Posts by Joshua

Much better! Looks very papery. Next step is camera work, but that will have to wait until tomorrow afternoon.

Quote from Cassius Admin Edit

[Admin Edit from Cassius 050323: I am hijacking Joshua's thread and changing the title to make it more generic and hopefully extend it. I have seen the first draft of Joshua's map video. It is excellent and it is a reminder of how effective and far-reaching that good video can be.

We need to encourage everyone who is even slightly interested in creative video production to try their hand at this. We can use this and other threads to share information about tools and methods and ask each other questions.

I entitled the thread with a reference to free and open source software, because I think it is highly desirable that we use tools that are available to others and with which we can better share our expertise. However I know that some of the most powerful options are not publicly offered, so don't let that stop you from posting about what you are using, especially if the cost is relatively low. But thinking ahead to what will be most effective in getting other people going, options which are totally open and low or no cost are probably going to find the widest adoption.

We have lots of creative people here and it would be great if we could encourage each other to produce work like this. Now for Joshua's post which started this thread:

I am not proficient in the use of the this software by any means, but I did want to share some progress on a video I'm working on that focuses on the early Epicureans. Just two images: before and after. The first map I pulled from Wikimedia. The second map is zoomed, showing some of my progress in blender, and with a little bit of added texture. Hopefully I can get it to look more like paper. Anyway, once I have the map looking the way I want it to, I can set the 'camera' to follow a track around the map; panning across the Aegean, zooming in on a city or an island, etc.

The Catholic Church for most of it's history has had 2 main categories for literature--Sacred and Profane. Sacred literature was scriptural or theological, and Profane was everything else. Except for the outliers like St. Jerome, Profane literature was not necessarily regarded as 'bad'. That connotation came later. It just...wasn't sacred.

There is a similar axis when it comes to outlook, orientation or disposition. It shows up in education--studying Divinity prepared one for life in the church. Studying the humanities prepared one for life outside it.

Humanism is everything that has, as it's focus, the nature, life, customs, languages, art, history, folk ways, nations, states, governments, and so on, of human beings.

Divinity has for its object the relationship between man and God. Humanism has for its object the relations between mankind, and between man and himself.

The monasteries of Europe made ornate, jewel-encrusted illuminated manuscripts to enshrine the words of God. Laborious to produce, written in a hand difficult to read (blackletter, an ugly variant of Carolingian miniscule), and in any case usually chained to the shelf or the lectern, these books were made to glorify God, not enlighten men.

In the 14th century, a network of secular Italian scholars in Florence, Venice, and in the Papal Curia in Rome--even in the Curia they were not always in Holy Orders--began to stimulate a demand for a new kind of book. The first major innovation was to rifle the collections of monastic libraries for the works of pagan antiquity. The second was to make them readable again, and to that end these scribes gradually developed their own style of handwriting. Like Blackletter, this new hand, which we now call 'humanist miniscule', was derived from Carolingian miniscule. Unlike Blackletter, it was beautiful--it was clear, graceful, and with room to breath. It could be copied quickly, could be read easily. Reading in the monasteries was meant to be a chore, like cooking, cleaning or plowing--now it was becoming pleasureable to read.

In the monasteries, literary discussions were strictly prohibited. No questions were to be asked, and no doubts entertained.

But the humanists had their eye on this world, and this world has problems. How should a State function? How should armies be raised, trained and drilled, laws be written or established, clean water be supplied? What about navigation, agriculture, architecture, medicine, trade, economics and astronomy? Above all, how should we live? The ancients had written on every one of those topics.

That's humanism in a nutshell, and it was best expressed by two poets; "I am human; nothing human is alien to me", wrote Terence in the 2nd century BC. And Alexander Pope echoed the sentiment in the 18th century--"The proper study of Mankind is Man."

Blackletter

Carolingian miniscule

Fear, anxiety, and pain.

Premises;

1. The hand either feels pleasure, or it feels pain, or it feels neither pleasure nor pain.
2. If pleasure is the highest good, then the absence of pleasure would feel like a lack of pleasure.
3. This lack of pleasure would be felt in every member of the body.
4. My hand does not feel pleasure or pain.
5. My hand does not feel a lack of pleasure.

Conclusion;

1. Pleasure is not the highest good.

Against premises 1, 2, and 4:

(Principle Doctrine 3) "The magnitude of pleasure reaches its limit in the removal of all pain. When such pleasure is present, so long as it is uninterrupted, there is no pain either of body or of mind or of both together."

Torquatus grants premise 3:

"The inference is shrewd enough as against the Cyrenaics, but does not touch Epicurus. For if the only pleasure were that which, as it were, tickles the senses, if I may say so, and attended by sweetness overflows them and insinuates itself into them, neither the hand nor any other member would be able to rest satisfied with the absence of pain apart from a joyous activity of pleasure."

The wisdom of granting this premise is, in my view, questionable. Premise 5 relies upon it for relevance, and I think it has problems. For example; I can feel pain from teeth, but unlike other organs the teeth do not register actively pleasureable sensations. Should the teeth, not equipped with the ability to register pleasure, feel the lack of pleasure? I don't see how.

Against premise 5;

Premise 5 relies on the previous premises 1-4 for relevance. Given the challenges presented above, premise 5 is inadmissible.

Looks like Eikadistes has come across it though.

Ternissa might be an Anglicization of a Gallicization of a Latinization of Θεμίστη; Themista, of our recent conversations.

I just glanced over the thread here and didn't see it, maybe I haven't come across this before. It's worth noting that this is the same Landor that Frost mentions in his poem "Lucretius versus the Lake Poets".

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‘Nature I loved; and next to Nature, Art.’

Dean , adult education may seem silly.

What of it, though? I got some willy-nilly

The other evening at your college deanery.

And grateful for it (let's not be facetious!)

For I thought Epicurus and Lucretius

By Nature meant the Whole Goddam Machinery.

But you say that in college nomenclature

The only meaning possible for Nature

In Landor's quatrain would be Pretty Scenery.

Which makes opposing it to Art absurd

I grant you—if you're sure about the word.

God bless the Dean and make his deanship plenary.

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Aphrodite was born of foam off Cythera, but went to Cyprus. Both islands had cultic sites dedicated to her. Athena was born from Zeus' head, but is associated also with the island of Rhodes.

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ANONYMOUS: I, THE pencil, was silver when I came from the fire, but in thy hands I have become golden likewise. So, charming Leontion, hath Athena well gifted thee with supremacy in art, and Cypris with supremacy in beauty.

Book 16 of the Planudean Anthology.

I wonder if she died some time before Epicurus. Their practice of memorializing the dead through books of praise would explain Cicero's complaint. Then there is that connection between the names Leontion and Leontius. Perhaps Leontion was the daughter of Themista and Leontius. Impossible to say at this distance.

I seem to recall finding mention of Leontion in the Greek Anthology, I'll have to check when I get home.

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In the school of Epicurus I never heard one mention of Lycurgus, Solon, Miltiades, Themistocles, Epaminondas, who are always on the lips of the other philosophers. And now that we Romans too have begun to treat of these themes, what a marvellous roll of great men will our friend Atticus supply to us from his store-houses of learning! Would it not be better to talk of these than to devote those bulky volumes to Themista? Let us leave that sort of thing to the Greeks. True we owe to them philosophy and all the liberal sciences; yet there are topics not permitted to us, that are allowable for them. Battle rages between the Stoics and the Peripatetics. One school declares that nothing is good but Moral Worth, the other that, while it assigns the greatest, and by far the greatest, value to Morality, yet still some bodily and external things are good. Here is an honourable quarrel, fought out in high debate! For the whole dispute turns on the true worth of virtue. But when one argues with your [Epicurean] friends, one has to listen to a great deal about even the grosser forms of pleasure! Epicurus is always harping upon them!

Cicero, De Finibus, book 2

Livioandronico2013 - Own work

CC BY-SA 4.0

Tomorrow, Saturday April 8th, is the 203rd anniversary of the rediscovery of the Venus de Milo in 1820. As Don pointed out recently, April was the month dedicated to Venus/Aphrodite by the Romans.

Creatress, mother of the Roman line,

Dear Venus, joy of earth and joy of heaven,

All things that live below that heraldry

Of star and planet, whose processional

Moves ever slow and solemn over us,

All things conceived, all things that face the light

In their bright visit, the grain-bearing fields,

The marinered oceans, where the wind and cloud

Are quiet in your presence – all proclaim

Your gift, without which they are nothingness.

For you that sweet artificer, the earth,

Submits her flowers, and for you the deep

Of ocean smiles, and the calm heaven shines

With shoreless light.

-Trans. Rolfe Humphries

I think this might be one of our better episodes on materialism, in part because of the focused effort to work out the implications of atomism and follow them through to their conclusions.

Thread

Episode 167 - "Epicurus And His Philosophy" Part 20 - Chapter 9 - The New Physics 02

Welcome to Episode 167 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the only 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 you will find a discussion thread…

Cassius

March 25, 2023 at 3:42 PM

I mainly see it as a question of emphasis--with the caveat being that what we emphasize in life colors our perception of what life amounts to while we live it.

Show Notes:

Thoreau, on Lucretius and Prometheus;

"[I was] struck only with the lines referring to Promethius (sic)—whose vivida vis animi…extra/processit longe flammantia moenia mundi.”

"Gravity" [2013] Fire Extinguisher Scene

Virgil, Georgics, Book II, verse 490

"Me indeed first and before all things may the sweet Muses, whose priest I am and whose great love hath smitten me, take to themselves and show me the pathways of the sky, the stars, and the diverse eclipses of the sun and the moon’s travails; whence is the earthquake; by what force the seas swell high over their burst barriers and sink back into themselves again; why winter suns so hasten to dip in Ocean, or what hindrance keeps back the lingering nights. But if I may not so attain to this side of nature for the clog of chilly blood about my heart, may the country and the streams that water the valleys content me, and lost to fame let me love stream and woodland. Ah, where the plains spread by Spercheus, and Laconian girls revel on Taygetus! ah for one to lay me in Haemus’ cool dells and cover me in immeasurable shade of boughs! Happy he who hath availed to know the causes of things, and hath laid all fears and immitigable Fate and the roar of hungry Acheron under his feet."

-Trans. J.W. Mackail

Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas - Wikipedia

Two philosophers on motion;

Zeno of Elea - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Heraclitus - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Omaha is 100 miles south of the city I grew up in, and its zoo is consistently ranked as one of the best in the nation. It was also a feature of my childhood, and we went several times a year. Among its other achievements--the largest nocturnal exhibit, the largest indoor swamp, one of the largest indoor rainforests and desert domes in the world, the largest glazed geodesic dome on earth, and so forth--was an ornangutan who could pick locks.

Every night, zookeepers would close and lock the great ape enclosures and then lock the building they were housed in. Every morning, when they opened the building, they found all of the orangutans loose inside. This went on for some time, until at last they discovered that Fu Manchu, a Sumatran orangutan, was keeping a length of wire along his gumline. When the zookeepers went home for the night, Fu Manchu would set to work with his wire, and pick the lock on the entrance to the orangutan enclosure.

Not only did he grasp the concept of locks and how they work, he also understood that his wire was "contraband" of a sort, and that it needed to stay hidden when not in use. And he understood that his mouth was a good place to hide it--he would always have it with him, and no one would suspect!

The head zookeeper was on the point of firing someone for carelessness before they discovered the real cause.

We were discussing Helen Keller on the chat this evening, and how she came to learn not just superficial things about her environment, but achieved a fully aware understanding of abstract concepts and principles. It seems to me that the brain is thirsty for information, and given the right stuff it finds a way. I can imagine a future intelligent supercomputer being as confused about the human understanding of mathematics as we are about Fu Manchu's grasp of the principles involved in lockpicking.

"Retaining his imperium, or power to command, Torquatus was in Africa in 47.[17] There the surviving boni raised an army which included 40,000 men (about 8 legions), a powerful cavalry force led by Caesar's former right-hand man, the talented Titus Labienus, forces of allied local kings and 60 war elephants. The two armies engaged in small skirmishes to gauge the strength of the opposing force, during which two legions switched to Caesar's side. Meanwhile, Caesar expected reinforcements from Sicily. In the beginning of February 46, Caesar arrived in Thapsus and besieged the city. The boni, led by Metellus Scipio, could not risk the loss of this position and were forced to accept battle. Scipio commanded "without skill or success",[18] and Caesar won a crushing victory which ended the war. Torquatus fled the field along with Scipio, attempting to escape to Hispania, but was trapped at Hippo Regius by the fleet of Publius Sittius. Scipio committed suicide on board a ship and Torquatus either committed suicide with him or was captured and executed.[19]"

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I think I still have qualms about seeing "instinctual behavior" as evidence of a prolepsis.

I mean I'm basically throwing out the prolepsis of the gods without hesitation, I think it's fair play to reconsider a lot of it.

It also occurs to me to say that part of that conversation included a question from Cassius as to whether any anticipation of justice is separable from the feelings of pleasure and pain. We do refer to the "prick of the conscience", after all.