Posts by Joshua

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."

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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:

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[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.

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[54] "Καὶ μὴν καὶ τὰς ἀτόμους νομιστέον μηδεμίαν ποιότητα τῶν φαινομένων προσφέρεσθαι πλὴν σχήματος καὶ βάρους καὶ μεγέθους καὶ ὅσα ἐξ ἀνάγκης σχήματος συμφυῆ ἐστι.

[54] "Kai men kai tas atomous nomisteon medemian poioteta ton phainomenon prospheresthai plen schematos kai barous kai megethous kai hosa ex anagkes schematos sumphue esti.

[54] "Moreover, we must hold that the atoms in fact possess none of the qualities belonging to things which come under our observation, except shape, weight, and size, and the properties necessarily conjoined with shape.

-Letter to Herodotus, Epicurus, from Diogenes Laertius Book 10 (Perseus Project)

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My rhetoric professor in grad school attributed Epicurus with moderation, which I can understand but I don’t see it as his actual point - more like being (reasonable*) and “sensible” in its classical definition of awareness and affectedness of the senses.

I probably wouldn't express it the following way normally, but since you have posed an interesting question and it can be helpful to think out loud sometimes, I might answer it this way:

I suggest that Epicurus advocated not moderation, but what modern philosophers following Max Weber call instrumental rationality; choices (and avoidances) are considered rational when they are expected to lead to a desired end, which for Epicurus is the end of increasing pleasure and reducing pain.

In any case, welcome!

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First, I must distinguish between that which always is and never becomes and which is apprehended by reason and reflection, and that which always becomes and never is and is conceived by opinion with the help of sense. All that becomes and is created is the work of a cause, and that is fair which the artificer makes after an eternal pattern, but whatever is fashioned after a created pattern is not fair. Is the world created or uncreated?—that is the first question. Created, I reply, being visible and tangible and having a body, and therefore sensible; and if sensible, then created; and if created, made by a cause, and the cause is the ineffable father of all things, who had before him an eternal archetype. For to imagine that the archetype was created would be blasphemy, seeing that the world is the noblest of creations, and God is the best of causes. And the world being thus created according to the eternal pattern is the copy of something; and we may assume that words are akin to the matter of which they speak. What is spoken of the unchanging or intelligible must be certain and true; but what is spoken of the created image can only be probable; being is to becoming what truth is to belief. And amid the variety of opinions which have arisen about God and the nature of the world we must be content to take probability for our rule, considering that I, who am the speaker, and you, who are the judges, are only men; to probability we may attain but no further.

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Why did the Creator make the world?...He was good, and therefore not jealous, and being free from jealousy he desired that all things should be like himself. Wherefore he set in order the visible world, which he found in disorder. Now he who is the best could only create the fairest; and reflecting that of visible things the intelligent is superior to the unintelligent, he put intelligence in soul and soul in body, and framed the universe to be the best and fairest work in the order of nature, and the world became a living soul through the providence of God.

-Timaeus, Plato, transl. Benjamin Jowett

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So, is there some root Latin that makes this “watching over everything” such an active tense, vs the simple, passive knowing that everything in the universe operates according to its own sentient nature?

That is a good question! I will try to remember to look into this later today.

The thing is, even Aristotle's Physics could be described as a text on metaphysics according to the modern meaning of that term. Both words, physics and metaphysics, had each of them one meaning in antiquity, and have both of them quite another meaning now. In antiquity, both branches were viewed predominately through the lens of logic, and neither of them were subjected to the method of rigorous experimentation against the standards of reproducibility and falsifiability. In modern usage, that method has come to mark out the shifting boundaries between the scientific study of nature and the non-scientific, the latter of which includes both common pseudoscience (the claims of which are usually falsifiable and generally have been falsified) and what we call the philosophical branches of metaphysics, theology, eschatology, etc.--the claims of which are often not falsifiable.

I say 'usually falsifiable' and 'often not falsifiable' because most systems of thought straddle the boundary, the opinions of Stephen J. Gould notwithstanding. For example, the claim in alchemy that lead can be transmuted into gold through basic chemistry (rather than high-energy particle physics) can be tested, has been tested, and has not produced the desired result; however, the corresponding claim in Hermeticism that the divinely-natured human soul can make an analogous spiritual ascent cannot even be tested. This latter claim falls outside of what we would now call physics, but it did not necessarily fall outside of what the Greek philosophers called physics.

All of that is to say that I do not favor a change in nomenclature. Both Aristotle and Epicurus discussed whether motion was possible, and whether anything can come from nothing, and whether atoms and void or love and strife or the four classical elements were the building blocks of nature, and both Aristotle and Epicurus referred to their studies of these questions as physics. We should focus our attention instead on clarifying, when necessary, the distinction between the ancient and the modern meanings of that word.

That was well done, Cassius, and I only have one note; I would suggest replacing the reference to Christian 'inner peace' in section I with a citation instead to Philippians 4:7, and the peace of God, which passeth all understanding. Christianity does not really idealize inner peace, it idealizes obedience.

I think I mentioned this video in the episode;

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Now all goes on without disturbance as far as regards each of those things which may be explained in several ways so as to harmonize with what we perceive, when one admits, as we are bound to do, probable theories about them. But when one accepts one theory and rejects another which harmonizes as well with the phenomenon, it is obvious that he altogether leaves the path of scientific inquiry and has recourse to myth.

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But to assign a single cause for these occurrences, when phenomena demand several explanations, is madness, and is quite wrongly practiced by persons who are partisans of the foolish notions of astrology, by which they give futile explanations of the causes of certain occurrences, and all the time do not by any means free the divine nature from the burden of responsibilities.

-Epicurus, Letter To Pythocles

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First, I must distinguish between that which always is and never becomes and which is apprehended by reason and reflection, and that which always becomes and never is and is conceived by opinion with the help of sense. All that becomes and is created is the work of a cause, and that is fair which the artificer makes after an eternal pattern, but whatever is fashioned after a created pattern is not fair. Is the world created or uncreated?—that is the first question. Created, I reply, being visible and tangible and having a body, and therefore sensible; and if sensible, then created; and if created, made by a cause, and the cause is the ineffable father of all things, who had before him an eternal archetype. For to imagine that the archetype was created would be blasphemy, seeing that the world is the noblest of creations, and God is the best of causes. And the world being thus created according to the eternal pattern is the copy of something; and we may assume that words are akin to the matter of which they speak. What is spoken of the unchanging or intelligible must be certain and true; but what is spoken of the created image can only be probable; being is to becoming what truth is to belief. And amid the variety of opinions which have arisen about God and the nature of the world we must be content to take probability for our rule, considering that I, who am the speaker, and you, who are the judges, are only men; to probability we may attain but no further.

-Timaeus from Timaeus, Plato

The Internet Classics Archive | The Republic by Plato

Plato's Republic, book VII

I agree with Cassius on pleasure, but I do want to add something relevant to joy. This comes from Julien Offray de la Mettrie's Anti-Seneca; many here will recognize this from Charles's work on the French materialists.

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Nous sommes donc en droit de conclure que, si les joies puisées dans la nature & la raison, sont des crimes, le bonheur des hommes efs d’être criminels.

We are therefore entitled to conclude that, if the joys drawn from nature and reason are crimes, then the happiness of men is to be criminal.

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Trace the line of life backwards, and see it approaching more and more to what we call the purely physical condition. We come at length to those organisms which I have compared to drops of oil suspended in a mixture of alcohol and water. We reach the protogenes of Haeckel, in which we have 'a type distinguishable from a fragment of albumen only by its finely granular character.' Can we pause here? We break a magnet and find two poles in each of its fragments. We continue the process of breaking, but, however small the parts, each carries with it, though enfeebled, the polarity of the whole. And when we can break no longer, we prolong the intellectual vision to the polar molecules. Are we not urged to do something similar in the case of life? Is there not a temptation to close to some extent with Lucretius, when he affirms that 'nature is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself without the meddling of the gods?' or with Bruno, when he declares that Matter is not 'that mere empty capacity which philosophers have pictured her to be, but the universal mother who brings forth all things as the fruit of her own womb?' Believing as I do in the continuity of Nature, I cannot stop abruptly where our microscopes cease to be of use. Here the vision of the mind authoritatively supplements the vision of the eye. By an intellectual necessity I cross the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that Matter which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of all terrestial Life.

-John Tyndall, Belfast Address, August 1874

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It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat the mirror-like surface of the water, in which every twig and blade of grass was so faithfully reflected; too faithfully indeed for art to imitate, for only Nature may exaggerate herself. The shallowest still water is unfathomable. Wherever the trees and skies are reflected, there is more than Atlantic depth, and no danger of fancy running aground. We notice that it required a separate intention of the eye, a more free and abstracted vision, to see the reflected trees and the sky, than to see the river bottom merely; and so are there manifold visions in the direction of every object, and even the most opaque reflect the heavens from their surface. Some men have their eyes naturally intended to the one and some to the other object.

-Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

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How familiar do you think More might have been with Epicurus?

Thomas More (1478-1535) published Utopia in 1516; for reference, here are some of the relevant texts from antiquity by first Latin translation, first Latin printing, and the first Aldine press edition of the Greek text:

And here is the editor of a 1964 edition [archive.org] of Utopia commenting on More's sources;

So to answer your question, he appears to have been quite familiar with the standard texts on Epicureanism!

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Those two Joshua along with the material on Archimedes we need to come back to next week on the podcast

From the same work of Plutarch linked above:

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And yet Archimedes possessed such a lofty spirit, so profound a soul, and such a wealth of scientific theory, that although his inventions had won for him a name and fame for superhuman sagacity, he would not consent to leave behind him any treatise on this subject, but regarding the work of an engineer and every art that ministers to the needs of life as ignoble and vulgar, he devoted his earnest efforts only to those studies the subtlety and charm of which are not affected by the claims of necessity. These studies, he thought, are not to be compared with any others; in them the subject matter vies with the demonstration, the former supplying grandeur and beauty, the latter precision and surpassing power. For it is not possible to find in geometry more profound and difficult questions treated in simpler and purer terms. Some attribute this success to his natural endowments; others think it due to excessive labour that everything he did seemed to have been performed without labour and with ease. For no one could by his own efforts discover the proof, and yet as soon as he learns it from him, he thinks he might have discovered it himself; so smooth and rapid is the path by which he leads one to the desired conclusion. 6 And therefore we may not disbelieve the stories told about him, how, under the lasting charm of some familiar and domestic Siren, he forgot even his food and neglected the care of his person; and how, when he was dragged by main force, as he often was, to the place for bathing and anointing his body, he would trace geometrical figures in the ashes, and draw lines with his finger in the oil with which his body was anointed, being possessed by a great delight, and in very truth a captive of the Muses. And although he made many excellent discoveries, he is said to have asked his kinsmen and friends to place over the grave where he should be buried a cylinder enclosing a sphere, with an inscription giving the proportion by which the containing solid exceeds the contained.