Posts by Don

Thank you for all you do to keep our little virtual Garden up and running! It is sincerely appreciated.

Quote from sanantoniogarden

I suppose one of the main difficulties initially, is how we can reconcile Epicurus' physics with modern physics?

My take has been to concentrate on what Epicurus's big takeaway was in his physics: We live in a material universe, governed by natural, physical laws with no supernatural or divine intervention. The rest are details. Prescient details for the most part, but I'm not worried by the details. Plus, ancient Greek atoms (ΑΤΟΜΟΙ) are not the atoms of modern physics, the name not withstanding. But Epicurus did get the general idea of small particles coming together to make a whole different than their individual characteristics. I do not, in any way, feel an obligation to adhere to the pre-scientific physics of 2,300 years ago to think of myself as an Epicurean. That said, I do think Epicurus was on the right track at least on a lot of his physics.

I hope that helps.

Welcome aboard, sanantoniogarden !! It's good that you've perused material presented here before. That should give you a good idea of where we're coming from.

I am curious when you mentioned:

Quote from sanantoniogarden

Epicureanism, despite its difficulties...

I would be interested to hear what you see as difficulties. I would bet that some of us have had the same thoughts, and it sounds like it might be a good discussion thread

Quote from Don

Welcome aboard, aragen. Thank you for the introductry post on how you ended up here. I highly recommend Emily Austin's book Living for Pleasure as a wonderful, approachable, conversational, modern introduction to the philosophy.

I look forward to your questions and contributions to the forum.

Excellent summary of the historical context! Thanks for posting.

Welcome aboard, aragen. Thank you for the introductry post on how you ended up here. I highly recommend Emily Austin's book Living for Pleasure as a wonderful, approachable, conversational, modern introduction to the philosophy.

I like forward to your questions and contributions to the forum.

I'm not sure I'll be able to attend in person tonight, so I wanted to wish everyone a very Joyous Twentieth and a Happy Birthday to Epicurus!!

I always like to go back to Philodemus's epigram inviting Piso to the 20th celebration in Herculaneum on this day:

αὔριον εἰς λιτήν σε καλιάδα, φίλτατε Πείσων,

ἐξ ἐνάτης ἕλκει μουσοφιλὴς ἕταρος,

εἰκάδα δειπνίζων ἐνιαύσιον: εἰ δ᾽ ἀπολείψεις

οὔθατα καὶ Βρομίου χιογενῆ πρόποσιν,

ἀλλ᾽ ἑτάρους ὄψει παναληθέας, ἀλλ᾽ ἐπακούσῃ

Φαιήκων γαίης πουλὺ μελιχρότερα:

ἢν δέ ποτε στρέψῃς καὶ ἐς ἡμέας ὄμματα, Πείσων,

ἄξομεν ἐκ λιτῆς εἰκάδα πιοτέρην.

***

And, yes, it is udders οὔθατα and wine from the island of Chios Βρομίου χιογενῆ:

"During the Hellenistic period, the island also had become the largest exporter of Greek wine, which was noted for being of relatively high quality (see "Chian wine"). Chian amphoras, with a characteristic sphinx emblem and bunches of grapes, have been found in nearly every country with whom the ancient Greeks traded. These countries included Gaul, Upper Egypt, and Southern Russia" (Wikipedia)

You can find ancient recipes online for udders if y'all would like to try those.

Here's some discussion too this point:

Post

RE: Episode 175 - "Epicurus And His Philosophy" Part 27 - Chapter 12 - The New Hedonism 04

We mentioned the circumplex in today's episode. Here are some resources:

https://psu.pb.unizin.org/psych425/chapt…cumplex-models/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2367156/



PS: From my perspective, Epicurus included *everything* to the right of the vertical axis in his definition of pleasure. The Cyrenaics, for example, only included the upper right quadrant.

Don

May 21, 2023 at 2:14 PM

See also:

Apiqoros: The Last Essays of Salomon Maimon - Hebrew Union College Press

Before the Enlightenment, before Spinoza had rejected traditional beliefs about the Bible, came the humanistic skeptics of the Renaissance. Alongside such…

press.huc.edu

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23509248

(I'll try and follow-up on that jstor paper)

Heresy and the Formation of the Rabbinic Community

books.google.com

This is all fascinating! Evidently there's maybe more to the Epicurean link to Antiochus Epiphanes than I initially expected. Do we know how far back Apiqoros goes in Hebrew? To the time of the Maccabees?

On Dune, Joshua shared this previously and it includes the additional mention of "Bicouros of Shaitan; "a lazy missionary of the devil"

Thread

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Arrakis

So I've been thinking of getting into some light game modding and I've been getting into the worldbuilding side of Frank Herbert's Dune, one of the greatest sci-fi worlds ever made. His stories are set in our galaxy, but in a far distant future where Earth is nothing but a faint memory and mankind has spread across the stars. Herbert's narrative texture relies for its effect on extrapolating the development of human language, religion, and folkways across this vast scale of time, and words from…

Joshua

September 18, 2022 at 10:05 PM

Quote from Cassius

does an analogy of ripples on an ocean have any different emotional impact or philosophical implication than the particles in space analogy?

For me, no difference.

I get the same sense of awe when thinking that the iron in my blood was forged in the heart of long dead stars, the oxygen I breathe is from the respiration of plants, the light that enters my eyes from Orion's Belt has been traveling for unimaginably long times before I sense it. It's only a matter of different levels of thinking about my connection to other people, other life forms, and the vast universe itself.

PS. And I need to add that that connection isn't metaphorical or mystical or supernatural, it's literal. I am literally connected to everything else in a physical, tangible, material way. From the atoms that make me up coming from dead stars, to the air I breathe coming from plants, the acquintances and friends and relatives and acestors I have that come from all over the world, I am a result of all those connections rippling and bubbling and waving through the cosmos and out into the infinite All.

We've been having some heavy discussions on the forum recently, so, as a mind/palate cleanser, I present an Instagram post I found of baby pigs. That first one seems to certainly be pursuing pleasure!

https://www.instagram.com/p/C1t7vJYpoaO/

Quote from Bryan

In minute 20 "There are no particles in the world, the basic fundamental building blocks of our universe are these fluid-like substances that we call fields"

What is a "substance that is not made of any particles"?

There are "particles" just not as we have become accustomed to think of them. The metaphor he uses of waves on the ocean seems appropriate as long as it's not taken literally.

This whole presentation gets at the discussions we've all had on the forum in the past about different levels of perspectives and reality at different levels of perception. “By convention sweet and by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention color; but in reality atoms and void.” from Democritus. This presentation could be summed up “By convention atoms and void; but in reality waves and fields.”

We don't exist at the level of waves and fields, we live our lives in the macroscopic world. But we make use of the knowledge gained by quantum field theory every day in our electronic devices. But pleasure and pain don't need to be understood at the subatomic level to guide our lives. We're flesh and blood and bone and brain interacting with other physical, emotional creatures trying to get through the day.

For me, the idea that the particles that make me are ripples on a cosmic ocean, connecting me to every other thing in the universe, is awe-inspiring in the best way. No gods necessary. Just the infinite structure of an infinite universe bubbling up here and there.

Quote from Bryan

In minute 15 he says that the field operates while being "never touched" and "without ever touching," and says "the field is real... you can affect things far away using the field without ever touching it."

How can something be affected without contact?

That was a physical demonstration by Farday and a demonstrable effect of the electromagnetic field. He may have stated it in an unfortunate layperson, non scientific way, but the effect is real. The electromagnetic field is "invisible" to our naked unaided eyes, but using the right equipment, you can see it, detect it, use it. It's not supernatural or eerie or anything like that. He's just using "touching" in a colloquial, touch it with your finger sense. If real. It what makes what we're doing online possible as well.

Quote from Cassius

All of which leaves the biggest questions that Epicurus wanted to address, such as whether there is something outside of "this observable universe" that these physicists are talking about (something which implicitly might be "god") totally unanswered. That larger question is at least as important to our daily lives as it is to get a better understanding of fields.

From my perspective, Epicurus answered the question of "is something outside of 'this observable universe'" explicitly. The answer was yes. The cosmos (kosmos ΚΟΣΜΟΣ), from everything I have read, is akin to our idea of an "observable universe." I'm going to use K kosmos instead of C cosmos because we tend to define cosmos as the "universe" colloquially, but I want to get across the idea of the ancient kosmos. The kosmos is the world-system in which we live. The Library of Congress has a wonderful article on ancient Greek cosmology:

https://www.loc.gov/collections/finding-our-place-in-the-cosmos-with-carl-sagan/articles-and-essays/modeling-the-cosmos/ancient-greek-astronomy-and-cosmology/

Important points:

• From the 5th c BCE, it was known we live on a sphere.
• "In this system the entire universe was part of a great sphere. This sphere was split into two sections, an outer celestial realm and an inner terrestrial one. The dividing line between the two was the orbit of the moon."

The other stars and planets were thought of as spheres, too, since even Epicurus wrote against people thinking the stars and wandering stars were gods because they were perfect spheres. So, it would have been theoretically possible to travel to other "worlds" - other spheres - without leaving our kosmos. See the diagram below...

So, that's OUR kosmos.

Epicurus also posited other kosmoi - other world-systems - that would be other kosmoi somewhere else in The All, the universe. Such as..

.

with, supposedly the gods residing in the metakosmos/intermundia/"the space between world-systems."

That's my perspective on how Epicurus envisioned The Universe. There is plenty of space "outside our observable universe." It's just filled with other kosmoi with their own worlds, animals, humans, and even philosophers.

For y'all's consideration (I have not watched the entire hour, but it's geared toward a lay audience)

btw, thatchickinpa ... I revised my post above with a lengthy PS after you 'd it. If you want to take that back, I won't be hurt .

For reference, here's a thread from 2020 where we were discussing this topic:

Thread

Infinity and the Expanding Universe

Recently there was some discussion of the expanding universe, heat death, the infinite (in time and space) universe and the ramifications of these ideas. I just came across an image from 1750 of the universe comprised of infinite galaxies, which made me think that it might be useful to start a thread on the topic. Just in case anybody would like their mind blown!

epicureanfriends.com/wcf/attachment/1240/

Here's the article that the image came from:

…

Godfrey

July 23, 2020 at 4:50 PM

It includes a link to the Dawkins/Krauss video.

PS. I feel the need to emphasize that the Epicueans clearly conveyed that "nothing comes from nothing." But the texts may use that shorthand but elsewhere clarify that theymean "nothing comes from that which did not previously exist." Basically, everything gets recycled into something else in the infinite expanse of the universe - not just our little cosmos here but what Epicurus and others called The All in the texts, To Pan ΤΟ ΠΑΝ... Latin uses universus (From ūnus (“one”) +‎ versus (“turned”), hence literally "turned into one") with the same meaning.

In modern physics, they're not saying "nothing comes from nothing" either. Their confusing shorthand provocative layman's "nothing" is just the quantum fields permeating all of space. The idea of the cosmos - our observable universe - coming out of a quantum fluctuation... similar to what some cosmologists posit is the ultimate fate of our cosmos (NOT the universe remember) an unimaginable number of billions and trillions of years in the future - strikes me as elegant. The new cosmos and our current one doesn't/ didn't come from nothing. It was birthed from the very existing underlying structure of the infinite universe.

So ... Are you looking for Epicureans expounding ways in which they are misrepresented or misunderstood... Or are you looking for citations of Epicureans are saying others (the hoi polloi) are misunderstanding the "correct" view as expounded by the Epicureans?

I was a little confused by the examples.