Posts by Bryan

I wanted to include this striking quote from William DeWitt Hyde (From Epicurus To Christ, pgs. 22-24):

"Perhaps we are inclined to look down on Epicurus's ideal as a low one. Well, if it is a low ideal, it is all the more disgraceful to fall below it. And of us do fall below it every day of our tense and restless lives. Let us test ourselves by this ideal, and answer honestly the questions it puts to us.

How many of us are slaving all day and late into the night to add artificial superfluities to the simple necessities? How many of us know how to stop working when it begins to encroach upon our health; and to cut off anxiety and worry altogether? How many of us measure the amount and intensity of our toil by our physical strength; doing what we can do healthfully, cheerfully, joyously, and leaving the rest undone, instead of straining up to the highest notch of nervous tension during early manhood and womanhood, only to break down when the life forces begin to turn against us?

Every man in any position of responsibility and influence has opportunity to do the work of twenty men. How many of us in such circumstances choose the one thing we can do best, and leave the other nineteen for other people to do, or else to remain undone?

How many of us have ever seriously stopped to think where the limit of healthful effort and endurance lies, unless insomnia or dyspepsia or nervous prostration have laid their heavy hands upon us and compelled us to pause? Every breakdown from avoidable causes, every stroke of work we do after the border-land of exhaustion and nervous strain is crossed, is a crime against the teaching of Epicurus."

Quote from kochiekoch

If you can tap into the power of the heavens

Yes, I want to rescind my dismissiveness. If these were any other shape, it would be very tempting to think they just had a practical use. But given that the dodecahedron was an important part of the key to transcending metempsychosis, and as such was almost an object of worship in the early Academy (as Kochiekoch said), it does indeed suggest these objects were not for (some unknown) practical use.

The fact that there were also icosahedral versions seems to solidify the Platonic connection.

Quote from Charles

The 1712 edition of Creech, published by Jacob Tonson

The next year, Jacob Tonson and John Watts published another version with engravings by Guernier, but this time by with the text edited by Michael Maittaire (French classicist) and funded by Richard Mead (doctor to the crown and patron of the classics).

I recently got a 1713 edition of this for only £40. The text is Latin-only, but does contain one page of English, which is more-or-less an Enlightenment era copywrite.

ANNE R. = Anne Regina = Queen Anne

I agree, Eikadistes. I feel as though the circumstantial evidence we have is sufficient to accept the theory.

In general outline, it seems Plato, as he aged, became less skeptical and more Pythagorean. The old academy would have been the most influenced by Pythagoreanism. Of course, later on, the more skeptical new academy more closely aligned with skepticism seen in Plato's earlier and public works.

The old academy is the least known, least public, and the most "mystic." This Pythagorean-influenced Platonism would have been the version of Platonism that Epikouros was arguing against.

Quote from Cassius

One of his key criticisms was directed at the Pythagorean doctrine of the immortality and transmigration of the soul.

Epikouros was undeterred by the Pythagorian threat that, if he built his science upon sensation, his spirit would be metempsychotized into a bird.

"And the tribe of birds are derived by transformation, growing feathers in place of hair, from men who are harmless but light-minded—men, too, who, being students of the worlds above, suppose in their simplicity that the most solid proofs about such matters are obtained by the sense of sight." [Timaeus, 91d fin.]

The SFOTSE and leaping pig hats are great!

I may be pushing it, but are full-brim hat types a possibility?

I wanted to highlight this section:

"God began by first marking them out into shapes by means of forms and numbers. And that God constructed them, so far as He could, to be as fair and good as possible, whereas they had been otherwise,—this above all else must always be postulated in our account. Now, however, it is the disposition and origin [53c] of each of these Kinds which I must endeavor to explain to you in an exposition of an unusual type; yet, inasmuch as you have some acquaintance with the technical method which I must necessarily employ in my exposition, you will follow me.

[53c fin.] In the first place, then, it is plain I presume to everyone that fire and earth and water and air are solid bodies; and the form of a body, in every case, possesses depth also. Further, it is absolutely necessary that depth should be bounded by a plane surface; and the rectilinear plane is composed of triangles. [53d] Now all triangles derive their origin from two triangles, each having one angle right and the others acute; and the one of these triangles has on each side half a right angle marked off by equal sides, while the other has the right angle divided into unequal parts by unequal sides. These we lay down as the principles of fire and all the other bodies, proceeding according to a method in which the probable is combined with the necessary; but the principles which are still higher than these are known only to God and the man who is dear to God."

Within (2) What always becomes, our realm of sensation, Plato says it is most probable that everything is made out of triangles. This is at the basis of his geometry that Epíkouros attacks, but it is the basis for some other absurd ideas: triangles in your stomach and blood breakdown food, this becomes less efficient as you get older -- because your triangles are getting increasingly more dull (81c), this is, in fact, exactly what aging is.

The elements are built from and can be broken back down into triangles. If it seems to you that triangles alone might not be sufficient as a basis for everything we see in the word -- you have not considered that these triangles have different angles and come in different sizes (57d).

Quote from Cassius

If so, atoms are constantly moving, and in that sense, void is constantly relocating

I would not think that the void can relocate. Void can in no way be altered. In fact, that malleability is what makes Plato's receptacle so different from the void:

"This all takes place at once, like the rotation of a wheel, because there is no such thing as a void." (79c)

"There is no void, these things push themselves around into each other, all things move by exchanging places." (80c)

Plato is very clear that the "(3) The receptacle, or what everything comes to be in" is not void, because void does not exist.

"There is no void into which anything that is moving could enter" (79b)

It is well known that the spirits of men who lived a good life go on to live in the star that God made for them, but if a man does not live a good life, his spirit will be reincarnated as a woman (42c) -- but it is less well known that spirits persisting in not living the good life (i.e., not understanding the geometry behind the motions of the stars), but instead are stupid enough to trust their senses, will come back as birds (91e):

"As for birds... they descended from innocent but simple minded men, men who studied the heavenly bodies but in their naivete believed that the most reliable proofs concerning them cold be based upon visual observation."

So I guess that is our future.

Quote from Don

just floods in general.

Yes I think this is correct.

Plato places this back 9,000 years from his day. Most civilizations were still using very natural materials, and the larger and more advanced of these lived near the coast. Given that a lot of ice was still melting in the north and sea levels were rising, it seems very possible that most early civilizations during that time were built on coasts that are now far under the sea.

Plato says the Egyptians mentioned a large power in the west that held most of North Africa up to Egypt's borders, parts of Spain, and the bottom half of Italy (as well as islands in the Atlantic)—but the people in what is now Athens fought them back from further advancing east.

Not that a specific event is recorded, but in general, this sounds possible and like the exact type of general activity that would be "big news" in the Mediterranean 11,000 years ago.

I think this is something Plato probably believed to be true—he would have wanted it to be true. As he says, it shows that Athens was, in a way, destined to be great because of its geography and because of the race of those who live there. Solon, a relative of Plato and the origin of this story, famously did travel to Egypt and was friendly with their government.

It makes sense to split, because Atlantis is a distracting introduction (which I brought up) but it is not addressed by Epikouros, who is focused instead on the restrictive geometry that Plato assigns to the elements.

Quote from Don

It is entirely a literary invention of Plato

And of course some scholars throw out all of Timaeus, as a mere "rhetorical exercise" that Plato himself did not take seriously. But it could be just the opposite. It among his last works, and seems to be a sustained, sincere look into the best model of nature he could come up with. In book 14, Epicurus appears to interpret the Timaeus literally.

I got a hat and the patches for my first round, but now I see there are even more items available! This is cool, thank you.

Quote from Cassius

Anyone want to suggest an edition that is both readable and has line numbers?

This is readable and has line numbers. The pages are a little thin, but they do hold up to writing and highlighting: Link

The section you underlined is 27d/28a.

The inclusion of all void and all space as something everlasting makes sense and is consistent with Epikouros, who says that only the (1) void and (2) atoms are whole, unchanging, natures. The Whole is everlasting, but always changing.

10.40 "But if a location did not exist, which we call 'void,' 'space,' and 'intangible nature' – bodies would not have anywhere to be, or [anything] through which they move: just as they are seen moving, beyond these, nothing at all is able to be conceived (either comprehensibly or analogously to the comprehensible) as being apprehended according to whole natures, and not as what are called the 'symptoms' or 'properties' of these."

After Critias' fun story of proto-Athens defeating Atlantis' eastern advancement, Timaeus sets up the distinction between (1) what always is, vs. (2) what is always becoming. He says the craftsman looked to (1) what always is as a model to form our single kosmos, which is in the realm of (2) what is always becoming. Only the realm of (1) what always is has any certainty, and therefore when discussing our Earthly realm of (2) what is always becoming, we need to be content with probabilities.

For Epíkouros the closest we have to a realm of (1) what always is, is the whole natures (ὅλαι φύσεις) of the atoms and the void, and the realm of (2) always becoming corresponds somewhat with compounds and their emergent qualities.

Epíkouros agrees with Plato in the way that he speaks with certainty about (1) what always is, and also agrees that we must be content with not having complete certainty about (2) what is always becoming, i.e., all the movements and interactions of all compounds (as it highlighted in his Letter to Pythocles).

Later on Plato includes a third aspect, the (3) Receptacle / Neutral Base. From this angle we have:

(1) What always is, after which all is molded, ("father")

(2) What always becomes, our realm of sensation, ("offspring")

(3) The receptacle, or what everything comes to be in, ("mother")

Plato says the receptacle "is modified, shaped and reshaped by the things that enter it," and he compares it to a neutral base perfumers use.

Quote from Cassius

eternal and enduring

Cassius you brought up last Wednesday how Epikouros uses these terms. Here is the distinction as far as I understand it.

Quote from Martin

light has mass while the elementary particle which makes up light, the photon has a nominal rest mass of zero

Thank you Matin. Even if photons are only considered "massless" when they are not moving — Given, in the real world, light is never not moving, why should we follow Einstein and take the basis of our considerations something that does not exist: "massless and motionless elementary particles of light"?

Quote from Martin

Although from a theoretical perspective, Einstein's theories and quantum mechanics have replaced Newton's theory of gravity/mechanics, in actual practice, Newton's theory is still far more often applied than the newer theories because Newton's mechanics is accurate enough and more efficient to use for problems which are within its limits.

Does not this mean there is a separation between our theory and our practice? If Newton works in the real world, perhaps he is mostly all we need.

Throwing in this clear and simple quote from Epikouros against determinists:

"…While you all simultaneously make everything have its cause [of movement] from its former movement and turn reasoning upside down..."

…ἅμα ποιοῦντες πάντ' ἀ[πὸ] τῆς προτέρας κ̣ινήσε̣[ω]ς τὴν αἰτίαν ἔχειν καὶ π̣ε̣ρικάτω τρέ̣ποντες τὸν λόγον…

Book 25, P.Herc. 1420 col. 4 (fr. B 12)