Posts by Joshua

Robert, you might be interested in a dialogue by Desiderius Erasmus called The Epicurean. That's not a great version of the text to read from, but unfortunately I'm not at home at the moment. Here's a seminal passage from a cleaner text:

Quote

[...] If they are Epicureans that live pleasantly, none are more truly Epicureans, than those that live holily and religiously. And if we are taken with Names, no Body more deserves the Name of an Epicurean, than that adorable Prince of Christian Philosophers; for Ἐπίκουρος in Greek signifies as much as an Helper. Therefor when the Law of Nature was almost erased by Vice; and the Law of Moses rather incited than than cured Lusts, when the Tyrant Satan ruled without Controul in the World, he alone afforded present Help to perishing Mankind. So that they are mightily mistaken that foolishly represent Christ, as by Nature, to be a rigid melancholick Person, and that he invited us to an unpleasant Life; when he alone show'd the Way to the most comfortable Life in the World [...].

Edit to add; It's possible that this is Erasmus' response to Lucian's high praise of Epicurus in his letter on Alexander the Oracle-Monger.

Erasmus collaborated with his friend and correspondent Thomas More on an edition of Lucian's dialogues.

Quote

Astonishing that the single copy of Lucretius was found. Another thing this made me think about was that probably the number of illiterates who learned by someone reading the texts or booklets decreased when Epicureanism moved to the Latin language of Rome. Unless they were translated into Latin, probably only the few educated elites were privy to the teachings of the Garden. Do you or anyone have knowledge of how that went in the Roman language areas?

DaveT, we do have a partial record of the transmission of Epicureanism from Greece (and Greek) to Rome (and Latin), and much of it comes down to us from Cicero himself. Cicero wanted to cultivate a high Latin literature, and he wished also to confer on this nascent project a beautiful stylistic polish. To that end, he extolled the efforts of those who wrote on high matters in Latin, and he scorned authors whose work did not meet his aesthetic standard.

Enter the Epicureans Amafinius and Rabirius! Cicero writes in book four of his Tusculan Disputations about the history of Roman philosophy:

Quote

The study of philosophy is certainly of long standing with us; but yet I do not find that I can give you the names of any philosopher before the age of Lælius and Scipio: in whose younger days we find that Diogenes the Stoic, and Carneades the Academic, were sent as ambassadors by the Athenians to our senate. And as these had never been concerned in public affairs, and one of them was a Cyrenean, the other a Babylonian, they certainly would never have been forced from their studies, nor chosen for that employment, unless the study of philosophy had been in vogue with some of the great men at that time; who, though they might employ their pens on other subjects, some on civil law, others on oratory, others on the history of former times, yet promoted this most extensive of all arts, the principle of living well, even more by their life than by their writings. So that of that true and elegant philosophy, (which was derived from Socrates, and is still preserved by the Peripatetics, and by the Stoics, though they express themselves differently in their disputes with the Academics,) there are few or no Latin records; whether this proceeds from the importance of the thing itself, or from men's being otherwise employed, or from their concluding that the capacity of the people was not equal to the apprehension of them. But, during this silence, [the Epicurean] C. Amafinius arose and took upon himself to speak; on the publishing of whose writings the people were moved, and enlisted themselves chiefly under this sect, either because the doctrine was more easily understood, or because they were invited thereto by the pleasing thoughts of amusement, or that, because there was nothing better, they laid hold of what was offered them. And after Amafinius, when many of the same sentiments had written much about them, the Pythagoreans spread over all Italy: but that these doctrines should be so easily understood and approved of by the unlearned, is a great proof that they were not written with any great subtlety, and they think their establishment to be owing to this.

He seems to suggest that Amafinius was the first person to transmit Greek philosophy into Latin. However, Cicero found the prose style of these early Roman Epicureans deeply offensive to his cultivated sensibilities. In the first book of his Academic Questions, he quotes from Varro, who shares his desire for a native Roman literature written in good Latin:

Quote

Varro: "For as I saw that philosophy had been explained with great care in the Greek language, I thought that if any of our countrymen were engrossed by the study of it, who were well versed in Greek literature, they would be more likely to read Greek treatises than Latin ones: but that those men who were averse to Greek science and to the schools of the Greek philosophers would not care the least for such matters as these, which could not be understood at all without some acquaintance with Greek literature. And, therefore, I did not choose to write treatises which unlearned men could not understand, and learned men would not be at the trouble of reading. And you yourself are aware of this. For you have learnt that we cannot resemble Amafinius or Rabirius, who without any art discuss matters which come before the eyes of every one in plain ordinary language, giving no accurate definitions, making no divisions, drawing no inferences by well-directed questions, and who appear to think that there is no such thing as any art of speaking or disputing.

According to Wikipedia, Martin Ferguson Smith estimated that Amafinius lived in the late second and early first century BC. This would put his birth about 100 years after the death of Epicurus. I don't a have a copy of Smith's translation of Lucretius to check the citation.

Regarding the loss of texts:

Quote

Alongside discussions of Virgil and Ovid, for example, the Roman rhetorician Quintilian remarked that “Macer and Lucretius are certainly worth reading,” and went on to discuss Varro of Atax, Cornelius Severus, Saleius Bassus, Gaius Rabirius, Albinovanus Pedo, Marcus Furius Bibaculus, Lucius Accius, Marcus Pacuvius, and others whose works he greatly admired. The humanists knew that some of these missing works were likely to have been lost forever—as it turned out, with the exception of Lucretius, all of the authors just mentioned have been lost—but they suspected that others, perhaps many others, were hidden away in dark places, not only in Italy but across the Alps. After all, Petrarch had found the manuscript of Cicero’s Pro Archia in Liège, in Belgium, and the Propertius manuscript in Paris.

-The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt

And regarding Epicurean texts specifically, we do have a very telling remark that dates from the 4th century AD. In this letter written by the emperor Julian the Apostate for the purpose of instructing his pagan priests, he sets strict limits to the kinds of works those priests will be permitted to read:

Quote

But for us it will be appropriate to read such narratives as have been composed about deeds that have actually been done; but we must avoid all fictions in the form of narrative such as were circulated among men in the past, for instance tales whose theme is love, and generally speaking everything of that sort. For just as not every road is suitable for consecrated priests, but the roads they travel ought to be duly assigned, so not every sort of reading is suitable for a priest. For words breed a certain sort of disposition in the soul, and little by little it arouses desires, and then on a sudden kindles a terrible blaze, against which one ought, in my opinion, to arm oneself well in advance.

And it's interesting to note the very first name he mentions, as a writer of works deemed unsuitable:

Quote

Let us not admit discourses by Epicurus or Pyrrho; but indeed the gods have already in their wisdom destroyed their works, so that most of their books have ceased to be. Nevertheless there is no reason why I should not, by way of example, mention these works too, to show what sort of discourses priests must especially avoid; and if such discourses, then much more must they avoid such thoughts. For an error of speech is, in my opinion, by no means the same as an error of the mind, but we ought to give heed to the mind first of all, since the tongue sins in company with it.

-pg. 328, fragment of A Letter to a Priest, by Emperor Julian

Finally, there is this famously difficult passage from the Christian historian (I use the word begrudgingly) Paulus Orosius, who was commissioned by Augustine to write a response to the pagans who blamed the sack of Rome in 410 AD on the lapse in devotion to the pagan gods, itself caused by the rise of Christianity. Here he describes the Caesar's conduct in the Siege of Alexandria in 47 BC. It is probably the single most important passage in all ancient literature touching on the question of the Christian role in the loss or destruction of books, and it is not at all easy to parse:

Quote

During the combat, orders were issued [by Julius Caesar] to set fire to the royal fleet, which by chance was drawn on shore. The flames spread to part of the city and there burned four hundred thousand books stored in a building which happened to be nearby. So perished that marvelous monument of the literary activity of our ancestors, who had gathered together so many great works of brilliant geniuses. In regard to this, however true it may be that in some of the temples there remain up to the present time book chests, which we ourselves have seen, and that, as we are told, these were emptied by our own men in our own day when these temples were plundered—this statement is true enough—yet it seems fairer to suppose that other collections had later been formed to rival the ancient love of literature, and not that there had once been another library which had books separate from the four hundred thousand volumes mentioned, and for that reason had escaped destruction" (Historiarum Adversum Paganos [History Against the Pagans] Libri VII, VI.15.31ff)

He appears to admit to the Christian practice of plundering pagan temples, and to the looting of the books found therein. He does not record the fate of the books that were taken.

Here is an example from Cicero's Tusculan Disputations of what a virtue-ethics alternative might look like:

Quote

Wherefore, if, as you granted in the beginning, infamy is worse than pain, pain is certainly nothing; for while it appears to you base and unmanly to groan, cry out, lament, or faint under pain — while you cherish notions of probity, dignity, honour, and keeping your eye on them, refrain yourself — pain will certainly yield to virtue, and by the influence of imagination, will lose its whole force. — For you must either admit that there is no such thing as virtue, or you must despise [that is, regard as nothing] every kind of pain. Will you allow of such a virtue as prudence, without which no virtue whatever can even be conceived? What then? will that suffer you to labour and take pains to no purpose? Will temperance permit you to do anything to excess? Will it be possible for justice to be maintained by one who through the force of pain discovers secrets, or betrays his confederates, or deserts many duties of life? Will you act in a manner consistently with courage, and its attendants, greatness of soul, resolution, patience, and contempt for all worldly things (rerum humanarum despicientiae)? Can you hear yourself called a great man, when you lie groveling, dejected, and deploring your condition, with a lamentable voice; no one would call you even a man, while in such a condition: you must therefore either abandon all pretensions to courage, or else pain must be put out of the question. [N.B. That is to say, pain must not be regarded as an evil.]

When Epicurus 'set sail in his own little boat', it wasn't to emulate this view of things, it was to wholly reject it.

Quote

"Nevertheless, it seems that “being well-adjusted” during this was in fact Epicurus' goal."

I think the point of the Krishnamurti quote is that there is a difference between being "well-adjusted in a sick age" and being "well-adjusted to a sick age". When Lucretius writes of 'the heights well-fortified by the teachings of the wise', he is intentionally placing distance between that refuge and the world at large.

There are two traps to be avoided in finding that refuge. The first trap is the ivory tower of protected status and privilege, which remains undeniably in the world but is nevertheless cold, detached, and out of touch with the common people and the real needs of life. The second trap is the false hope of supernatural religion, which supposes its adherents to be 'in this world but not of this world'; according to this view, the common people and the real needs of life are ephemeral side attractions acting as a transient prelude to the main event - the afterlife.

Epicurus rightly acknowledged that he really was of this world, and he did not console himself with the hope of a life after death. And if his philosophy is to be of any use to anyone, it cannot reside exclusively in the coseted innards of any ivory tower. He must engage with the common people, and he must give serious thought to the real needs of life.

But he is not obligated to sacrifice his own peace and happiness in the process!

Quote

One thing that I do not understand though is whether, in Epicurus' time, there was such a thing as "social trust" among communities larger than say, the Garden, and whether this is thought to possibly contribute to a similar sense of security.

The Law of Xenia, or hospitality, was regarded as sacred to Zeus himself, and stories abound of the punishments inflicted on those who violated it. This unwritten law was the cornerstone of the Greek idea of social trust, and of the etiquette surrounding the host-guest relationship.

My favorite example of this kind of social trust is related by Vitruvius in his De Architectura:

Quote

It is related of the Socratic philosopher Aristippus that, be­ing shipwrecked and cast ashore on the coast of the Rhodians, he observed geometrical figures drawn thereon, and cried out to his companions: "Let us be of good cheer, for I see the traces of man." With that he made for the city of Rhodes, and went straight to the gymnasium. There he fell to discussing philosophical subjects, and presents were bestowed upon him, so that he could not only fit himself out, but could also provide those who accompanied him with clothing and all other necessaries of life.

As soon as he saw the geometrical figures drawn in the sand, he knew he was near Greeks. He knew that he could trust that the Law of Xenia would be upheld, and that he and his shipmates would survive the ordeal.

Principle Doctrine 39 may be the most relevant text on this question:

Quote

39. He who best knew how to meet fear of external foes made into one family all the creatures he could; and those he could not, he at any rate did not treat as aliens [ἀλλόφυλά]; and where he found even this impossible, he avoided all association, and, so far as was useful, kept them at a distance.

As Kalosyni informed us the other day, there has been a recent development regarding Philodemus' library at Herculaneum, and for the first time a complete scroll has been digitally unrolled from beginning to end.

A link to a PDF containing the Greek text and an English translation can be found at the website of the Vesuvius Challenge here. The PDF is linked immediately under the title and date, and also describes in great detail the process and technology used to virtually unroll the text.

Quote

To rely on their existence because everyone believes in them doesn't seem consistent.

I have my own questions on this topic, DaveT , but I have come to an understanding that may be helpful on this one.

Here is Bailey's translation of the text from the Letter to Menoikeus:

Quote

[123] The things which I used unceasingly to commend to you, these do and practice, considering them to be the first principles of the good life. First of all believe that god is a being immortal and blessed, even as the common idea of a god is engraved on men’s minds, and do not assign to him anything alien to his immortality or ill-suited to his blessedness: but believe about him everything that can uphold his blessedness and immortality. For gods there are, since the knowledge of them is by clear vision. But they are not such as the many believe them to be: for indeed they do not consistently represent them as they believe them to be. And the impious man is not he who popularly denies the gods of the many, but he who attaches to the gods the beliefs of the many.

Regarding the sentence I've underlined, I no longer read this as Epicurus offering evidence of the existence of the gods. Rather, I think he is offering a definition of a god. This is in line with the pedagogy described in this passage in the Letter to Herodotus:

Quote

First of all, Herodotus, we must grasp the ideas attached to words, in order that we may be able to refer to them and so to judge the inferences of opinion or problems of investigation or reflection, so that we may not either leave everything uncertain and go on explaining to infinity or use words devoid of meaning.

So when he says in Menoikeus that a god is 'a being blessed and incorruptible', he is saying that those are the ideas attached to the word god. It's not important or evidentiary that 'everyone believes in gods'. It is important (at least to Epicurus) that people commonly have an idea about the thing said to be represented by the word god.

The actual evidence comes in the next sentence in Menoikeus: we know the gods exist because of 'clear vision', ἐναργὴς. They are manifest. The 'true impression', or preconception, that is, the prolepsis of the gods, seems to derive from this clear vision.

TL:DR; From the point of view of the individual, other people are not involved in helping to determine the existence of the gods. They are only useful insofar as they ratify our grasp of the meaning of the word god.

A Latin inscription on a flyleaf at the back of Montaigne's personal copy of Lucretius:

Ut sunt diversi atomorum motus non incredibile est sic convenisse olim atomos aut conventuras ut alius nascatur montanus.

Since the movements of the atoms are so varied, it is not unbelievable that the atoms once came together in this way, or that in the future they will come together like this again, giving birth to another Montaigne.

Using this thread to keep everything together:

Quote

XXXVII. “They have nothing to do,” your teacher says. Epicurus truly, like indolent boys, thinks nothing preferable to idleness; yet those very boys, when they have a holiday, entertain themselves in some sportive exercise. But we are to suppose the Deity in such an inactive state that if he should move we may justly fear he would be no longer happy. This doctrine divests the Gods of motion and operation; besides, it encourages men to be lazy, as they are by this taught to believe that the least labor is incompatible even with divine felicity.

But let it be as you would have it, that the Deity is in the form and image of a man. Where is his abode? Where is his habitation? Where is the place where he is to be found? What is his course of life? And what is it that constitutes the happiness which you assert that he enjoys? For it seems necessary that a being who is to be happy must use and enjoy what belongs to him. And with regard to place, even those natures which are inanimate have each their proper stations assigned to them: so that the earth is the lowest; then water is next above the earth; the air is above the water; and fire has the highest situation of all allotted to it. Some creatures inhabit the earth, some the water, and some, of an amphibious nature, live in both. There are some, also, which are thought to be born in fire, and which often appear fluttering in burning furnaces.

In the first place, therefore, I ask you, Where is the habitation of your Deity? Secondly, What motive is it that stirs him from his place, supposing he ever moves? And, lastly, since it is peculiar to animated beings to have an inclination to something that is agreeable to their several natures, what is it that the Deity affects, and to what purpose does he exert the motion of his mind and reason? In short, how is he happy? how eternal? Whichever of these points you touch upon, I am afraid you will come lamely off. For there is never a proper end to reasoning which proceeds on a false foundation; for you asserted likewise that the form of the Deity is perceptible by the mind, but not by sense; that it is neither solid, nor invariable in number; that it is to be discerned by similitude and transition, and that a constant supply of images is perpetually flowing on from innumerable atoms, on which our minds are intent; so that we from that conclude that divine nature to be happy and everlasting.

-Cicero, Tusculan Disputations

We didn't get very far into this yesterday, but a passage from Tertullian quoted by Stephen Greenblatt raises a similar problem of inactivity:

What we tend to see is Epicureans adapting the ideas of others, but refashioning them so that they slot in to the broader framework of Epicureanism.

The Empedoclean view of the principles of Love and Strife as ethical forces of nature was not found suitable, but the Lucretian refashioning of this idea into the metaphorical Venus and Mars of atomic physics was useful to him as a didactic poet, so he used it.

His borrowing of the account of the plague in Athens from Thucydides might have followed a similar course, except that the poem ends abruptly.

And DeWitt points out somewhere that Epicurus was capable of enlisting Homer in his defense if it came to it.

What a tedious person.

Clement of Alexandria, like St. Jerome and St. Augustine, received a classical education in the pagan Greek tradition prior to converting to Christianity, and also like them developed a taste for pagan literature.

Jerome records in a letter that his own devotion to the works of Cicero earned him a visitation from his god in a dream:

Quote

Asked who and what I was I replied: “I am a Christian.” But He who presided said: “Thou liest, thou art a follower of Cicero and not of Christ. For ‘where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be also.’” Instantly I became dumb, and amid the strokes of the lash—for He had ordered me to be scourged—I was tortured more severely still by the fire of conscience, considering with myself that verse, “In the grave who shall give thee thanks?” Yet for all that I began to cry and to bewail myself, saying: “Have mercy upon me, O Lord: have mercy upon me.” Amid the sound of the scourges this cry still made itself heard. At last the bystanders, falling down before the knees of Him who presided, prayed that He would have pity on my youth, and that He would give me space to repent of my error. He might still, they urged, inflict torture on me, should I ever again read the works of the Gentiles. Under the stress of that awful moment I should have been ready to make even still larger promises than these. Accordingly I made oath and called upon His name, saying: “Lord, if ever again I possess worldly books, or if ever again I read such, I have denied Thee.” Dismissed, then, on taking this oath, I returned to the upper world, and, to the surprise of all, I opened upon them eyes so drenched with tears that my distress served to convince even the incredulous. And that this was no sleep nor idle dream, such as those by which we are often mocked, I call to witness the tribunal before which I lay, and the terrible judgment which I feared. May it never, hereafter, be my lot to fall under such an inquisition! I profess that my shoulders were black and blue, that I felt the bruises long after I awoke from my sleep, and that thenceforth I read the books of God with a zeal greater than I had previously given to the books of men.

Equally delirious were the fantasies Confessions of St. Augustine, again by an encounter with Cicero:

Quote

Among such as these, in that unsettled age of mine, learned I books of eloquence, wherein I desired to be eminent, out of a damnable and vainglorious end, a joy in human vanity. In the ordinary course of study, I fell upon a certain book of Cicero, whose speech almost all admire, not so his heart. This book of his contains an exhortation to philosophy, and is called "Hortensius." But this book altered my affections, and turned my prayers to Thyself O Lord; and made me have other purposes and desires. Every vain hope at once became worthless to me; and I longed with an incredibly burning desire for an immortality of wisdom, and began now to arise, that I might return to Thee. For not to sharpen my tongue (which thing I seemed to be purchasing with my mother's allowances, in that my nineteenth year, my father being dead two years before), not to sharpen my tongue did I employ that book; nor did it infuse into me its style, but its matter.

How did I burn then, my God, how did I burn to re-mount from earthly things to Thee, nor knew I what Thou wouldest do with me? For with Thee is wisdom. But the love of wisdom is in Greek called "philosophy," with which that book inflamed me. Some there be that seduce through philosophy, under a great, and smooth, and honourable name colouring and disguising their own errors: and almost all who in that and former ages were such, are in that book censured and set forth: there also is made plain that wholesome advice of Thy Spirit, by Thy good and devout servant: Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And since at that time (Thou, O light of my heart, knowest) Apostolic Scripture was not known to me, I was delighted with that exhortation, so far only, that I was thereby strongly roused, and kindled, and inflamed to love, and seek, and obtain, and hold, and embrace not this or that sect, but wisdom itself whatever it were; and this alone checked me thus unkindled, that the name of Christ was not in it.

These in turn makes Clement's claim all the more risible:

Quote

As Scripture has called the Greeks pilferers of the Barbarian philosophy, it will next have to be considered how this may be briefly demonstrated. For we shall not only show that they have imitated and copied the marvels recorded in our books; but we shall prove, besides, that they have plagiarized and falsified (our writings being, as we have shown, older) the chief dogmas they hold, both on faith and knowledge and science, and hope and love, and also on repentance and temperance and the fear of God — a whole swarm, verily, of the virtues of truth.

If Greek philosophy was 'stolen' from the Hebrews as Clement claims, why do these zealous converts sneak away from the dull boredom of the allegedly genuine in order to delight themselves with the high refinement and polish of the allegedly counterfeit?

Oh, right. They do it because they are tempted by the Devil. As I said, tedious.

I quite like DeWitt on this point;

That's from pages 66-67 of Epicurus and his Philosophy. Lucretius had indeed written (Book IV, line 823) that sight did not exist before the eyes, or language before the tongue; these organs were not created to fulfill a purpose. Rather, their existence afforded the opportunity to be adapted by the organism for the uses with which we now associate them.

In this way the early Epicureans prefigured Charles Darwin, who also wrote about the eye in a well-remembered passage that is often abused by creationists:

Quote

To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound.

But if Epicurus rejected the Platonic and Aristotelian view of teleology, what justification can we make for his continued use of the word telos (τέλος)? DeWitt resolves the problem by suggesting that, while Epicurus did throw out creationism and intelligent design, he did not wholly reject teleology.

Quote

"This amounts to saying that a nonpurposive Nature had produced a purposive creature, for whom alone an end or goal of living could have a meaning. This is teleology at a minimum."

He enlarges on this theme with a discussion of the word nature as opposed to reason on pages 127-132, and here is a relevant excerpt:

Quote

The priority of Nature was also insisted upon in establishing the identity of the end or telos. Aristotle had furnished a precious hint in this connection; he wrote "that perhaps even in the case of the lower animals there is some natural good superior to their scale of intelligence which aims at the corresponding good." To this principle Epicurus adapted his procedure. By the promptings of Nature alone, apart from reason, every animate thing, the moment it is born, reaches out for pleasure and shrinks from pain. Consistent with this reasoning is the steady practice of referring to pleasure as "the end of Nature," which occurs five times in our scant remains. As analogous phrases may be cited "the good of Nature" and "the pleasure of Nature," all of them implying that reason played no necessary role in establishing the truth. Similar is the implication of parallel phrases such as "the wealth of Nature," signifying that Nature and not reason reveals the true meaning of wealth; and also "the limits of Nature," implying that Nature and not reason teaches the true limits of the desires.

Thanks to Don for finding Martin Ferguson Smith's recent and updated work on his findings at the archaeological site at Oinoanda:

https://www.tabedizioni.it/web/content/462840

As I mentioned in the recording, it isn't always easy to keep up with fresh developments in the study of ancient Epicureanism. Most of us will be familiar with Martin Ferguson Smith's work through his revision of the Loeb edition of Lucretius, as well as through his prior translations of the text of an inscription by Diogenes of Oinoanda.

We were chatting on a Sunday zoom a few weeks ago when someone mentioned the parallel that can be drawn between the physics of Epicurus (mutually exclusive atoms and void) and the ethics of Epicurus (mutually exclusive pleasure and pain).

I tried to explain that in Aristotle there is a different parallel--a parallel between the square of opposition in the four classical elements on the one hand, and the square of opposition in logic on the other. One implication might be that logic is rooted in the very fabric of the cosmos, independent of mind or language. This might relate to our broader conversation as to the difference between the Cartesian dictum cogito ergo sum, and the Jeffersonian; "I feel, therefore I exist."

Quote

The second part of metaphysics, is the inquiry of final causes, which we note not as wanting, but as ill-placed; these causes being usually sought in physics, not in metaphysics, to the great prejudice of philosophy; for the treating of final causes in physics has driven out the inquiry of physical ones, and made men rest in specious and shadowy causes, without ever searching in earnest after such as are real and truly physical. And this was not only done by Plato, who constantly anchors upon this shore; but by Aristotle, Galen, and others, who frequently introduce such causes as these: “The hairs of the eyelids are for a fence to the sight. The bones for pillars whereon to build the bodies of animals. The leaves of trees are to defend the fruit from the sun and wind. The clouds are designed for watering the earth,” etc. All which are properly alleged in metaphysics; but in physics are impertinent, and as remoras¹ to the ship, that hinder the sciences from holding on their course of improvement, and introducing a neglect of searching after physical causes. And therefore the natural philosophies of Democritus and others, who allow no God or mind in the frame of things, but attribute the structure of the universe to infinite essays and trials of nature, or what they call fate or fortune, and assigned the causes of particular things to the necessity of matter without any intermixture of final causes, seem, so far as we can judge from the remains of their philosophy, much more solid, and to have gone deeper into nature, with regard to physical causes, than the philosophy of Aristotle or Plato; and this only because they never meddled with final causes, which the others were perpetually inculcating. Though in this respect Aristotle is more culpable than Plato, as banishing God, the fountain of final causes, and substituting nature in his stead; and, at the same time, receiving final causes through his affection to logic, not theology.

-Sir Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning

¹A marine suckerfish, which was thought of old to hinder the progress of sailing ships by attaching itself via suction to the hull.

I'm more familiar with measurements of the earth from my days in Land Surveying, and the classic experiments that I can recall are these;

• The Eratosthenes experiment; a fairly accurate measurement of the circumference of the earth.
• The Mason-Dixon Survey, which demonstrated that mountains exert gravitational pull
• The Schiehallion survey, which first calculated the mass of the earth
• The Cavendish experiment, which much more accurately measured the mass of the earth
• The Transits of Venus across the sun, which used this earlier knowledge to measure the Astronomical unit.

What you need is an accurate measurement of the planet you're standing on, so that you can observe celestial phenomena from many different known positions on that planet at the same time and collate the data.

I'm at lunch now, I don't have time for a more complete answer.

That's a somewhat difficult question. Ancient Rome is usually credited with the first invention of what we now call public welfare, which for them was the grain dole; the 'bread' in 'bread and circuses'. In Greece, citizens that did not own land and thus could not support themselves were in the best case sent away to found a colony. In the worst case they were sold into slavery to settle their debts.

State coffers in antiquity were generally lavished on land and naval defense, on temples and palaces, on public festivals, or on grand engineering projects. Herodotus credits the Samians with three such public projects; the tunnel of Eupalinos, the man-made breakwaters that circumscribed the harbor at what is now called Pythagoreio, and the Temple of Hera, which was then the largest in the Greek world.

Everything about currency, taxation, and public expenditure has changed transformatively since then.

The problem is further compounded by the argument made in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that investment in the space program also boosted development in adjacent fields like satellite communication and navigation, in rocketry for wartime applications, and in the advancements in materials science and computer science which we all rely on everyday.

These are all issues that can be placed by modern individuals under an Epicurean lens, but which Epicurus himself would not have been well-equipped to discuss himself. When Lucian narrates a space voyage in his True Story, it's a farcical fantasy written to satirize the absurd travelogues that were being written by his contemporaries.

That is perhaps not the answer you were looking for!

Excellent question, Matteng!

Regarding the fourth criterion of the canon, I will simply point the way to Prof. David Glidden's Epicurean Prolepsis. It won't furnish any answers, but in it he does attempt to explain why the question itself is extremely confusing, and why we should tread carefully.

Regarding the passage you have quoted from Hiram's essay, we have direct evidence of this method in the Letter to Pythocles:

Quote

[95] for in our own experience we see many things which shine by their own light and many also which shine by borrowed light. And none of the celestial phenomena stand in the way, if only we always keep in mind the method of plural explanation and the several consistent assumptions and causes, instead of dwelling on what is inconsistent and giving it a false importance so as always to fall back in one way or another upon the single explanation. The appearance of the face in the moon may equally well arise from interchange of parts, or from interposition of something, or in any other of the ways which might be seen to accord with the facts.

[95] καὶ γὰρ παρ᾽ ἡμῖν θεωρεῖται πολλὰ μὲν ἐξ ἑαυτῶν ἔχοντα, πολλὰ δὲ ἀφ᾽ ἑτέρων. καὶ οὐθὲν ἐμποδοστατεῖ τῶν ἐν τοῖς μετεώροις φαινομένων, ἐάν τις τοῦ πλεοναχοῦ τρόπου ἀεὶ μνήμην ἔχῃ καὶ τὰς ἀκολούθους αὐτοῖς ὑποθέσεις ἅμα καὶ αἰτίας συνθεωρῇ καὶ μὴ ἀναβλέπων εἰς τὰ ἀνακόλουθα ταῦτ᾽ ὀγκοῖ ματαίως καὶ καταρρέπῃ ἄλλοτε ἄλλως ἐπὶ τὸν μοναχὸν τρόπον. ἡ δὲ ἔμφασις τοῦ προσώπου ἐν αὐτῇ δύναται μὲν γίνεσθαι καὶ κατὰ παραλλαγὴν μερῶν καὶ κατ᾽ ἐπιπροσθέτησιν, καὶ ὅσοι ποτ᾽ ἂν τρόποι θεωροῖντο τὸ σύμφωνον τοῖς φαινομένοις κεκτημένοι.

The word translated as method in this passage is τρόπος, trope, or way. The way of manifold explanation; when confronted with a strange new phenomenon (φαινομένων), one should begin be considering the various natural hypotheses (ὑποθέσεις) or potential causes (αἰτίας) that might possibly have given rise to the phenomenon. These potential explanations must harmonize with sense perception, and also with known facts. All of this is in contrast to the way of the single explanation, which constitutes an arbitrary selection of one possible explanation to the exclusion of all others.

It's important to remember that the purpose of this exercise is not to develop a robust or rigorous scientific explanation for every phenomenon. The purpose is to eradicate fear. For example; are bolts of lightning hurled down by Zeus in order to punish hubris, as in the myth of Phaeton? There is no reason to think so; that is just one possible explanation, and that particular explanation isn't even a good one. As Lucretius notes (book 2, line ~1100), thunderbolts are often seen to strike the temples of Olympian Zeus himself. The explanation, in other words, does not accord with known facts.