Episode 008 - Step Two - Nothing Goes to Nothing!
Date: 03/07/20
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1454-episode-eight-step-two-nothing-goes-to-nothing/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Episode 008 covers the second great physical principle from Book One: “Nothing goes to nothing” — the complementary observation to “nothing comes from nothing.” Julie reads the full Daniel Brown passage (lines ~157–250), which argues that since elemental matter is eternal and indestructible, what appears to die or perish merely resolves into its constituent particles, which then combine into new forms. The panel discusses how these two principles together foreclose all possibilities of supernatural action — covering both the origin and the dissolution of things — and why Lucretius invokes Venus (pleasure) and Ether in what are purely poetic metaphors for natural forces, not references to actual deities.
The episode includes extended discussion of how these Epicurean observations relate to modern physics. Martin notes that conservation of matter and energy is consistent with Lucretius’s claims, but points out that modern cosmology posits a beginning of time that complicates the claim of eternal existence — though he also observes that 13.8 billion years is effectively eternal relative to any human observation span. The panel addresses the distinction between theoretical physics (speculative models) and experimental physics (what actually counts for falsifiable claims), and whether physics can “prove or disprove” a God. Martin’s conclusion: it cannot, because supernatural forces by definition cannot be measured, but experimental physics proceeds by assuming no supernatural forces and has been internally self-consistent. This is not arbitrary — it is grounded in observation.
A memorable extended discussion develops from Julie’s Epicurean pragmatism point: Cassius recounts a debate among physicians about the terms “idiopathic urticaria” (we don’t know why you have hives) versus “spontaneous urticaria” (they just happen), arguing the latter implies a dangerously supernatural-sounding causelessness. Martin clarifies that “spontaneous” in physics (e.g., radioactive decay) does not mean uncaused, just randomly distributed in time. Julie closes by noting that the physics argument alone does not exhaust the Epicurean case against fearing divine punishment — Principal Doctrine 1 (the nature of perfect divine beings implies no anger or gratitude) is equally important. Panelists: Cassius, Julie, Elaine, Martin.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
Welcome to Episode 8 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who lived in the age of Julius Caesar and wrote On the Nature of Things, the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. I’m your host, Cassius, and together with my panelists from the EpicureanFriends.com forum, we’ll walk you line by line through the six books of Lucretius’s poem and discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. Be aware that none of us are professional philosophers, and everyone here is a self-taught Epicurean. We encourage you to study Epicurus for yourself, and we suggest the best place to start is the book Epicurus and His Philosophy by Canadian professor Norman DeWitt.
Before we start with today’s episode, let me remind you of our three ground rules. First, our aim is to bring you an accurate presentation of classical Epicurean philosophy as the ancient Epicureans understood it — not to put our own positions into the words of the poem. Second, in this podcast we won’t be talking about modern political issues. Over at the EpicureanFriends.com forum, we call this approach, not Neo-Epicurean, but Epicurean. Epicurean philosophy is not a religion. It’s not Stoicism, Humanism, Buddhism, Taoism, Atheism, or Marxism. It’s a unique philosophy of its own, to be understood on its own terms — not in terms of conventional, modern morality. Third, Lucretius will show that Epicurus was not focused on over-the-top luxury, like some people say, but neither did he teach a minimalist lifestyle, as other people say. Epicurus taught that feeling, pleasure, and pain are the guides that nature gives us to live by — not gods, idealism, or virtue ethics. More than anything else, Epicurus taught that the universe is not supernatural in any way, and that means there’s no life after death, and any happiness we’ll ever have comes in this life, which is why it is so important not to waste time in confusion.
Remember that our home page is LucretiusToday.com, and there you can find a free copy of the version of the poem from which we’re reading, and links to where you can discuss the poem with us at EpicureanFriends.com.
Now let’s get started with today’s discussion at approximately line 157 of the Latin edition, read today by Julie.
Julie:
For if every being was liable to death through all its substance, snatched from our eyes, it would directly perish — no need of violence to make a breach in all its parts and loose the vital bands. But now, since all things are formed from eternal seeds, nature wills that nothing be destroyed unless some force prevails, which beats with blows its outward form, or pierces through the pores with subtle art, and so dissolves the frame.
Besides such things as are removed by age, if time destroys them quite in all its parts, whence does the power of love restore to light the several races of beings? Whence the earth, with nicest art, does nourish them when born and makes them grow and feeds with proper food each its kind? Whence do the bounteous springs and rivers, with their wandering streams from far, supply the sea? The air, whence feed the stars? For the vast tract of time already passed had long ago consumed things that were formed from mortal seed. But if those bodies which compose this universe of things were still supplied through all that space and periods of time that passed long since, they must surely consist of an immortal nature and from death secure can never into nothing fall.
Again, the same violence would everywhere destroy all beings if the eternal power of matter did not hold fast their close compacted frame and bonds, more strong or weak. A single touch would surely be the cause of death, for things formed out of mortal seed by any force must perish and their frame be quite dissolved. But now, because the union of seeds of bodies differs, which consist of matter eternal in its nature, every being is safe from danger till some proper force, proportion to its texture, makes the assault. So nothing can return to nothing — everything resolves by separation of its parts into its principles from whence it sprung.
Lastly, the rains that father Ether pours into the womb of mother earth do seem to perish there, but straight fair fruits spring up. The boughs grow green upon the trees, their limbs increase and bend beneath a load of fruit. Hence all the living race of men and beasts are fed, our gallant cities filled with youth, our leafy woods resound with songs of birds new fledged. The weary flocks grow fat, repose their bodies on the fertile plains, while the white milky humor from their dugs distended flows. And hence their sprightly young and wanton play frisk with their tender limbs over the soft grass, cheering their little hearts with the pure milk. And therefore things we see do not entirely die — nature still renews one thing by another, nor does she suffer one thing to be, unless supplied with matter from something else that was dissolved before.
Sorry — I kind of stumbled over that.
Cassius:
No, you did fine, Julie. Oh, that was great — that’s a long reading. We probably should start with putting it all in context — where we are in terms of what we’ve read already. Anybody want to try to do that?
Elaine:
Well, you know, we’ve been talking about how nothing comes from nothing — things don’t just spring into being out of the void. So this section is addressing the corresponding idea: that just as things don’t just appear magically, they also don’t vanish magically into nothing. Instead, they go into their parts, and those parts are irreducible at the smallest point — but they don’t go into nothingness.
Cassius:
And why is that significant? Why are we talking about this?
Elaine:
Well, you’ve got to cover both aspects if you want to remove the possibility of supernatural action — both coming into being and going out of being. Both of those parts have to be explained.
Cassius:
Yeah, that’s certainly the way I see it. I think one thing going through my mind — doing some of our conversations online over the last week, there were one or two posts in particular where somebody would suggest that a particular writer was Epicurean, and they would say that this writer talked about there not being supernatural gods. But this seems to me to be an effort to back up that assertion. In other words, you can say that you’re an atheist, or you can have a position on gods — but it’s just an assertion unless you can state the grounds for your reasoning about it. And I think largely, obviously, that’s what we’re doing here: Lucretius is explaining what backs up his contention that there are no supernatural gods. That’s obviously the reason we’re studying the physics in the first place — to decide whether they exist or not. And we’re in the middle of the proof, from his point of view, of how you argue that there are no supernatural beings, that the universe was not created supernaturally. It was created naturally — and these are the supporting arguments that allow him to say that he’s not just being arbitrary. He’s not just saying “you should listen to Epicurus or you should listen to Plato.” He’s saying: these are the arguments by which you have confidence in the conclusion.
And you mentioned that this was the reasoning — I want to say even more than that: this is evidence-based reasoning. These are observations that you can easily make yourself and see how they make sense.
Julie, what do you think?
Julie:
I mean, I agree with all of the above. I don’t really have a whole lot to add yet.
Cassius:
Martin?
Martin:
The first two paragraphs are consistent with today’s physics, so that one is no issue for me.
Cassius:
Well, why don’t we stay with that for just a moment, then? In what way do you see them as consistent?
Martin:
Yeah, because what they’re based on is basically the preservation of matter and also energy, essentially. Probably the energy preservation principle is not stated explicitly in Epicurean terms, but what is stated is compatible with it.
Julie:
Martin, what I was thinking about too, for those first two paragraphs — it makes me think of “bodies at rest remain at rest, bodies in motion remain in motion, unless there’s some interfering force,” because he says “nature wills that nothing be destroyed unless some force prevails.” So I think he’s anticipating those principles in physics — the whole inertia issue.
Cassius:
I have a point to raise in those first two paragraphs which seems to me slightly different from the rest of them. Most of the points seem to be observations about — or questions about — how does something new arise unless it comes from components that are already there? But if you look at the beginning of the second paragraph, he asks: whence does the power of love restore to light the several races of beings? And in — let’s see — Munro says: “out of what does Venus bring back into the light of life the race of living things?” And Bailey says: “how is it that Venus brings back the race of living things after their kind into the light of life?”
But is he distinguishing something there? Does that passage imply that Venus or pleasure is some entity separate from the matter? Or is that just poetic license? Do you see where I’m going with that?
Julie:
I think so. Why did he bring Venus into the overall issue? Is it that if, after living, when we died, we just sort of went poof and all of the matter that made up our bodies was gone — eventually there would be nothing left to make living beings out of?
Cassius:
Elaine, I think where I’m going is slightly different from that.
Elaine:
Oh, no, no — I think from the preceding passages, it’s clear that he’s talking about procreation because of pleasure. And so you could have all the procreation you want, but if you didn’t have any matter to build the fetus with, where would it come from?
Julie:
I don’t know if I know what you’re getting at, Cassius, but — so for example, I think they also talk about the sea, right? So like, if the water just disappeared, there would have to be a continual renewing of that water, otherwise it would just all go away, right?
Cassius:
Right, right. Kind of what you’re getting at. Okay, so yeah — I agree that sex would answer the question for the animals, but we have to be careful about premises. Because we all agree with Epicurus’s position on the physical way that the universe works — but in this part of the poem, he is trying to argue to people who maybe don’t already accept that, why it’s true. And so I think what he’s trying to get at is that if things could just disappear, there would have to be an inexhaustible source where new things are coming from — and where is that? Otherwise, you just recycle everything. You eat food, your body turns it into stuff you can use. And the same thing with plants and every living creature: they take some of the matter around them and convert it into what they need, rather than it coming from some other world-source.
Julie:
Yeah. And I think by adding sex into it — I mean, this is how you get new organisms. They don’t just spring into being. So he’s reminding us of that.
Elaine:
But if you don’t have anything to make them out of, you still won’t have them even if you have sex. So I would hate to think that he was talking about some kind of additional force. I think that was a metaphor.
Cassius:
Yeah. And that’s exactly the point I was wanting to focus on — in case somebody reading this picked up the book in the middle without knowing the background of Epicurean philosophy, because you could probably ask the same question about the first sentence of the fourth paragraph, where it says the rains that father Ether pours into the womb of mother earth: is he saying that there is some God who is initiating this function?
Elaine:
And of course that would not be the case.
Cassius:
Right. He’s a poet.
Julie:
I feel like it’s worthwhile to talk a little bit more about the inertia aspect of this because I think that’s really cool. And when I say “bodies in motion remain in motion and bodies at rest remain at rest” — everybody knows what I’m talking about, right? So that to me is what he’s saying. You would not have need of violence to make a breach in your parts — you wouldn’t die if it were not for some kind of action on your life. Now he says “such things as are removed by age” — that would be the same thing. So it’s not just some kind of mysterious thing that happens, that you get changes in your body and your telomeres, your body ages. But it’s not a mysterious thing. And if those processes didn’t happen due to environmental exposures, then you would just continue on as you are throughout time. So he’s realizing that something at the particle level has to happen — where he talks about a force prevailing, “pierces through the pores with subtle art.” Something has to happen to make matter change. And I think that’s really, really important.
Cassius:
Elaine, do you see any different point being made in the second half of this passage, or is it basically the same point?
Elaine:
You know, I think it’s very interesting that he mentioned bonds “more strong and weak.” I mean, they really didn’t know they were chemistry, but there are strong and weak bonds. Every time I see something that he couldn’t have observed yet, but he just made an educated guess — it just amazes me.
Martin:
Not really. What you can see is in macroscopic matter. There are also pieces which have strong cohesion. Well, that’s true. But scaling the same thing down, he can conclude it from what he can experience with his regular senses.
Elaine:
Yes, yeah, I agree. It’s just that not everybody made that conclusion. It’s just phenomenal to me.
So, if we take what would be something very loosely constructed as an example — liquid water wouldn’t hold its shape. Right, or: “a single touch would surely be the cause of death” — something that would just break down like a dandelion. You just blow on it a little bit and it comes apart. If our bodies were like that, we wouldn’t be here very long.
Cassius:
He says “a proper force proportion to its texture makes the assault.” So it depends on which kind of being you are — what it takes to break you up. If you’re a turtle, you’ve got a shell. We each take different levels and types of force to be broken apart. And if that weren’t true — if we could all be broken apart the same way — then that would be nothing returning to nothing. But he’s observing that it takes different kinds of forces to break us into our components.
I see one more point that I can throw in, which I’m not sure we’ve covered explicitly — at the end of the second paragraph here, which is somewhere around Line 226 of the Latin. And this time looking at the Munro version, it says: “for infinite time gone by and lapse of days must have eaten up all things which are of mortal body.” If I untangle that, I think what he’s saying is that if things could go to nothing, then because time in the past has been — for purposes of this sentence — infinite, over the course of an infinite amount of time in the past, if things could go to nothing, then by now certainly everything would have gone to nothing. There would be nothing left.
Elaine:
Yes, right, exactly right. But we see that there are things that still exist, and so there must be some explanation for that. Either they have been created anew by gods from nothing — or they have come from the remnants of things that were here in the past. And the evidence that we can see is that things don’t go to nothing entirely. And so the reason things are still here, and everything hasn’t disappeared into the void, is that the elemental particles themselves don’t ever go away.
Yes, yeah — I’m glad you caught that, because I saw that when we were reading it and I almost passed it up, but that’s a critical point. So once again, he’s got a heck of a lot of information packed into these few verses.
And the last paragraph is beautiful — he’s talking about the recycling of water molecules. The rain comes, then the plants grow, then animals eat, and so on. The water isn’t disappearing just because we’ve drunk it — it’s still there.
Cassius:
Julie, I think you and I are similar in that I’m not sure either of us has a tremendous amount of physics training. And I know that Elaine has tremendous physics training from being brought up in a family of physicists.
Elaine:
Don’t say “tremendous” — it’s probably what they say “half-vast,” right?
Cassius:
Right, probably. And we know that Martin has tremendous physics training. Martin actually knows it right, because he’s German, and all Germans have tremendous physics training.
Elaine:
Oh, my goodness.
Cassius:
And I’m basically a third-rate accountant and lawyer, so I don’t have much physics training. And I don’t know about you, Julie — do you have any physics training?
Julie:
I took two semesters of physics in college. The end.
Cassius:
Yeah — I’m counting on Martin to tell me when I say something that’s not right.
Elaine:
So I’m counting on that too — Martin, you better speak up if I say something out of school.
Martin:
I would definitely raise my hand if something is spoken incorrectly.
Cassius:
Thank you, thank you. I appreciate that — it makes me feel safe to just spout off now, because I know that you’ll fix it.
Martin:
Yes, of course.
Cassius:
The reason I went into that is that it’s clear that if we attempted to unpack this against the very latest developments in theoretical physics, we would spend all of our time talking about that and go into a rabbit hole we might never come out of. But we probably do need to comment, on a generalist level — as Martin raised earlier — that maybe there are certain parts of this that modern theoretical physics has not exactly confirmed, or that they might dispute. But the point I’m going to make is that for ordinary people who are simply looking for a philosophy of life, and who need to decide how much confidence they can have in particular arguments, we probably do need to have a general framework for how we’re looking at this material. We can differ on that. But I’ve always found these arguments fairly persuasive. And although I can at the same time entertain the idea that there are contrary arguments in the latest theoretical physics, I also think to myself: theoretical physics is always changing, and my life is relatively short. I have to have a conclusion about how I’m going to spend it. Just as everyone who has ever lived in the past has had to make decisions about how to live their life based on the level of evidence available to them.
Elaine:
Yeah, that’s thoroughly the pragmatist position, right? I mean, just come on — you know, get done with quibbling over things that you can never feel. It’s interesting to study them, but when you come to make a decision, make your decisions based on the most obvious, reasonable information.
Martin:
Yeah, but you have a comment on your mentioning of theoretical physics. It’s not theoretical physics which shows, approves something, or discovers something — what they discover is just internally in the mathematical structure. What counts is experimental physics. Experimental physics proves certain things. Theoretical physics is needed to know how to set up experiments and how to interpret them — but essentially, as a non-physicist, you can completely ignore theoretical physics and just read the explanations of what comes out of the experimental part. Because at the forefront of research, theoretical physics is just speculative. It doesn’t show anything that’s proven. It just shows models along which we look for what to refute, and what we can get preliminary confirmation on.
And in this context — another remark: when I said I will raise my hand if something contradicts modern physics, that is valid for this oral conversation. But there are a couple of things written that we didn’t take the time yet to respond to. And that is: if we look at the experimental data we have and extrapolate them, we certainly have something like a beginning of time, at least for the universe as we experience it. So we need to re-examine the claim that matter has eternally existed. Because the problem is, if we extrapolate back to the Big Bang, even though the Big Bang as a singularity may never have happened, it is still a valid starting point for time. Because before that we have simply no definition of time — we need at least two bodies to properly deal with time. And close to that singularity, distinct bodies didn’t even exist. So there is just no time before that point to define and say something about. Unless of course one of these theoretical speculations which could explain how, through a tunneling phenomenon, this universe sprang from a previous universe — then it wouldn’t have really had to be at that singular point, but tunneled through it in some way. And then it could be possible, based on a model like this, to possibly figure out something of what was before. But for now, we just don’t have any method yet to address that. So for now the best we can say from our knowledge is that time has a beginning about 13-point-something billion years ago.
Cassius:
So for me, Martin — that doesn’t negate any of the conclusions that he made since time started. Would you say that’s true?
Martin:
No, also — so the way I say for myself: this statement on eternal existence is that compared to our direct observation span, it has existed like an eternal time. So it doesn’t matter whether it’s really eternal or just 13-point-something billion years.
Cassius:
Right — it might as well be. I don’t think that should get in people’s way of understanding this material. Because these things about nothing coming from nothing and nothing going to nothing are true now that we are here.
Martin, one of the ways that I try to reduce this down to my own personal conclusion is to ask: has experimental physics given us any evidence that the universe was created by Yahweh, or that there was a supernatural creation of the universe at any particular time? Because if experimental physics did establish that there was a supernatural force at the beginning — or if experimental physics indicated that there was supernatural outside influence going on at any point in time — then guys, I’ll tell you right now, I’m out of here. Because I’m going to go to the temple or to the church and throw myself down and ask for that eternal life that God would theoretically provide. If there is experimental evidence of a God, then I want to know what’s going on with that God, and follow his rules so that I can get the rewards that gods offer, according to those who tell us about them.
Martin:
But physics can neither prove nor refute it. Because as a starting point of physics there is already the assumption that there are no supernatural forces. So the only way you could conclude that something supernatural exists is if you couldn’t get any consistent results in any way — if everything were inconsistent. And that’s similar to what Epicurus says: we just do not observe that things spring up from nothing and disappear. So if that happened — yes, that could be seen as an indication of something supernatural, because we couldn’t figure out any consistent laws of nature. But as soon as we figure out consistency, we basically assume, just on some preliminary observation, that there are no supernatural forces. And this self-consistency means that a God is not needed — but also not necessarily excluded.
Julie:
Because if there were a God — this is like some of what Victor Stenger has said — okay, let’s say there’s a supernatural God performing these actions, but when you measure things, you can explain everything just by physics. That means the God is acting in a totally invisible way, not actually affecting the movement of the material particles. So you don’t even need that God to explain it. I guess you couldn’t say there’s a God that was mimicking all the things that were going on without affecting them — I mean, it just gets to be absurd.
Cassius:
Well, I think a lot of religions would adjust for what you can observe, and they would say things like “God uses physics.”
Julie:
Yeah, but you can’t distinguish between when God’s using physics and when God is not. There’s no God necessary to explain it, and so that’s why it’s just like this extra thing — that they say is immaterial — so you couldn’t possibly measure it. So it’s out of the realm of science, out of the realm of falsifiability. It’s just a made-up idea. Does that make sense, Cassius?
Cassius:
It does, it does to me. And Julie, I’m glad you jumped in there, because I was going to call on you. I really think that what we are trying to do is bring into the real world of living people this Epicurean philosophy and what Lucretius is trying to say here. And so what concerns me most of all is: what do we think a normal, ordinary person — who’s not a trained physicist or trained philosopher — what do we think the message Lucretius and Epicurus would say to that person would be from all of this? How is a normal person going to react to these arguments? What should we tell them they should take away?
Julie:
I would say from my perspective, the main point is that most things that happen in the world are predictable — through what we have observed and through the science that we have. And it’s not about whether or not gods exist or gods don’t exist or anything like that. It’s about: you don’t have to fear that some random action is going to happen unless it’s something we have observed happens on a regular basis. Because that’s kind of the core of Epicurean thought. It’s not about whether or not the gods exist — Epicurus never said that gods don’t exist, right? It was just that you do not have to fear the gods. The gods aren’t going to take some action and strike you with lightning. So to me the core is that everything can kind of be explained. Yes, there’s a positive probability that you could get struck by lightning, but it’s very small — and you don’t have to act in a particular way to prevent it, other than you know, don’t go swimming when there’s a lightning storm. You can kind of take those things into your own hands.
Cassius:
I think that’s a wonderful point, Julie. And actually, that brings up something — I had an interesting conversation on a physician’s social media group this week. There was a question on the forum: what’s your just-favorite medical term — what words do you like the most, for whatever reason? And there were a whole lot of funny, elaborate-sounding medical words that people were throwing out, stuff that alliterated and so on. And I said my favorite was idiopathic urticaria — which comes from the Latin, and it means basically “we don’t know why you have hives.” It’s the most common type of hives in children: itchy rashes of unknown cause. But that doesn’t mean you should keep looking for one, because we do know it’s unlikely to be allergic. Probably some of it is viral — but because it is harmless but just uncomfortable, it makes more sense to treat the symptoms and not go looking for causes that we already know are unlikely to show anything up.
So then a doctor on the forum said he hated that term. He was an allergist. He said it makes people think the doctor is stupid — that they just haven’t looked for the cause. They don’t know — they’re ignorant of the cause — but there is one, and they keep looking for it. And he said he preferred the European term spontaneous urticaria. And I thought: oh my goodness, I would not want to have that! That implies that there’s some kind of almost supernatural thing going on — that there isn’t a cause. Rather than saying “we don’t know what the cause is,” spontaneous is like: oh, it just happens. And that — I think — is the wrong message to send patients. It’s okay to tell them that some things happen where we know there is a cause, but we don’t yet know what it is — but by the way, it’s not harmful, you know, we can help you with the symptoms. Versus “spontaneous” — it’s almost like spontaneous combustion. You could just be walking around and suddenly burst into flames. Or suddenly break out in hives, and there isn’t a cause.
Elaine:
That’s an excellent point about “spontaneous” versus “idiopathic.” I have never considered that before. But those are the right words, and the choice of words that you’re getting into there — I completely agree with what you just said. And I also feel better about when I randomly just have hives.
Julie:
To stay on that for just a moment — as far as “spontaneous” — because I’ve never thought about that word in that context, but I think you’re right. The word “spontaneous” implies some weird external cause — some weird, almost supernatural thing: like it just happened out of nothing. “Spontaneous combustion” — there are people who talk about people bursting into flames. Okay, here it is: from the Latin roots, spontaneous — “willing, or of one’s free will.” So spontaneous urticaria would be like: the hives came of their own free will. They just could happen whenever — your body could just freely decide to burst into flames for no reason. And that’s not happening, because matter changes in matter just as he says here: “nature rules that nothing be destroyed unless some force prevails.” Something has to happen to make matter change, and that doesn’t start up on its own.
It might not be going too far to say that’s what all this physics is about: things do not happen spontaneously. They happen because of pre-existing forces that arise from the elements themselves — not from supernatural forces, but from the elements and their movements.
Cassius:
Martin, do you have any comment on “spontaneous” and the implications of that word?
Martin:
I understand your point on it, but it doesn’t necessarily imply that. As a physicist, I have no problem with it, because radioactive decay is spontaneous in that sense. But what drives this is actually — in the case of a nucleus — that we have the repulsive forces there, and the radioactive nucleus is unstable. So there exists the force — it’s just that it happens in a randomly distributed way in time. But I don’t think that’s “spontaneous” in the way people are thinking about it when they say “it happens for no reason.” There is still a reason for the decay. It’s not just uncaused.
Elaine:
And yeah — when a lay person says “spontaneous” like “spontaneous combustion,” they’re talking about “nothing happened and suddenly you’re on fire.” There are reasons for things — just because we don’t always know the specific cause, or because for an individual nucleus we can’t predict when — that doesn’t mean there is no cause whatsoever.
Cassius:
And taking things back to the lay level is really what we ought to always strive to do. Yeah — and I think that’s a different thing from things happening for no cause whatsoever, for no reason. So we’d want to emphasize to people that there are reasons for things — causes for events that are not supernatural.
Just like at the end of today’s discussion — as we begin to close — we can go on indefinitely talking about different writers, different theories, different experiments, different observations, and we can never really get to the point of saying: where are we going to end up? What are we going to rely on for our conclusion? At the end of the day, where do we stop? We have to eventually eat. We have to eventually go to sleep. We have to resume our normal daily activities. We can’t constantly fill our minds with speculations about the origins of the universe.
So where do we rest our confidence and put it on the shelf and say: this is where I resolve this question at the moment, and this is how I’m going to live my life? Because I can’t live my life constantly reading book after book on physics. And I think Epicurus was telling us that it’s important to realize that in the end, the conclusion we need to be comfortable with — and confident of — is that there are not supernatural forces outside of nature which are threats to us. And I think we’ve talked about threats a lot today, but also: they don’t reward us either. There’s not going to be a life after death and therefore a reason to attempt to live our lives in conformity with the rules of a particular religion — because the evidence just does not support that. In the end, when we look out the window, things don’t disappear to nothing. Things don’t come from nothing. Our daily existence appears to us in every way to be consistent with atoms and void changing positions, and the rules of nature that Epicurus has been discussing.
Elaine:
Yeah, and I think that’s the pragmatist position. There’s no need to say that we’re making any kind of absolute pronouncement — and even if Epicurus was. There’s no reason to say that you have to say that to be an Epicurean. To follow these principles as the most pragmatic, reasonable — really the only thing we have access to. We just don’t have access to information that can’t be observed, and so why bother with it?
Cassius:
Elaine, you’re using the word “pragmatic” several times, and I think it’s worth commenting on that. I personally wonder if some people — my standard theoretical normal ordinary person — may have a derogatory meaning in their mind about the word “pragmatic,” or they may contrast it with “principled.” Julie — you’re the sounding board for normal and ordinary person — does “pragmatic” have any negative connotation in your mind?
Julie:
It doesn’t in my mind. But I don’t know that I get to be that person.
Cassius:
Okay, that’s good to know. Probably none of us — I include myself — are normal. But you know where I’m going. I don’t know — we could poll our members. We could ask them: how does the word “pragmatic” strike you? It’s true that probably most people don’t know what philosophical pragmatism is. But I think it hadn’t come around in Epicurus’s time — it was after him. I can’t imagine that he would have had an argument with it. But it’s exactly the kind of thing that you say constantly: when are we going to stop twiddling around with stuff that’s unprovable and unresolvable and decide — what does this mean about the decisions that I’m going to make today in my day-to-day life? Am I going to base that on observable phenomena or imaginary things?
Let me say it one other slightly different way. I think that some people, when they use the word “pragmatic,” are implying that they are settling for pragmatism — that well, I don’t have X, Y, or Z absolute knowledge, so therefore I’m going to settle for the knowledge that I do have. And I think that’s probably not the way to look at it.
Elaine:
No. Pragmatism means what can you use — what’s usable. It doesn’t necessarily imply that you would like to have more. It means that you admit that some things are not testable. If somebody tells you that there is a thing that exists that can’t be measured or observed, then they’ve immediately said you can’t test it — so you can’t even talk about that question. It doesn’t mean that’s not an issue. It means that it’s irrelevant. And you know that it’s irrelevant, so you’re going to go ahead and take action. I don’t see it as a cave or as settling. It’s more a criticism of idealism, in my opinion, than a cave.
Cassius:
I completely agree with you. I think it’s a question of who we’re talking to. People who have had more training and education and scientific background are more comfortable with what you’ve just said, Elaine. Those people who’ve had less of that background — at least in my personal experience — often run into people who say “I am absolutely certain of this because God said so” or “it’s right here in the Bible.” And so they think that an argument that’s not based on what God said is inherently inferior — because “you’re just looking at your own experience, but I’m looking at the Bible,” or they’re using some authority argument. And so we’re constantly going to run into the issue: are we inherently coming from a position of weakness because we’re just basing our conclusions on our own observations? Is observational reasoning inherently inferior to religion or to Platonic idealism? Obviously I have my own answer to that question. But I think a significant number of people who would come across Lucretius and Epicurus are going to be searching for answers to questions like that.
Julie:
I mean, I think there’s a complicated answer to that. But the kinds of people who are going to stick to “this is true because it’s in the Bible” by the time they get to adulthood are not likely to be listening to our podcast, and are not likely people who are going to be interested in Epicureans. So I think the importance of getting down to the fundamentals of what we’re going to agree is going on in the universe appears to be most relevant for the humanists — people who are not supernaturalists but who have decided there can be such a thing as absolute virtue and absolute ethics. Those people are not proposing that there’s a supernatural. So we’re really not even having to make the supernatural argument. But what we are having to remind them is that there’s no “virtue particle” or anything out there to underpin their assertion that there are absolute virtues. That is where I think we could maybe make the most headway.
And — just on the point that Elaine just finished making — I’ll say that there’s no reward for virtue outside of pleasure. Right.
Julie:
I guess I don’t have much more to add there. There was one point I wanted to make on something you said earlier, Cassius — and it’s not really important to the discussion we’re having here, but just in case there’s anyone listening who’s kind of on the fence and just listening to arguments: I just wanted to point out that the argument around whether or not there are supernatural beings with any sort of punishment-or-reward system — what we’re talking about today with the physics is an important part of that argument, but it’s not the entire argument. Because I think somebody could listen to this entire podcast and go, “Oh, that’s not a strong enough argument to prove that there are no gods trying to punish us.” And that’s not the entirety of the argument.
Cassius:
Yeah, you’re right. We certainly can’t go into the details of the rest of the argument. But just in case somebody hears you say that — what are the categories or what direction are you referring to?
Julie:
Well, I guess — is it Principal Doctrine number one? They’re basically saying: if you define something as a divine being, that implies no anger and no gratitude. And a reward or punishment would require that the god was either angry with you or felt gratitude for some reason. So you come to the same conclusion through a different argument, apart from the physics.
Cassius:
And you’re saying that this second part is an important part of the argument too?
Julie:
I’m saying I think that this second part is an important part of the argument — that the physics alone may not convince people that they don’t need to fear the gods. By itself, it’s not enough, because of the nature of the gods: through anticipations, we know gods are perfect, and therefore you would not expect a perfect and self-sufficient being to be concerned about regulating the lives of ants and other people who are irrelevant to them.
Cassius:
Yes. Elaine?
Elaine:
Yeah, I think we need the whole picture. We’re going to go through the whole poem eventually, so we can’t just make one argument. That’s why the book is long.
Julie:
Absolutely — I just wanted to point that out for anybody listening to this particular podcast.
Cassius:
Right, yes. I think that’s really important. You constantly are going back and forth in Epicurean philosophy, it seems like, from the outline level to the details and back again. And in fact that’s what Epicurus specifically advised in the Letter to Herodotus: that you don’t always need to be referring to the details, as long as you keep the outline level in your mind. And clearly, what you’re talking about — the nature of a perfect being — is one of the higher-level conclusions that comes from a different manner of reasoning, but is consistent with the detail level as well. That’s got to be the way that outlines and details fit together: they have to be consistent, but you don’t constantly have to refer back to every detail while you’re talking about the higher-level conclusions.
Martin, we probably ought to start to wrap up.
Martin:
I mean, I’m pretty much out of any more comments, so.
Cassius:
I think this has been a good discussion today, I think.
Elaine:
All of them have been — this is a particularly good one.
Cassius:
All right, well, I hope y’all have a good week, and I look forward to next week.
Martin:
Absolutely, yep.
Julie:
Me too.
Cassius:
Thanks, everybody — we’ll do it again next week. Yep, bye-bye.
All:
Bye-bye. Bye-bye.