REMINDER: SUNDAY WEEKLY ZOOM - December 21, 2025 -12:30 PM EDT - Ancient Text Study: De Rerum Natura by Lucretius -- Meeting is open to Level 03 members and above.
Quote from DonEmily's consistent emphasis on "extravagant desires aren't bad" is refreshing!!
To further this comment: as I recall, she mentioned that the extravagant desires are where the real work of the philosophy is done. This line of thinking agrees with my thinking that these desires are the "sweet spot" of working with the philosophy, so that makes me happy 
There are some "moments," but she generally gets back to clarify them in good fashion.
Emily Austin's interview with The Next Big Idea podcast dropped today. It's a great interview and quite favorable to Epicurus. Rufus (the interviewer) mentions some other authors that he's interviewed on the podcast and that some of us have read, so I was quite pleased that he made the connections. Definitely check it out! 
The Next Big Idea - Wondery | Premium Podcasts
Also on Google podcasts, Apple podcasts, etc.
(unless there was a trend ancient poets adopted of heavily employing repetition as a rhetorical technique)
This is what I'm curious about, but totally ignorant. Any thoughts Joshua ?
Humphries does use "we" at line 112 (not 102). That doesn't bother me, though. It's in the midst of describing erroneous views of religion, and leading into the exposition on "nothing comes from nothing", where it's eventually made quite clear that everything is atoms and void.
Humphries:
"Our starting-point shall be this principle:
Nothing at all is never born from nothing
By the gods' will. Ah, but men's minds are frightened
Because they see, on earth and in the heaven,
Many events whose causes are to them
Impossible to fix; so, they suppose,
The gods'will is the reason. As for us,
Once we have seen that Nothing comes from nothing,
We shall perceive with greater clarity
What we are looking for, whence each thing comes,
How things are caused, and no "gods' will" about it.
There are also lots of images of Epicurus that turn up in a Google search of Lucretius 
I answered Melville, but I also like Humphries and Stallings. I tend to prefer the verse versions.
Looks like they probably got it from Wikipedia... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucretius
It also shows up here https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/de-la-nature…r-ce/1134766966
Here it says that this image is an engraving from a bust https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lucretius That might be the bust above, but if so it's not a good match to my eye.
Hard to say if the bust relates to the ring without some side views. The eyes are rather pronounced in each of them, though.
Here's another image. It's on this site https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/contributors/lucretius but I don't see any attribution.
Admin Edit: This thread was split off from an earlier thread concerning Epicurus' Birthday. In this case I left a copy of the posts in the original location, but let's use this thread to discuss "Astronomy Software." I've previously intended to post about "orreries" (and maybe that exists somewhere, and I just can't find it at the moment). At any rate there's plenty of precedent for Epicureans being interesting in the night sky, so we can talk here about software or other technology to assist in that.
For several years my son and I have looked at the moon most evenings that it's visible. This discussion of the lunar calendar has me intrigued as to what it might be like to tune in more closely to the lunar cycles as another way of being in nature. To that end, I found an app! Oh, the irony....
At any rate, Daff Moon gets my vote as an excellent tool. I've been using it for a few weeks now; my favorite features are a chart showing the phases of the moon, and a "sphere" feature that shows the sun and the moon in a simple 3D view in relation to the ground plane at my location. It has lots more: the sun, the planets, orbits, if those are of interest. Two thumbs up!
For several years my son and I have looked at the moon most evenings that it's visible. This discussion of the lunar calendar has me intrigued as to what it might be like to tune in more closely to the lunar cycles as another way of being in nature. To that end, I found an app! Oh, the irony....
At any rate, Daff Moon gets my vote as an excellent tool. I've been using it for a few weeks now; my favorite features are a chart showing the phases of the moon, and a "sphere" feature that shows the sun and the moon in a simple 3D view in relation to the ground plane at my location. It has lots more: the sun, the planets, orbits, if those are of interest. Two thumbs up!
The objections to "extravagant" are certainly valid. On the other hand, it has kind of a delightful, libertine quality to it by making an unnecessary pleasure, be it pink icing or a bit of ice cream, into a little celebration. It can be a reminder that pleasure is the goal, and to enjoy life.
Fascinating! It's for good reason that the poetry of DRN became the subject of study in antiquity, even when the core ideas were marginalized by its opponents. I regret that I never studied Latin: it almost seems worth taking up just to gain a fuller appreciation of the poem. Thanks Joshua for your posts!
So Epicurus was on to something: maybe (part of) the brain is in the chest 
Fascinating with respect to the Canon!
That all makes sense. Where I get a little mystified is with the epibolai of the dianoia as these seem to be more than a sensation. To me, it seems too obvious to consider that the way the images are received is a type of sensation: there wouldn't have been any disagreement with that unless there is something more involved. Would that thing be something between a sensation and a conscious thought, and would it have some function relating to, but different from, an anticipation? If so, understanding that could be illuminating.
FWIW, this from Epicurean Philosophy: An Introduction from the "Garden of Athens", page 144, kindle edition:
the reputable American Professor of Psychiatry and famous writer Irvin Yalom recently wrote: “The more I learn about this extraordinary Athenian thinker, the more strongly I recognize Epicurus as the first existential psychotherapist”
This thread and the Episode 155 thread are getting intertwined! I just posted there before reading the last couple of posts here. Here's the link to that post, so I don't duplicate it:
From the Hopkins Press article linked in Don 's post above: "In De Anima (Of the Soul) he [Aristotle] argues that, for every sense, there is a sense organ." It would seem that Epicurus was referencing this, and thinking of the brain as a sense organ when he wrote about images, dreams and knowledge of the gods. Centaurs and such were also perceived in this way by images getting jumbled in transit, as it were.
Our conception of the brain is far removed from this idea, and this makes it more difficult to understand the Canon as Epicurus intended it. Dreams, images and gods do originate from outside input. The difference between Epicurus and us is that we see such things as subconscious mental processes, processing external input from myths, legends and religion, often occurring in infancy and early childhood. Epicurus (to my understanding) describes such things as sensations that the brain experiences directly, with no processing involved.
However there's a further point about which I'm quite unclear. What exactly are epibolai? And what is meant by "grasping" and "focusing the attention"? The latter two, at least, sound to me like mental processes. Then my question is whether or not any Epicureans are including these mental processes in the Canon and why? This may have already been answered and I missed it in my befuddlement: if so, I apologize.
Not sure; I was reacting to the above posts. I'm pretty unclear as to the 4th criterion and the epibolai so I'm just trying to get my footing at this point. Also, as I recall epibolai have something to do with grasping (as in understanding?). Both dreams and intuitive leaps are mechanisms for grasping, to my thinking.
