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Thank you for all of this, Marco! A while ago I posted something to the forum written by one of Stephen Greenblatt's critics. She (a Christian interested in medieval theology) wrote that Epicureanism was never widespread after the Renaissance, or even before it.
Never widespread in antiquity!? This can only be attributed to a failure to examine the evidence. Thank you for providing some of it here!
Born on this day in 1743, in the same year as Daniel Brown's anonymous publication of an early English translation of Lucretius.
And I continue to think that it makes sense to situate Epicurus as particularly Ionian. Among the Pre-Socratics, Aristotle called the Ionians physiologoi---"those who study nature".
Lucian was also Syrian, but has long been noted for his command of the Greek Language.
Diogenes was Lycian or Anatolian.
The films/images coming *from* things *to* our eyes or minds was a direct refutation of the competing ancient theory that our eyes beamed out some kind of ray. To me, it's a lighthouse metaphor (Epicurean theory) vs a flashlight metaphor (Platonic et al metaphor)
That was going to be my main angle into this issue on the podcast, but we didn't get that far yesterday. I've been scooped!
The Dawkins quote that I got somewhat wrong:
“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”
That's a good point, Don, and it raises an interesting problem in theology; while Christianity in the main stream has abandoned the injunction against 'making graven images', Islam still adheres to it. In the Charlie Hebdo case, this meant that western cartoonists were 'deserving of death' for their portraits of Mohammed. In one of the attacks against that magazine, twelve people were killed.
From a ban on physical images, it is but one more step to a ban on mental images:
“It is not permissible at all to imagine how the Entity of Allah or any of His Attributes is.”
-The late Shaykh Ibn ‘Uthaymeen, a prominent scholar of Islam
By way of contrast, we may look into Bernard Frischer's argument from The Sculpted Word: the early Epicureans were not only noted for their dedication toward portraits, but actually used them as a method for advocating the philosophy.
That's a good point, Don, and it raises an interesting problem in theology; while Christianity in the main stream has abandoned the injunction against 'making graven images', Islam still adheres to it. In the Charlie Hebdo case, this meant that western cartoonists were 'deserving of death' for their portraits of Mohammed. In one of the attacks against that magazine, twelve people were killed.
From a ban on physical images, it is but one more step to a ban on mental images:
“It is not permissible at all to imagine how the Entity of Allah or any of His Attributes is.”
-The late Shaykh Ibn ‘Uthaymeen, a prominent scholar of Islam
By way of contrast, we may look into Bernard Frischer's argument from The Sculpted Word: the early Epicureans were not only noted for their dedication toward portraits, but actually used them as a method for advocating the philosophy.
Two other points to make by way of preface:
1.) Martin has been kind enough on a number of occasions to correct me when I use the phrase "many worlds". "Many-worlds" is an interpretation of modern quantum mechanics that is neither empirical nor falsifiable, and has nothing to do with Epicurean physics.
What we will be talking about is Cosmic Pluralism, which is simply the understanding that Earth, or the bodies of Solar System, are not the only celestial bodies in existence.
2.) The use of the word "idol" in 46 should not be construed to carry its religious connotations. Epicurus uses the Greek word εἴδωλον, eidolon, which is the root of the English word but means:
Noun Edit
εἴδωλον • (eídōlon) n (genitive εἰδώλου); second declension
1. phantom, ghost
2. shape, figure, image
3. image of the mind: idea, fancy
4. representation, statue, idol
We appear to be dealing with some combination of definitions 2 and 3.
Further, we must not assert `up' or `down' of that which is unlimited, as if there were a zenith or nadir.
Nor will their upward or their lateral motion, which is due to collisions, nor again their downward motion, due to weight, affect their velocity.
It seems to me that he is drawing a distinction between "down" in the sense of a direction that does exist, and "down" in the sense of a terminal position in that direction, which does not exist.
I had already read this, and thought of posting it; but now I can't remember much from it!
I don't know that I can quite get on board with identifying Thoreau as a Platonist or a neoplatonist. He was eclectic in the extreme (not to say eccentric), and seemed far more interested in the mysticism of the east than the philosophy of the west. He also denied the afterlife in one unusually candid journal entry.
I think he's decidedly more Aristotelian in many ways.
The Frontispiece is from an early portrait of Henry David Thoreau which, as you suggest, Cassius, I would know anywhere! The book itself, and its author, are totally unknown to me.
Point #2 says Plato twice instead of Epicurus, but otherwise good points!
I mentioned that atomism was thought to be one factor in the condemnation of Bruno and other 'heretics' (like Galileo) by the Catholic Church, and that the whole issue turned on the point of the Transubstantiation of the Eucharist from bread and wine into Body and Blood. The historical evidence surrounding Bruno's death is fragmentary, complicated, and highly controversial even today. It's true that one of the witnesses who denounced him to the inquisition did so because of his 'denial of the Eucharist': this was by no means the only charge, and not the most important one either. Anyway, here is the Canon of the Catholic Church as promulgated at the Council of Trent, followed by a little bit of Aristotle, and finally Democritus where it all started.
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From the 13th session of the Council of Trent:
it is indeed a crime the most unworthy that they should be wrested, by certain contentions and wicked men, to fictitious and imaginary tropes, whereby the verity of the flesh and blood of Christ is denied, contrary to the universal sense of the Church, which, as the pillar and ground of truth, has detested, as satanical, these inventions devised by impious men; she recognising, with a mind ever grateful and unforgetting, this most excellent benefit of Christ.
And because that Christ, our Redeemer, declared that which He offered under the species of bread to be truly His own body, therefore has it ever been a firm belief in the Church of God, and this holy Synod doth now declare it anew, that, by the consecration of the bread and of the wine, a conversion is made of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of His blood; which conversion is, by the holy Catholic Church, suitably and properly called Transubstantiation.
CANON I.-If any one denieth, that, in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist, are contained truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the whole Christ; but saith that He is only therein as in a sign, or in figure, or virtue; let him be anathema.
CANON lI.-If any one saith, that, in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucharist, the substance of the bread and wine remains conjointly with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denieth that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the Body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the Blood-the species Only of the bread and wine remaining-which conversion indeed the Catholic Church most aptly calls Transubstantiation; let him be anathema.
CANON III.-If any one denieth, that, in the venerable sacrament of the Eucharist, the whole Christ is contained under each [Page 83] species, and under every part of each species, when separated; let him be anathema.
CANON IV.-If any one saith, that, after the consecration is completed, the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ are not in the admirable sacrament of the Eucharist, but (are there) only during the use, whilst it is being taken, and not either before or after; and that, in the hosts, or consecrated particles, which are reserved or which remain after communion, the true Body of the Lord remaineth not; let him be anathema.
Aristotle, on Substance and Species
A substance—that which is called a substance most strictly, primarily, and most of all—is that which is neither said of a subject nor in a subject, e.g. the individual man or the individual horse. The species in which the things primarily called substances are, are called secondary substances, as also are the genera of these species. For example, the individual man belongs in a species, man, and animal is a genus of the species; so these—both man and animal—are called secondary substances.
Democritus
By convention sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void.
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Principal Doctrine 22. We must take into account as the end all that really exists and all clear evidence of sense to which we refer our opinions; for otherwise everything will be full of uncertainty and confusion.
No kidding!
There is a passage in the Latin text of Lucretius that alludes to the Parentalia and Feralia, which I'll need to find. These are consecutive feasts for dead ancestors and baleful spirits, as the names imply. Most English translations that I've seen do not capture the allusion, but it's there in the Latin.
Also, lactose and galaxy!
the "universe" of everything as a while
A good long while! 😄
We talked about that as well, ironically; in the Epicurean universe, things tend to endure. This allows us the reasonable expectation that change comes slowly, which is important for two reasons: it means (contra Heraclitus) that the pace of change is slow enough for things to remain explicable or understandable, thus evading a back-door into skepticism; and it means that you won't find Epicureans, like Millerite Christians, crowded onto mountaintops to get closer to heaven and the rapture.
Show Notes:
On "Primitive Tribes" and Observational Skills
Daniel Everett and the Piraha people:
On cave paintings and Renaissance art:
Acute observation necessary for survival:
https://www.survivalinternational.org/galleries/ingenious
Empiricism Vs. Poetry
John Keat's, Lamia:
[...] Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine—
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-person'd Lamia melt into a shade.
Edgar Allan Poe, Sonnet--To Science
Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
[...]
Walt Whitman
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
The Second Law of Motion
This is the most powerful of Newton's three Laws, because it allows quantitative calculations of dynamics: how do velocities change when forces are applied. Notice the fundamental difference between Newton's 2nd Law and the dynamics of Aristotle: according to Newton, a force causes only a change in velocity (an acceleration); it does not maintain the velocity as Aristotle held.
This is sometimes summarized by saying that under Newton, F = ma, but under Aristotle F = mv, where v is the velocity. Thus, according to Aristotle there is only a velocity if there is a force, but according to Newton an object with a certain velocity maintains that velocity unless a force acts on it to cause an acceleration (that is, a change in the velocity). As we have noted earlier in conjunction with the discussion of Galileo, Aristotle's view seems to be more in accord with common sense, but that is because of a failure to appreciate the role played by frictional forces. Once account is taken of all forces acting in a given situation it is the dynamics of Galileo and Newton, not of Aristotle, that are found to be in accord with the observations.
Epicurus' postulated that all matter is in constant motion: this appears to place him closer to Newton's position (F=ma) than to Aristotle's (F=mv), but without gravity as a reference point (to say nothing of relativity) the question is largely academic. Aristotle proposed that the natural condition of matter was not inertia, but rest.
All things are born from their seeds
Spontaneous Generation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation :
The doctrine of spontaneous generation was coherently synthesized by Aristotle, who compiled and expanded the work of earlier natural philosophers and the various ancient explanations for the appearance of organisms, and was taken as scientific fact for two millennia. Though challenged in the 17th and 18th centuries by the experiments of Francesco Redi and Lazzaro Spallanzani, spontaneous generation was not disproved until the work of Louis Pasteur and John Tyndall in the mid-19th century.
John Tyndall striking a blow for Epicurus yet again!
In salamanders:
https://sdzwildlifeexplorers.org/animals/fire-s…%20the%20flames.
