinite in time and space (next week).

There are many youtube videos that cover these issues. Here are a few that talk about how the view that the universe started at a single point in time is by no means universal today:

Physics Videos Discussing Infinite Universe Possibilities:

1.1. Roger Penrose - Did The Universe Begin? https://youtu.be/OFqjA5ekmoY

1.2. Sean Carroll - Did the Universe Begin? https://youtu.be/FgpvCxDL7q4

1.3. Eternal Universe! The New Theory That Could Change the Way We Think about the Universe! https://youtu.be/_TGTcv894j4

1.4. PBS - What If The Universe DID NOT Start With The Big Bang? https://youtu.be/HRqBGnSxzyI

1.5. Celestium: Eternal Universe: The New Theory that Might Change the Way we Think About the Universe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28AstfdTiOA

1.6. Closer To Truth - What Would An Infinite Cosmos Mean? https://live-closer-to-truth.pantheonsite.io/video/what-wou…te-cosmos-mean/

Quote from Don

Epicurus posited many world-systems in an infinite All (universe). That's exactly what the texts provide.

... And that's exactly what I mean too when I say "the universe is all that exists." Any kind of terminology such as world systems or multiverses or anything else falls within "the universe is all that exists. " If it exists anywhere using any adjective, it's part of the "universe."

Quote from Don

By what means? Not being argumentative, just curious.

Probably by means not currently predictable by me, but I bet there are people who could suggest ready answers. Brain transplants would be a gross example, but i presume that the aging process has genetic control mechanisms which should be reversible. I'm rusty on my old Star Trek episodes and I am sure there are many more suggested mechanisms. But I don't see it as a stretch to say that there's nothing that happens to human bodies that shouldn't be reversible given advances in technology.

Probably we need a subsection of the physics forum devoted to life extension!

Thanks for letting us know about that GnothiSeauton, and I hope your post here will spur lots of discussion. And more thoughts from you on it as well.

The issue of how to deal with people who have firm pre-existing ideas about what Epicurean philosophy is all about, when those ideas turn out in fact to be an eclectic blend of Stoicism, Buddhism, humanism, and general "virtue-based-ethics," is never going to go away.

Those who are committed to those viewpoints don't understand that they are not Epicurean, and they are unlikely to be interested in changing them. As pointed out in A Few Days In Athens, argument over core ideas accomplishes little but disruption and bad feelings.

What we have tried to do here on the forum is be straightforward at the very beginning about core controversial issues. Hopefully no one who glances over the opening page or the new member materials will have any illusions - IF they read them.

The idea of any effort to force people to hold ideas with which they disagree would be absolutely anti-Epicurean, but at the same time freedom of thought doesn't mean that we have to ignore the thoughts of those who want to participate. There are many fundamental points of Epicurean philosophy involving controversial issues of determinism, skepticism, and the nature of what "absence of pain" really means that are non-negotiable if you're going to have a truly "Epicurean" group.

One point I always make is that there are plenty of other places on the internet, or meetup groups in the world, for those who want to study Buddhism or Stoicism or just want to do general riffing because they love to talk philosophy of any kind. It's my experience that trying to work with people who are commited to a generalist / eclectic / anything-goes approach rarely leads to anything truly beneficial and never lasts for long.

Every person and group has to decide for himself with whom they want to interact, but I think it's essential to have boundaries, and to be up-front and honest about where those boundaries are.

Here at the forum we have put a lot of time into refining our front page, our member rules documents, and our welcome messages about where those boundaries are. Those are there because it's a fact of life that Stoicism and Buddhism and humanism are much more popular than reading closely what Epicurus really wrote. And it's a fact of life that the prevailing view is that Epicurus was basically a Stoic or Buddhist who used different terminology. Therefore anyone who sets up any kind of "Epicurean" public endeavor has to expect that many who ask to participate are going to hold attitudes that are deadly to a "truly" Epicurean project.

So the first and most important comment I have is that your experiences are problems that we'll always be dealing with, but the rewards are worth dealing with them.

Quote from Pacatus

One of the considerations that seems to get shunted aside in discussions of the Epicurean gods (especially from a realist perspective, but also from an idealist one)

I agree that needs more attention. Many people seem to take it for granted that Epicurean gods equate to Zeus and his crowd, and I doubt very much that that is a good assumption at all.

Quote from Don

If you want to go down the physics route translated into a modern paradigm, I'm going to posit that the intermundia refers to another dimension or another universe in the multiplicity of universes out in The All. Gods are material and natural, but reside outside our universe under a different physics than our own. We cannot see them with our eyes, because our universe doesn't overlap with theirs. They are not aliens living on planets in our universe. That's just an assertion on my part, granted. But that's the only way I could right now "accept" a corporeal divinity in an Epicurean theological context.

I'd say your suggestions there are possibilities, but not really compelled at all by the texts. I would expect Epicurus thought of the universe as "all that exists."

Quote from Don

I find it much easier to think of the gods as what an ideal life would be like without the limits on mortal, corruptible bodies.

I think this indicates our difference in perspectives. I have no problem stipulating that it is possible within natural physics for a living being to find ways to completely replace its own atomic structure over time so as to not be subject to the necessity of death. In fact I'd find it much more difficult for me to argue that it's "impossible." Absent the standard possibilities of humanity blowing itself up etc., I'd wager we are me no more than a couple of hundred years from that ability ourselves, at the outside.

Sometimes the most contentious issues generate the most progress.

I would say that the construction "Whenever you find creatures that are living beings, blessed, and imperishable, ... you know for sure that those are not Epicurean gods." can be very useful if made more complete and clear.

I have added the ellipsis because I don't think it is clear what 'find' means, nor is it complete.

As to "find," much revolves around whether "images received by the mind" should be included within "find."

But the bigger issue I have is the completeness. The following variations that make the statement more complete I would say are clearly in harmony with Epicurus, and more practical to apply, especially as will be needed for application as we begin space travel and start finding alien life:

• Whenever you find creatures who appear to be living beings, blessed, and imperishable, and yet causing trouble for others or experiencing trouble themselves, you know for sure that those are not Epicurean gods.

Or -

• Whenever you find creatures who appear to be living beings, blessed, and imperishable, and yet suffering from pain disease or dying, you know for sure that those are not Epicurean gods.

But in contrast, to construct something that leads to "Whenever you find creatures who appear to be living beings, blessed, and imperishable, you know for sure that these are not gods" shifts the emphasis to a physics test, rather than one that follows the logical definition that Epicurus sets out in both Menoeceus and PD01.

In addition to being a physics test that is not clearly present in the texts, the latter construction rings of a dualism between gods and the rest of the universe. I know of no reason to infer that gods cannot come into contact with any non-god entity whatsoever under any circumstances. It seems clear that that was in part the reason for the discussion of the intermundia. To say that by definition they cannot have any contact with any other forms of matter would place them entirely outside the sphere of natural entities composed of atoms, which Epicurus seems to be working hard to keep them squarely within.

As to not making the gods a physics test, I would apply what David Sedley says about pleasure in "Epicurus' Refutation of Determinism" (my emphasis added):

By establishing that cognitive scepticism, the direct outcome of reductionist atomism, is self-refuting and untenable in practice, Epicurus justifies his non-reductionist alternative, according to which sensations are true and there are therefore bona fide truths at the phenomenal level accessible through them. The same will apply to the pathe, which Epicurus also held to be veridical. Pleasure, for example, is a direct datum of experience. It is commonly assumed that Epicurus must have equated pleasure with such and such a kind of movement of soul atoms; but although he will have taken it to have some explanation at the atomic level, I know of no evidence that he, any more than most moral philosophers or psychologists, would have held that an adequate analysis of it could be found at that level. Physics are strikingly absent from Epicurus’ ethical writings, and it is curious that interpreters are so much readier to import them there than they are when it comes to the moral philosophy of Plato or Aristotle.

In the meantime:

Wikipedia:

Determinism is the philosophical view that all events in the universe, including human decisions and actions, are causally inevitable.

-----

And of course much much more which we can't hope to dissect in detail in the opening article. The practical affect of the issue is whether a human being has any control over his or future at all, and I would say that that is what Epicurus was addressing by referring mostly to the term "necessity" but also dealing with "fortune" and "fate" as well.

Hello UnPaid_Landlord. How so? Happy to hear your thoughts.

You might find some at least partial response in our recent podcast and notes for Episodes 257 and 258.

Thread

Episode 257 - There Is No Necessity To Live Under Necessity - Part 1

Welcome to Episode 257 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world.

Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where we discuss this and all of our…

Cassius

November 18, 2024 at 2:06 PM

i discover I do have one more thing to add to this.

The statement "if they are detectable to humans then they are not gods" is very close to:

"Believe that a god is something you can never know anything about."

Then where would you be?

You would be at the point: "If you claim to know anything about a god then by definition then what you are talking about is not a god."

That might be a very neat word-play way of disposing with the entire idea of gods, but it would be more far-reachingly negative to the existence or usefulness of the concept of divinity than even the idealist view.

Note I am saying "very close to" and not "identical," but the difference in the positions would be in the finer points of the word "contact," and that's why I called attention to taking this too far.

Lucretius Book Six:

[68] And unless you spew out all this from your mind and banish far away thoughts unworthy of the gods and alien to their peace, the holy powers of the gods, degraded by thy thought, will often do thee harm; not that the high majesty of the gods can be polluted by thee, so that in wrath they should yearn to seek sharp retribution, but because you yourself will imagine that those tranquil beings in their placid peace set tossing the great billows of wrath, nor with quiet breast will you approach the shrines of the gods, nor have strength to drink in with tranquil peace of mind the images which are borne from their holy body to herald their divine form to the minds of men. And therefore what manner of life will follow, you may perceive.

Ok - let me go back to the opening post. The point of it (and the thrust of the article, I think) is that to even look for something you have to define what you are looking for. In this sense "look" refers to investigation to establish that something is real.

I can see that we have an ambiguity in what it means to find that something is real. Most of the time we are referring to the five senses to establish reality, but in this case Epicurus / Lucretius seem to be talking about direct receipt of images by the mind as the criteria by which we are motivated to think of them as real.

Most of the time images correspond to things that have physical reality. In the case of centaurs, he's apparently saying that images can arrange themselves and *not* correspond with reality. It's debatable whether gods fit into the category of centaurs or not. Idealists might say gods are in the centaur category and have absolutely no independent existence. Realists might say that gods do have an independent existence, but that existence is not in the form of what we think of as solid bodies, but in the form of "quasi-bodies" of apparently flowing atoms (referencing Velleius here).

As i read the thread now the essential point of controversy that Tau Phi is different from the point of the original post that you should define what you are investigating before you start your investigation.

Tau Phi is suggesting that the act of "finding" something by our having any perception of it whatsoever with any of our five senses by definition means that the perceived thing is not an Epicurean god.

In order to reach that conclusion, I would say that you would need to find a clear statement by an authoritative Epicurean that it is universally inherent in the nature of a god that a god cannot ever be perceptible to one of the human five senses.

(That gets back to the comment Kalosyni made earlier as to exactly what Epicurus said that gods re invisible. Did one of the key Epicureans make a clear statement that rules out an Epicurean god ever being visible under any conditions? If there is such a statement I can't call it to mind, and this issue could have caused the possibility of living in the intermundia to arise as a way to reconcile why they might be visible there but not visible to us here on earth.)

Here I would go back to the question of comparing our knowledge of gods to our knowledge of atoms. Throughout most of history we have had no capacity to sense an atom with any of our five senses, yet we would firmly believe that atoms exist. Do we also take the position that advances in technology will never make it possible through instrumentation to "see" an image of a "smallest" particle? I doubt there is a theoretical impossibility of -- through advanced science -- observing a visualization of an elemental particle.

In Epicurean philosophy as I understand it, "images" are like anything else - they are composed of elemental particles. If you take the David Konstan / traditional realist position that Epicurus meant what he said that gods are perceivable through images, then there is an atomic basis for gods just like anything else, and I would see no theoretical reason why that presence could not be detected at least through advanced instrumentation.

Further, I see no theoretical reason why, as the article indicates, that we should rule out finding living beings which are self-sustaining and successfully regenerate themselves indefinitely. The question of whether they would be detectable to our five senses if we were close enough to them physically is pretty much exactly what the article is all about.

It's not at all obvious to me that the simple act of our being able to "detect" them, like we do or will eventually detect atoms, would necessarily amount to their being "disturbed" by our act of being able to detect them. As it is already, I see no reason to infer that it is impossible for an Epicurean god to be aware of humans, even if we stipulate as we do that humans cause no "trouble" for gods. That would be parallel to our being able to visualize an atom through instrumentation -- visualizing an atom would not necessarily cause us any disturbance whatsoever.

To try to summarize at this point, the traditional realist view of Epicurean gods is that they have *some* kind of physical existence arising from atoms. "Atoms" are non-detectable to our unaided five senses, but I would expect that they either are already or will be detectable in the future via instrumentation. Certainly combinations of atoms frequently become visible and touchable to humans. The bottom line is that such observation is pleasurable and the additional pleasure that such knowledge brings makes it desirable.

To my knowledge there's nothing in the texts that rules out an analogy between combinations of atoms giving rise to other things that are theoretically detectable and combinations of atoms giving rise to gods.

To impose a flat rule that "if they are detectable to humans then they are not gods" seems to me to be going too far. To me, this imposes a limitation on the possibilities that I don't see good reason for in the texts. The texts, especially Lucretius, seem to refer to humans perceiving images of gods when asleep and even sometimes when awake, so to me the texts seem to me to go in the opposite direction.

Yes you have to be flexible in thinking about what "detection" really involves, but that's the very point of the article. it's helpful to think about how we look for things which we don't ordinarily perceive with our senses here on earth, because there are lots of such things that affect us.

Once we eventually find intelligent life in some other part of the universe, our failure to have detected their existence up to that point did not in any way mean that we should have ever presumed that they did not exist. We have had at least since the time of Epicurus very good reason to firmly expect that intelligent life outside earth exists. For the same reason, we have reason to expect that some of those life forms are imperishable and experience lives that fit Epicurus' definition of godlike. And our act of detecting them in some way doesn't necessarily violate our expectation that they are blessed and imperishable.

OK more than enough for the moment.....

Quote from TauPhi

I am responding to your parallel of looking for extraterrestrial life to looking for Epicurean gods. I am talking about active, physical pursuit of finding life (and gods) in the universe, not about an abstract deliberation on their existence or non-existence.

We definitely disagree on that. People in the past who were not able to go to the stars were limited in their knowledge, but had no need for regret about it, because they could not. People in the future can go to the stars and the Epicurean theories of life on other worlds and even divinity will have even more practical meaning than it does today. And the very thought that we should restrict ourselves from exploring space and learning more about the universe is antithetical to Epicurus' emphasis on studying nature as the best way to live happily. The best way to learn more about nature and our place in it will be to go to the stars. Not everyone will want to or be able to do that, but the idea of arguing against the desirability of doing so - for those who wish to - would be against the positive and even combative spirit of the ancient Epicureans.

Quote from TauPhi

And again I have to disagree with this, taking the Epicurean perspective into consideration. It doesn't matter how much progress we make. Even if we have technology to be everywhere at the same time in the universe, Epicurean gods are off limit to humans. This is non-negotiable. Otherwise, the idea of such gods collapses entirely and Epicurus is proven dead wrong in this area of his philosophy.

Again, we disagree. The texts are not clear that they are by nature non-sensible to us for all time, only that they are in the intermundia and/or for whatever reason they are not something we sense EXCEPT through prolepsis, and Epicurus is labeling that as "clear." So we disagree on this aspect -- totally - in taking it to the conclusion that any other intpretation would "collapse" the philosophy.

You're going further even than the "idealists" would go in stating that it would be "impossible" to gain additional knowledge about divinity.

Quote from TauPhi

The first part is about non-gods. The second part is about gods. They don't mix.

Again, I think we're just in fundamental disagreement here because you are maintaining that it is inherently impossible to gain additional knowledge in the future (after space travel) than we have today, and I think that's a fundamentally flawed perspective. We'll learn much more in the future about everything as we travel out into space, including what forms life may take in which it lives happily and imperishably.

This discussion is exactly what I thought might occur and I am glad to have the opportunity to explore it.

The biggest hurdle in Epicurean philosophy is to take seriously that Epicurus was using important words in different ways than the majority use them.

Pleasure IS the absence of pain literally and fully in Epicurean philosophy, because the feelings are defined to be one of two - either pleasure or pain, with no middle or third option. But most people are like Cicero, and that choice of wording just goes past them like water off a duck's back. Like Cicero, they insist on equating pleasure with sensual stimulation alone, and they refuse to include within pleasure other positive experiences of life that don't include sensory stimulation, so they have to get that definition out of their minds if they are going to understand Epicurus' position better than Cicero did.

The same thing is going on with gods. I am not going to assert why any one individual thinks the way they do, but I *will* assert that most every living being on the earth today has been conditioned to thing that "gods" are supernatural, omniscient, omnipotent, and all the other baggage that goes along with monotheism.

Epicurus was clearly breaking from that and saying that should define godhood as ONLY being happy and imperishable . That's why he could talk about being gods among men and not seem ridiculous, because he didn't for a minute entertain that there is anything supernatural about being a god. Being "imperishable" is somewhat allegorical, but even there there is allegory in surrounding yourself with "immortal" things like friendship.

It's possible Tau Phi that you have a unique perspective that makes you impervious to concerns about divinity, and again if that is so I applaud you for it. But you are in a small minority of people on earth if you are , and it was Epicurus' view that it was not sufficient to say "supernatural gods do not exist."

His direction clearly seems to be, "Supernatural gods do not exist, but the idea of "divinity" is not crazy at all, and there is good reason that people think about it." There's lots and lots of speculation that can be had about images and prolepsis and "why" Epicurus thought that people have legitimate concerns about divinity, and that's the kind of thing that this forum is setup to do -- to explore what Epicurus taught and then apply it as productively as possible. This is not one of those fringe areas of physics that is easy to admit that modern science has changed. This is a core area of human philosophy and psychology which is going to be with us as long as we are human.

And to repeat, even the "idealists" who reject the view that Epicurus thought his gods really existed appear to me to be essentially in agreement with how important a question this is. Having a proper perspective on divinity is a lot more than saying negatively "supernatural gods don't exist." It's an essential part of the picture to understand where the issue comes from and to have a positive position that relates to where we want to go in living as close to happily and imperishably as we can.

"The act of finding them establishes interference"

I can see where you might be coming from and I can see this being arguable in a limited context -- here on Earth --- but I don't think Epicurus would agree that there are truly hard and fast and definite limitations that prevent this from being so if we traveled through space.

If Epicurus had been asked to consider whether they could be sensed in some way after space travel (maybe he did like Lucian did, but we don't know) then I think he would have said that of course that would be conceivable. He said that there are infinite numbers worlds with life on them, some like and some unlike ours, and all his basic definition requires is that they be living, happy, and imperishable. All the rest about quasi-bodies and the like is pretty clearly labeled a derivative speculation based on reasoning which might or might not prove to be correct (as to size, shape, language, etc)

Quote from Kalosyni

There is nothing in Epicurean texts that says the gods are invisible.

Actually I think there is. It's pretty clear as I understand that texts that gods cannot be sensed through the five senses. Now if you want to call the "direct receipt of images by the brain" a sense then you can say that they can be sensed, but I think it's pretty clear that they are not visible to us. Perhaps that's one of the finer points of their being in the intermundia (very far away - too far to see them).

Quote from TauPhi

My point is, Epicureans should not engage in an attempt to actively seek a physical contact with their gods

Now if " PHYSICAL CONTACT" is the point you're making then we are in complete agreement, cause as I said to Kalosyni the texts are clear that they can't be seen or touched. But I read your comment as saying we should not "seek information" or "knowledge" about the gods. That would be directly contrary to core Epicurean views. I don't want to get too picky about language but let me go back and review the thread.

Here's the part i was responding to:

Quote from TauPhi

But the answer to your question about the hunt for gods, if those are Epicurean gods, is: "You don't." Epicurean gods do not interfere with human affairs. Whenever you find creatures that are living beings, blessed, and imperishable, you know for sure that those are not Epicurean gods. The act of finding them establishes interference, therefore whatever you have just found is definitely not Epicurean gods. Looking for such gods makes as much sense as trying to see an invisible elephant. If you see it, it's definitely not an invisible elephant.

So if you're clarifying that you mean don't "physically" hunt for them, then I'd agree, at least until we make further progress in space travel etc. But I read that as a dismissal of any concern about divinity whatsoever, and that position (don't concern yourself about gods at all) is simply not what Epicurus taught.

You're certainly entitled to your personal opinion on this topic, Tau Phi, but it's my responsibility to the website readers to point out that Epicurus felt dramatically differently, and I think - and apparently every dedicated Epicurean in recorded history thought - for very good reason.

If your life is not disturbed by the issue of gods then you are fortunate, but that is not the case for most of the world throughout history. Epicurean philosophy is based largely on developing a proper view of divinity as a response to those problems and is a very legitimate response.

The framing of this article reminds me of the relevant section of the letter to Menoeceus.

The question: "How do you look for alien life when you don't know what alien life might look like?"

Could be transposed as: "How do you look for gods when you don't know what gods might look like?"

And it seems to me that the only answer to that question is to start with a "definition" stating the essential attributes of the thing you think you are looking for. The article doesn't focus on addressing those in the case of "alien life," but it seems to me that what Epicurus is doing in regard to gods: his starting point is to define them as living beings, blessed, and imperishable, and saying that we reach that conclusion based on prolepses (which I think most of us presume relates to "images"). There's a lot more to say than that, but the point of this post is only to point out that you can't even discuss something without stating a clear picture of what you're talking about, and that problem is as apparent today (in this article) as it would have been to Epicurus.

Quote

We have only one example of biology forming in the universe – life on Earth. But what if life can form in other ways? How do you look for alien life when you don’t know what alien life might look like?

These questions are preoccupying astrobiologists, who are scientists who look for life beyond Earth. Astrobiologists have attempted to come up with universal rules that govern the emergence of complex physical and biological systems both on Earth and beyond.

I’m an astronomer who has written extensively about astrobiology. Through my research, I’ve learned that the most abundant form of extraterrestrial life is likely to be microbial, since single cells can form more readily than large organisms. But just in case there’s advanced alien life out there, I’m on the international advisory council for the group designing messages to send to those civilizations.

Extraterrestrial life may look nothing like life on Earth − so astrobiologists are coming up with a framework to study how complex systems evolve

How do you look for alien life when you don’t know what alien life might look like?

www.space.com

I personally am in the camp of those who think that Lucretius did his dead level best to transmit Epicurus faithfully. Therefore whenever Lucretius says something clearly then I would wager that it reflects what Epicurus taught. But f someone were to ask me for an example of a line in Lucretius that has the most potential for deviating from what Epicurus himself taught, this - especially the part I underlined - would be the line that I would put under the microscope:

Quote from Lucretius 2:216

But if they were not used to swerve, all things would fall downwards through the deep void like drops of rain, nor could collision come to be, nor a blow brought to pass for the first-beginnings: so nature would never have brought aught to being.

But before I were to reach the conclusion that this deviates from Epicurus' own views, I would first want to examine the Latin original to see whether there is any chance of a subtlety of translation or other way to reconcile it. I presume that this isn't a scholium addition since it's poetry, but I presume that is not likely due to it being in poem form.)

Certainly like everything else swerves would go back infinitely in time, so there would have been no "first" swerve. As Sedley says it doesn't seem likely that Epicurus would have looked to the swerve as the reason why atoms come together in bodies, but maybe there's something even subtler going on that would have led him to think that it did. I don't gather that the letter to Herodotus is clear as to what it was that causes atoms to "stick" together after their initial collisions? That doesn't seem likely either, but maybe he was developing a theory that whatever causes the swerve has other emergent effects as well.

Are there other alternatives? Maybe Epicurus simply developed the swerve theory later in life and the Herodotus letter was earlier, and never revised, as Sedley seems to think? This calls for creative thinking.

For reference as to Lucretius saying the swerve initiates collisions, and as to whether a collision resulting from a swerve was necessary to initiate world formation:

EPICURUS’ REFUTATION OF DETERMINISM - David Sedley
1. The Swerve
A few facts are, I hope, uncontroversial enough to be set out without defence. Epicurus inherited Democritus’ atomic system, but modified it in a number of respects. In particular, he so vehemently objected to its rigidly deterministic laws as to postulate a minimal. ‘swerve’... in the motion of atoms, occurring at no fixed place or time — a doctrine which does not feature, in his meagre surviving writings but is nonetheless amply attested as his; and defended on his behalf by Lucretius (II 216-93). The swerve (a) _enables atoms falling through space at equal speed in parallel lines to collide occasionally and initiate cosmogonic patterns of motion_; and (b) somehow or other serves as a necessary condition for the behavioural autonomy of animate beings — a power often identified as ‘free will’.

...

I do not propose to expend much discussion on the swerve's cosmogonical function (Lucretius II 216-42), which I suspect to be a problem dreamed up with a preconceived solution in mind. Chains of atomic collisions in extra-cosmic space could have quite adequately been explained by the lateral intrusion of one or more atoms from elsewhere, despatched, say, by the break-up of a nearby world. The question of how such collisions ever started in the first place would not arise, given the infinity of past time and past worlds. That is, indeed, the view strongly implied by the Letter to Herodotus and the Letter to Pythocles, the physical epitomes which Epicurus wrote when he had already worked out his main cosmological views in Books I-XIII of his On Nature. Since these two works also contain no hint of the swerve doctrine, the likelihood is that it was his later work on psychology, apparently in the closing books of the thirty-seven book magnum opus, that led him to the innovation, and that it was only then grafted onto the existing cosmological scheme.

Bailey Lucretius Book 2 -

[216] Herein I would fain that you should learn this too, that when first-bodies are being carried downwards straight through the void by their own weight, at times quite undetermined and at undetermined spots they push a little from their path: yet only just so much as you could call a change of trend. But if they were not used to swerve, all things would fall downwards through the deep void like drops of rain, nor could collision come to be, nor a blow brought to pass for the first-beginnings: so nature would never have brought aught to being.

[225] But if perchance any one believes that heavier bodies, because they are carried more quickly straight through the void, can fall from above on the lighter, and so bring about the blows which can give creative motions, he wanders far away from true reason.

For all things that fall through the water and thin air, these things must needs quicken their fall in proportion to their weights, just because the body of water and the thin nature of air cannot check each thing equally, but give place more quickly when overcome by heavier bodies. But, on the other hand, the empty void cannot on any side, at any time, support anything, but rather, as its own nature desires, it continues to give place; wherefore all things must needs be borne on through the calm void, moving at equal rate with unequal weights. The heavier will not then ever be able to fall on the lighter from above, nor of themselves bring about the blows, which make diverse the movements, by which nature carries things on. Wherefore, again and again, it must needs be that the first-bodies swerve a little; yet not more than the very least, lest we seem to be imagining a sideways movement, and the truth refute it. For this we see plain and evident, that bodies, as far as in them lies, cannot travel sideways, since they fall headlong from above, as far as you can descry. But that nothing at all swerves from the straight direction of its path, what sense is there which can descry?

At present I am not finding a thread devoted specifically to the question of whether the swerve was required to cause atoms to come together into bodies, as Lucretius seems to say. Absent another thread that probably needs to be incorporated here too, or at least linked to another thread on that topic if it exists, so I will adjust the title further.

The reason atomic motion came up in the 12/11/24 Zoom is that we were discussing images, and the question arose as to whether images should be considered to be bodies subject to the kind of effects of motion that we observe at the level of bodies (we observe that objects "fall") or whether images travel like atoms at uniform speed in any direction without being subject to "falling" as they travel.

Aside from general interest in the physics involved in Epicurus' view of the movement of atoms, the question arises whether the movement of atoms is related to the movement of images (which was the subject of the Usener section).

Atoms travel at uniform speed, but collide with each other and that affects their direction. Did Epicurus think something similar happens with images?

What issues, if any, related to the movement of atoms and images need to be considered in the processing of images by the mind?

Also by Bryan:


Regarding the direction of the atoms, here Epicurus says that they continue in whatever direction they are going, until they have an impact.