Posts by Joshua

This site at UC Davis contains lecture notes on Epicurus' physics as they relate to Parmenides and Zeno.

And this site from the University of Pittsburgh has all of the relevant citations from Aristotle, our main source for Zeno's Paradoxes.

Polyenphysiszodeism.

Innumerable gods who are living beings and have their existence entirely in nature, but stand aloof from human affairs.

I hold a copyright on that term!

Beavers are discussed on this episode of QI starting at around 34:07.

Also make sure you watch the quantum levitation experiment at 35:40!

In this article, Tim O'Keefe argues that the quasi-body and quasi-blood of the gods is evidence for the Idealist view.

Here, Hegel is incomprehensible on the same subject.

And Dewitt, on page 261, is atypically cautious;

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It is not on record whether Epicurus adduced logical grounds for denying flesh and blood to the bodies of the gods. We are informed that he wrote of them as having "a sort of blood and a sort of body, lacking solidity such as characterizes ordinary bodies." It is quite possible that he was rationalizing a tradition, represented by Homer, who also denied blood to the bodies of the gods. Instead of blood there was in their veins a liquid called ichor, which in later Greek signified the straw-colored residue of blood called serum. As for the unsubstantial nature of the divine body, this was only what the general belief of the Greeks assumed to be true. As already mentioned, Epicurus preferred to follow tradition where permissible and was not bent upon introducing new gods, which was an indictable offense, but aimed rather to rationalize existing beliefs and recall his countrymen to true piety.

In this thread for Episode 226 I laid out my alternative to the Ontological argument. That is a work in progress, but in its current state it should be enough to call into question the validity of producing a being into nature a priori.

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(NOTE: No mention of "planet" other than the one on which the beings - human beings in this case - stand)

The planets are stars in this analysis--they are the "wandering stars" spoken of in the Letter to Pythocles;

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That some of the stars should wander in their course, if indeed it is the case that their movements are such, while others do not move in this manner, may be due to the reason that from the first as they moved in their circles they were so constrained by necessity that some of them move along the same regular orbit, and others along one which is associated with certain irregularities: or it may be that among the regions to which they are carried in some places there are regular tracts of air which urge them on successively in the same direction and provide flame for them regularly, while in other places the tracts are irregular, so that the aberrations which we observe result.

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τινὰ τῶν ἄστρων πλανᾶσθαι, εἰ οὕτω ταῖς κινήσεσι χρώμενα συμβαίνει, τινὰ δὲ ὁμαλῶς κινεῖσθαι, 177 [113] ἐνδέχεται μὲν καὶ παρὰ τὸ κύκλῳ κινούμενα ἐξ ἀρχῆς οὕτω κατηναγκάσθαι, ὥστε τὰ μὲν κατὰ τὴν αὐτὴν δίνην φέρεσθαι ὁμαλῆ οὖσαν, τὰ δὲ κατά τιν᾽ ἄλλην τισὶν ἀνωμαλίαις χρωμένην.

ἄστρων πλανᾶσθαι, astron planasthai, wandering stars. Planet means 'wanderer'.

The rules of pig-Latin;

Pig Latin

I'd like to develop a thesis that I'm working toward, and that I briefly mentioned on Sunday because it only then occurred to me;

Quote from Letter To Menoeceus, Yonge Translation

First believe that God is a living being immortal and blessed, according to the notion of a god indicated by the common sense of mankind; and so believing, thou shalt not affirm of him aught that is foreign to his immortality or that agrees not with blessedness, but shalt believe about him whatever may uphold both his blessedness and his immortality. For verily there are gods, and the knowledge of them is manifest; but they are not such as the multitude believe, seeing that men do not steadfastly maintain the notions they form respecting them. Not the man who denies the gods worshipped by the multitude, but he who affirms of the gods what the multitude believes about them is truly impious.

It's always struck me as odd that Epicurus' first use of god (θεὸν) is singular, and in subsequent usage he employs the plural. Some of the translators (as Yonge here) actually translate this as God, giving entirely the wrong impression.

I was struck by the similarity between this passage in Epicurus, and the opening words of Torquatus in De Finibus;

Quote from Cicero, On Ends, Reid Translation

The problem before us then is, what is the climax and standard of things good, and this in the opinion of all philosophers must needs be such that we are bound to test all things by it, but the standard itself by nothing. Epicurus places this standard in pleasure, which he lays down to be the supreme good, while pain is the supreme evil; and he founds his proof of this on the following considerations.

Notice that Torquatus in this passage is not saying that pleasure is the good because that is the "opinion of all philosophers"; Torquatus is relying on the "opinion of all philosophers" in order to establish a barebones definition of the good as such. What makes something the good? Something is the good because we test all things by it, but the good itself by nothing.

In the Letter to Menoeceus Epicurus seems to be doing the same thing. Before we can even discuss the gods, we need a working definition of what a god really is. Notice how this interpretation of the passage perfectly explains the use of the singular.

Person A: I have three pet marmots at home that I need to go take care of, but after that I'm good for whatever.

Person B: ...What the hell is a marmot?

No one would ever follow up the initial statement with the question, "what are three marmots?" When we ask for a definition, we ask in the singular. When Epicurus speaks on the gods, he first offers a definition, and his definition is also in the singular. And like Torquatus, who relies on the opinion of all philosophers when defining the good, Epicurus invokes the common opinion of mankind when defining a god.

He does not use the common opinion of mankind to justify his own belief that the gods exist. He thinks the gods exist because of images that impinge, because of prolepsis, because of the principle of isonomia, and perhaps other considerations as well. But he thinks that the gods are blessed and incorruptible because this is the definition of a god; if a god is neither blessed nor incorruptible, it isn't a god.

I have very little facility with the Greek, but I've never seen this interpretation set forth and I find that it solves two thorny problems at one go.

From the whole surface of the Earth there are less than 10,000 stars visible to the naked eye--out of something like 100 billion stars in our galaxy.

Yeah, I still prefer the Epistle of Horace to Juvenal here. I mentioned after the recording that my interest in Roman history pretty much flatlines after the assassination of Julius Caesar, so we are dealing with a sweeping period of ignorance on my part.

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You should pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body.
Ask for a stout heart that has no fear of death,
and deems length of days the least of Nature's gifts
that can endure any kind of toil,
that knows neither wrath nor desire and thinks
the woes and hard labors of Hercules better than
the loves and banquets and downy cushions of Sardanapalus.
What I commend to you, you can give to yourself;
For assuredly, the only road to a life of peace is virtue.

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Listening to the episode now, I think I was perhaps a little uncharitable to Juvenal here. While the emphasis on virtue as the "only road" to peace does strike the wrong note for me (even considering what Epicurus said about living wisely, honorably, and justly), Juvenal is clear in the second to last line that one doesn't need a gift from the gods to secure these things. The mention of Hercules does read to me as a nod to Stoicism, but even Lucretius uses Hercules as a metaphor in praising Epicurus for his philosophical labor.

Mea culpa!

Analogy compares things which are alike in relationship, cause, operation, throughput, etc. Similarity compares things which are alike in nature, shape, size, origin, and so on.

The way in which ocean liners transport people is similar to the way in which cargo ships transport goods; both vessels collect their payload from land-based ports, and carry them over water to their destination.

The way in which cargo ships transport goods is analogous to the way in which red blood cells transport oxygen. Red blood cells collect oxygen at the port (the alveoli in the lungs) and carry that oxygen through shipping channels (the blood vessels) until they reach their destination (the cells of the body).

I'm thinking out loud, don't take this too seriously!

Yeah, Cicero makes that case in book one of On Ends when he says that Epicurus would have known that atoms had to be divisible if only he had 'learned geometry from Polyaenus, instead of making him unlearn everything he knew'.

A comparison can be made with fractals; while, mathematically, images produced from fractal sets contain infinite detail in a finite space, Epicurus would say that nature itself has a lower limit in the atom.

Funnily enough, the very first thing Lucretius says to his readers is "empty your ears!"

quod superest, vacuas auris; "As for the rest (of you), ears empty"...

Lucretius offers a glimpse of the life of the gods in this passage in Book I;

Here is the long-awaited (by Cassius, if no one else!) research on this edition of Lucretius!

Here is that text on archive.org

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I would love to read what Dunster wrote about eternality. I want to know what "Drexelius" said too (don't know who that is at this point) but I would expect Dunster to have wanted to follow up on many of the leads that we are following today.

I attached a link into the quote above.

I know this text survives and I read it in full several months ago; my memory is that this is a very clerical work that didn't offer anything of interest. I'll let you know when I find it again!

I added more to post #2, which some of you may have read in an earlier version.

Edit; Have fun chewing on all of that!

And speaking of Thomas Creech, he crops up again in the Oxford Handbook of Eighteenth Century Satire;

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"Creech typically translated Horace closely, but when he encountered an Epicurean passage, whether atheist or hedonist, he often acted as a commentator instead, repressing it, softening it,leaving it prominently in place, or even seeming to justify and explain it. We see a striking example in epistle 1.6. Meanwhile, the translation of the lyrics organized by William Oldisworth (1712-13) appeared with Horace's Latin on the facing page. The device was likely encouraged by the popularity of Dacier's edition, although Richard Fanshawe had one the same. Dunster, faced with the philosophy of the hexameter poems, often rendered literally some extremely heterodox passages; yet even he could sometimes shield them from full view in time-honoured ways."

A digital scan of Rev. Samuel Dunster's Last Will and Testament, dated 22nd October 1751, is in my possession, though I cannot at present find the link at the National Archive website (The National Archives' reference PROB 11/810/394). In any case, the book containing his biography by Raines also contains a text of this Will; one entry reads as follows:

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To Mr. Joseph Haigh (my curate) all my MS. sermons, my new black gown and bands, and neck cloths, my Virgil and Horace, with my MS. notes in three volumes;

This work on Virgil is given the following shelf-mark at Chetham's Library:

There is also a very interesting letter recorded by Raines:

This letter dated 1734 would seem to suggest that Dunster has given up any rigorous work in the field of classics, but the quoted epistle from Horace gives some insight into his ongoing pursuits. Here is a comment on that epistle from Mark Morford.

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In the midst of everything you will read, and you will ask your
teachers by what system you may pass your life gently. Ask
whether desire (that always needs more) should trouble and disturb you; whether fear and hope for things that are not advantageous; whether philosophy or nature will give you virtue; what
will lessen anxiety, what will make you a friend to yourself,
what will bring you simple tranquillity—whether it is public honours or the pleasure of profits or the secret way and the path of a
life hidden from others. As for me, when I am refreshed by the
cold stream of Digentia, which Mandela drinks, a village furrowed with cold, what do you think is my opinion, my friend,
what do you believe is my prayer? “Let me keep what I have
now, or even less, so that I can live out the rest of my life (if the
gods wish me to live longer) for myself. Let me have a good supply of books and a year’s supply of food, and may I not float
hanging on the hopes of an uncertain hour.” Well, it is enough to
ask Jupiter for what he gives and takes away. He may grant me
life, he may grant me wealth: I myself will provide a mind free
from anxiety (aequum animum).

These beautiful and famous lines are the final expression of Horace’s
ethics. Although they are only indirectly concerned with pleasure and
although they suggest that prayer to the gods is efficacious, they are
fundamentally Epicurean. They are based on the maxim, “live unobtrusively”, and they suggest the moderate enjoyment of moderate pleasures. Their goal is a life free from mental disturbance, the achievement of ataraxia that is as much Stoic as Epicurean. Finally, they suggest that happiness is ours to achieve through control of our will, whatever the gods may give, good or ill. Here Horace agrees with the Stoics, and this doctrine will prove to be the foundation of the ethics of Epictetus.

-The Roman Philosophers; from the Time of Cato the Censor to the Death of Marcus Aurelius by Mark Morford

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As TauPhi has alluded to in another thread, Juvenal's tenth satire touches on similar themes. If Dunster is our translator of both Juvenal (1739) and Lucretius (1743), he would have been working on one or both of them at the the time of this letter (1734).

Only two things more remain to be said. Rev. Dunster's personal library went to auction in November of 1754 with the personal libraries of a handful of others. A catalogue in two volumes (I, II) was made available, and among the collections listed in Volume II were translations of Lucretius by Creech and Evelyn.

It is impossible, of course, to know whether they belonged to Dunster or one of the others. A search of the collection also brings up several books ancient and modern on astronomy. In the 1743 edition of Lucretius, a series of footnotes in Book V on pages 171-175 provide an extensive explanation of the movement of the heavenly bodies.

I have tried to accumulate here all of the sources and citations that I have been sitting on for the better part of a year. The evidence, as the reader will observe, is inconclusive and circumstantial at best. However, I am going to propose on the basis of this inconclusive evidence that Reverend Samuel Dunster, D.D., Rector of Hartley and Gravesend, Prebendary at the Cathedrals of Salisbury and Lincoln, and Vicar of Rochdale, is a promising candidate for the anonymous translator of the 1743 translation of De Rerum Natura, printed for Daniel Brown, bookseller, at the sign of the Black Swan without Temple-Bar, London.

Finis