Episode 009 - The Evidence That Atoms Exist, Even Though They Are Unseen
Date: 03/12/20
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1468-episode-nine-the-evidence-that-atoms-exist-even-though-they-are-unseen/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Episode 009 covers Book One around Latin Lines 265–328, on the evidence that atoms exist even though they cannot be seen. Elaine reads the Daniel Brown passage, which gives five types of evidence: (1) the effects of wind — invisible but smashing forests and ships; (2) the movement of unseen particles (smell, heat, cold, sound), all demonstrably material because they interact with bodies; (3) the evaporation of water from garments near the shore; (4) objects wearing imperceptibly away over time (rings, stones hollowed by dripping water, plowshares, paved streets, bronze statues’ hands worn by touch); and (5) nature’s general operation through gradual, invisible change.
The discussion opens with Elaine noting the poetic effect of the passage’s long run-on sentences describing wind and torrents — a deliberate device where the form mimics the rushing sensation. The panel then focuses on a significant translation controversy: Munro, Bailey, and Stallings all render the closing line about the faculty of sight as “jealously shut out” or “stingy,” while Martin Ferguson Smith uses only “inadequate.” Elaine looks up the Latin (invita — associated with envy, hostile glance, the evil eye) and concludes the older translators are probably more literal; Cassius suggests that Martin Ferguson Smith may have felt “jealous nature” sounded too anthropomorphic for Lucretius.
Julie raises a challenging epistemological objection: if Lucretius is arguing for things we cannot see, how is that different from religion making claims about unseen things? Cassius and Elaine work through why it isn’t — the atomic theory is grounded in observable effects and the already-accepted premises that nothing comes from nothing and nothing goes to nothing. Martin closes by noting that an observation-based argument can never finally refute a faith-based one to someone who refuses to accept observation as a standard — but that Lucretius is speaking to those who are open to evidence. The episode closes with a reading from Diogenes Laertius on the Epicurean criterion of truth and the confirmation/contradiction test, and with Cassius reading Principal Doctrines 22–24. Panelists: Cassius, Elaine, Julie, Martin.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
Welcome to Episode 9 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 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 — which is not necessarily the same as modern commentators interpret it. Second, we won’t be talking about modern political issues in this podcast. We call this approach, not Neo-Epicurean, but Epicurean. Epicurean philosophy is a philosophy of its own — it’s not Stoicism, Humanism, Buddhism, Taoism, Atheism, or Marxism. It’s unique and must be understood on its own terms. Third, we’ll be talking about many details of Epicurean physics, but we’ll always relate them to how they translate into Epicurean conclusions about how best to live. Lucretius will show that Epicurus was not focused on luxury, like some people say, but neither did he teach minimalism, as other people say. Epicurus taught that feeling, pleasure, and pain are the guides that nature gave 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 is 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.
Now let’s get started with today’s discussion, with Elaine reading the text.
Elaine:
And now, since I have taught that nothing can proceed from nothing, nor can things once formed to nothing be reduced — lest you by chance should doubt my reasons, since the seeds of things cannot be seen with naked eyes — hear further that there are seeds of bodies, and you must confess there are, impervious to the sight.
At first the raging force of winds does lash the sea, or throw vast ships, and chase the clouds. Sometimes they scour the plains with furious storms and spread them o’er with tallest trees, and vex the lofty hills with blasts that rend the woods. And so they bluster with a dreadful sound and roar with threatening noise through the air. These winds are therefore bodies to the eyes unseen, which scour the sea, the lands, the clouds, and toss them, thus tormented with their blasts. They act the same and spread destruction round, as a still stream increased by sudden rain and swelled by torrents pouring from the hills — the effect of driving showers is borne along, rending the limbs of trees and then whole woods. Nor can the strongest bridges bear the force, so sudden, of the rushing flood. The stream, made mad by hasty rains, beats on the dams with force impetuous, swells through the breach with horrid noise, and rolls the massy stones under its waves, and breaks what stops its tide. And so the hurricanes of wind drive on which way they point their blasts, like mighty floods — forests all before them, beat with frequent strokes. Sometimes they snatch with rapid turns and wild things as they roll in eddies through the air. These winds, ‘tis plain, are bodies still unseen, since by their furious blasts they rival in their force the largest streams — which bodies we own.
Besides, we feel the various smells of things but can’t discern how they affect the nose, nor can we see the raging heat, nor with our eyes perceive the cold, nor can we see a voice — all which by nature are bodies formed, because they make impression on the senses. For nothing but body can be touched or touch.
Again, a garment hung up by the shore that breaks the waves grows wet, until the sun expanded dries, yet no one ever saw how the moist vapor fixed, or how again it fled before the heat. The watery drops must be dissolved into small parts too subtle to be at all discovered by the eye.
But further: after circling many years, a ring upon the finger wears away. The fall of dropping water hollows stones. The crooked plowshare of iron wastes in the fields, and sensibly by use we see the streets paved with hard stones worn out by frequent tread of passengers. The brazen statues nigh the gates show their right hands made less by many of those who worship or who pass along. These things we see show less and less, but what a share of matter every time is brushed off, nature in envy to us has not indulged the faculty to see.
Lastly, what every day in nature does bestow on beings to make them grow by just degrees, not the most piercing eye could ever find. Nor yet the particles that fly and waste by age or decay, nor can you see by what degrees the rocks are eaten through by the corroding salts of dashing waves. Thus nature works by bodies not discerned.
Cassius:
Okay, this passage is a little longer than we’ve read for past episodes, but it fits together neatly as a particular section. The very first paragraph is a good summary of what’s going on — he says we’ve already talked about nothing coming from nothing and nothing going to nothing, but some people are going to say: well, I can’t see atoms, and therefore I don’t believe in them. So he has to address the issue of how you understand or have confidence in them if you cannot see them. This whole passage talks about how we can go about having confidence that atoms exist even though we can’t see them. It wraps up the existence of atoms, and after this passage, in the next episode, we’ll move to discussing the void. But today is focused on: how do we have confidence that atoms really exist when we cannot see them?
Can anyone feel free to jump in?
Elaine:
It’s a good defense of his epistemology based on observation of things that we can see. I noticed while reading it — especially in this second section, starting with “at first, the raging force of wind” — some of those sentences are very long. This is a translating decision, but just in this one, it has the effect of what’s being described, just poetically. I think that’s interesting because you can make an impression on your readers not just by the content of what is said, but, when you’re writing a poem, by the effect of the words themselves. So I don’t know if there was something in the original poem that made Daniel Brown translate it this way, but especially the section that starts “they act the same” — look how many lines that goes on before the sentence stops. There’s usually a reason that people will do that.
Cassius:
Which passage are you talking about?
Elaine:
So in the second paragraph, in the middle — you get to “they act the same and spread destruction round, as a still stream” — and it just goes on, talking about torrents and driving showers. Just the rhythm of the line and not stopping gives that effect of the wind and the rush. To me, that’s another way, besides the content, that you can give people the sensation of what you’re talking about with poetry. I don’t know if there’s something about the way Lucretius wrote that made the translator decide that, but I just thought it was interesting.
Cassius:
We can read either the Munro or the Bailey version of that, and see if they do the same thing. In Munro — you can see it. It would start on “the stream and spread destruction.” This is very long. He’s not stopping that sentence — he’ll put a semicolon in there, a colon, but it’s not really a stop. You’re commenting on the poetic aspect of it.
I suppose each of his illustrations within that passage is talking about some of the strongest forces of nature — hurricanes, river torrents — things where we can see that stones and trees and forests can be smashed by the power of nature itself, using basically wind and rain. Especially when you think about wind: you certainly cannot see it. You can see the effects, which is what we’re discussing. You can see the effects of wind, but you can’t see wind itself — you can’t see the content of the wind that’s doing all these incredibly powerful things. It sounds like he may even be talking about tornadoes, possibly — hurricanes, which were causing damage in Alabama right around this time. Something that’s not just this new virus — wind is a big thing to think about here.
So it’s something people can see. But then you contrast that — which is a lot of power and force — with talking about the ring on the finger wearing away, and the dropping water and the statues worn by touching or kissing. So that’s an interesting contrast: talking about the very forceful and obvious with the subtle, imperceptible wearing away of a particular bit of matter. And we’ve all seen both of those things happen.
I think probably the thing for us to focus on with this passage then would be the higher-level issue: how things that you cannot see still have to be accounted for, or still can be behind the most important aspects of your life. As much emphasis as we put on the senses, there are certain things you cannot perceive directly through the senses — you have to perceive them indirectly, by looking at the effects of things. Now, that’s still relying on the senses. It’s not speculative logic that has no connection with the senses. It’s the direct use of the senses, but through deduction, to conclude something that must be true, even though you can’t perceive it directly.
I’m a little curious about the ending of the fifth paragraph — the very last part: “these things we see show less and less, but what a share of matter every time is brushed off — nature in envy to us has not indulged the faculty to see.” Hmm. Let’s see — Munro says “has jealously shut out our seeing.” You know, that could relate back to the very opening of Book One, where we talked about the tight-barred gates of nature.
Now, Bailey calls it “the envious nature of our sight, has shut us out from seeing.” That’s probably slightly different — and maybe makes less sense, at least on first reading. “The envious nature of our sight” — that doesn’t really say who is envious or what they’re envious of. Munro’s “the nature of vision has jealously shut out our seeing” — that’s not saying that nature as an allegory is jealous of us. I don’t know that we’re competent enough to try to go to the Latin and second-guess any of these classical authorities as to what it could be saying differently. But the final passage seems to be to the effect that nature therefore works by unseen bodies. That’s what Munro says, and then Bailey says “tis then by bodies unseen that nature works her will,” and back to 1743: “thus nature works by bodies not discerned.” So he’s clearly referencing nature as an allegorical force here.
Maybe he is saying that nature as this allegorical force has taken a position on what the faculty of sight should do. But the 1743 is very specific: “nature in envy to us.” I guess we should look at Martin Ferguson Smith here.
Ah, he says “our inadequate faculty of sight.” Right — “our inadequate faculty of sight has deprived us from being shown.” It’s right at line 319, it looks like. “We observe then that all these objects being borne away are losing substance, but our inadequate faculty of sight has deprived us from being shown what particles are departing at any particular moment.” And I don’t see that he has a footnote about the passage, so he apparently is just not translating the word nature in the same way as these other writers have done.
It seems Stallings is mirroring Bailey here: “what is lost at any given moment we can’t say, because our stingy sense of sight will never let us see.” Stingy is another one. It’s putting the word “stingy” on our sight.
Elaine:
Yeah — I mean, clearly “stingy” and “jealous” have a connotation.
Cassius:
Yes — those have a different connotation than “inadequate.” So who is correct? Is it three classical scholars from the 1800s and early 1900s, or is it Martin Ferguson Smith, who’s got great credentials as well? I don’t know the answer to that. But this reinforces the necessity of comparing translations and not putting too much stress on one particular word that some translator might have chosen to use.
Elaine:
Which just makes the book that much easier to read.
Cassius:
Especially in these poetic translations, people like to be dramatic and they like to appeal to the feeling that poetry generates — whether it’s actually accurate to the meaning or not, sometimes. So is there anything going on here that we need to draw an opinion from, or is it just essentially the same thing?
Elaine:
So I’m looking at the Latin word — and it uses the word invita, which I have listed as a sense of envy, looking upon associated with the evil eye, looking against in a hostile manner, jealousy, dislike. I think probably the ones who are translating it that way are doing it more literally.
Cassius:
That’s very interesting — that Martin Ferguson Smith, I guess that bothered him. He just didn’t like that. I suspect you’re right, Elaine, because he does not footnote it. There’s no reason to think that he disagrees with the text or thinks it’s been transmitted improperly. He just doesn’t use that word — he just changes the meaning.
Because it probably does relate to what I mentioned a minute ago about the tight-barred gates of nature. Maybe that’s one of the underlying analogies or allegories that’s going on for people: well, why don’t we have all this information? There must be some reason we don’t have the ability to see these things. Nature must not have wanted us to see these things.
Elaine:
Yeah. That’s a very religious point of view. It is. And so I can see why Smith would have thought, “oh, he doesn’t mean that.” I can’t imagine Lucretius actually meant it that way. Literally, it would be more like Venus standing for pleasure. Maybe Martin Ferguson Smith didn’t trust the reader to figure that out. I don’t know.
Cassius:
Well, I think that point is worth emphasizing — that we have to be careful what the commentators and translators are telling us, even with the best intention. Because we don’t want to start out by implying to people that Lucretius or Epicurus really believed that the gods were doing things, because they ultimately do not say that. But I guess Lucretius — and maybe Epicurus, if the original said something on nature — they are dealing with the fact that they are talking to people who have been taught a different way of thinking about things, and they are comfortable talking in terms of forces of nature. They take a force of nature and they allegorize it immediately to a god — Mars for War, Venus for Love, Neptune for the Sea — and they’re just used to talking about major forces of nature being associated with an allegorical figure. And so when they’re talking about major forces of nature causing things like hurricanes, tornadoes, or floods, they probably also think in terms of some allegorical figure behind those things.
And of course, that’s the background here. He’s writing to Memmius, who is not an Epicurean. He’s writing to people who are not already within the Epicurean camp, and he is needing to talk to them in terms that they can relate to.
So I think another thing that we should say — which he himself says in the first paragraph: “And now, since I have taught that nothing can proceed from nothing, nor can things once formed from nothing be reduced” — that’s important because if you didn’t realize that, you might think that the statue wearing away was going into nothing. So if you’ve already agreed that it’s not disappearing, then you see that it gets smaller, and you have to say: it must be going into parts so small that I can’t see them. All of those things fit together.
Elaine:
I love the order that he’s doing this in — the progression from —
Cassius:
Yeah — like, how would you explain this? How would you convince somebody of your point? You have points to make, but you want to put them in an order that’ll be the clearest and the easiest to understand, giving real-life examples. You have to build your case. There are decisions you have to make: what are you going to start with? What do you do next? And it’s fascinating to follow the way that he decided to approach it.
I like the passage today, and it really is one of those examples of how he just gives example after example after example — for purposes of emphasis and clarity to make his point before he moves on to the next major point, which is going to be the existence of the void.
But maybe another general observation is that he’s had at least two major premises so far — nothing comes from nothing, and nothing goes to nothing — and he has stated them immediately with his reasons for concluding that they are accurate, which are observational reasons. Even though we don’t necessarily know why something happens, we can observe that it is happening and therefore reach conclusions based on that. But really, this section today is not so much a direct proof of those premises. It’s addressed to the issue of how those things take place — or why — based on the existence of atoms. It’s more of an epistemological point: this is the methodology by which the higher-level “nothing comes from nothing” and “nothing goes to nothing” actually operate, even though we cannot see the components that make it operate.
And you can tie that to the observation that some people say Epicurus is such a strict empiricist that he is going to believe nothing other than what his own senses revealed to him directly — which is true in a sense, but not true in the deeper sense, because he is going to use the senses to make all sorts of deductions about things that the senses cannot show us directly.
Elaine:
It reminds me — one time there was somebody who had asked me about atomic theory regarding Epicurus, and how he was able to discern these things as an empiricist if he could not see them. That’s exactly the point. They put Epicurus into the box of saying that nothing can be true unless we can touch it or see it. And that’s obviously not the case, because everything is built on things that we cannot touch and we cannot see, when you go back to the original source of atomic theory.
You know, so I did want to make another point — on the part about smells: “we feel the various smells of things but can’t discern how they affect the nose.” Back in that time, there hadn’t been research done on the olfactory system. We didn’t know about how smells worked. But now we actually do know what’s binding to the receptors in the nose — a lot about how smells work. So I think it’s important to say that even in cases when things seem impervious to our naked eye, that doesn’t mean we will never be able to observe them using instruments, magnifications, and so on. There are things that we don’t have any way of seeing directly even now — we can see the effects of them, so we know that something’s happening. Well, maybe eventually we will.
Cassius:
It does tie in to what he says at the very beginning and practically in every paragraph — that a lot of these things, he puts emphasis on the eyes not being able to see them.
Elaine:
Yeah, right, exactly. I think he would have been really excited by electron microscopes.
Cassius:
Julie, what were you going to say?
Julie:
Okay, so I struggle with this argument — and maybe y’all can help, okay — because basically what he’s saying is: well, we can’t really see what’s going on. As Elaine pointed out, some of this has been now proven by science, but at the time he was saying all of this, it hadn’t been. And so to me this seems like a very slippery slope — this argument of “you can’t see it, but here’s what’s happening” — because it’s really just theory. And so how does that — because then you can’t fault other philosophies and religions for saying, “well, you can’t see it, but here’s how it works.” You know what I mean? So how do you reconcile that?
Cassius:
I think that’s a great, great point. We should really dig into that.
But Julie, if we’ve already accepted that nothing can come from nothing or turn into nothing — because we’ve observed that — then…
Elaine:
Yeah, you have to do that first. Right.
Cassius:
In this paragraph, he’s kind of saying: yeah, it might look like something is going to nothing, but really it’s not. That’s his whole argument. You’re right. So you have to accept the other premises first. So then we’d have to go back to his other examples of things that we don’t see. We know that nothing comes from nothing, and nothing disappears to nothing. I think that’s a good point. But I guess I would say: if the examples he gave in that section were negated — what would be happening, that a statue could go into nothing gradually? What would make that possible, whereas it can’t just blink out of existence suddenly? You would need some kind of explanation for that.
Julie:
He did explain how it’s always in spots where people touch the statue or kiss it or make some contact. That’s a good point. Yeah, the rest of the statue was fine.
Cassius:
Julie, I would add: this is a great question, and it’s what we ought to be doing. We ought to be bringing up the objections that people would make throughout every one of these passages, and thinking about how Lucretius would respond to them. That’s one of the great benefits that we can bring by talking about this stuff like this.
Julie:
I agree too. And it’s hard to do because, as Elaine said, we all accept these propositions, right?
Cassius:
Yes — that really takes us back. Just like Epicurus said, we’re constantly flipping from the outline to the details and back again to keep everything in perspective.
And there’s many ways of getting at what the big picture is here, but we haven’t gotten to it in this section yet. But before we go very much further in the book, there’s a section that says: if you don’t trust your senses to reveal to you the things that are directly in front of you, then you can never have any basis for discussing anything at all that might be more complicated — that might not be right in front of you. You end up always coming back to very basic questions like: do you trust the senses or not? What kind of evidence are you going to demand in order not to trust the senses? Is it valid to ever accept an argument that has no evidence grounded in sensation? You really have to keep those central issues always in front of your mind and take a position on them. Because every step of the way through all of this, the people who believe in religion are going to say: well, that’s just a matter of faith. Faith transcends everything. Just immerse yourself in the Word of God and it will all become clear to you, because it could never become clear to you otherwise. The reasonings of men are always going to be inferior and unable to reveal to you the ultimate truths, which are beyond the senses — because that’s the nature of God. Don’t you understand that?
That’s the position they’re going to be taking. And there really is no way to directly refute that kind of argument, because it’s not even wrong — depending on your originating perspective. And Epicurus is ultimately saying that if I can’t see the proof of it in my own life, then I’m not going to believe it. And much of this comes down to that.
Martin, any comment on that aspect of it? Because that’s a deep part of this. I know it’s late over there, so you may not.
Martin:
There’s always the thing that we cannot really refute those guys who stick to their religion — only if they make the mistake of making a claim which we can review by refutable observations. But they don’t accept observation as the valid point of reference. No observation that we ever make will ever be sufficient to someone who says that observation is not the standard.
Cassius:
Now, Epicurus and Lucretius are talking, therefore, to people who are willing to be open to the idea that observation and evidence are of importance. And so they’re giving these people an observation-and-evidence-based narrative of how everything can and probably does work, consistent with a theory based on observation. But in the end, there’s no way that an observation-based argument can negate a faith-based argument to someone who says that faith is more important than observation.
And so we have to get comfortable, I think, with that underlying problem — because that’s the level at which people are going to end up making a decision about whether they agree with this and accept it or whether they just reject it. And I don’t know whether that level of decision-making is something so deeply ingrained in a particular culture or educational background or other environment that controls that. Or, as Epicurus contends, there’s some degree of free will, so people have some ability to decide ultimately how they’re going to make their decisions and conduct their analysis. But it’s a very deep issue.
Julie:
So this is not part of the reading, but I would like to point out that there are Principal Doctrines that speak to these issues — the ones about sense perceptions — just in case anybody is listening and thinks they need to address that. It’s there; it’s just not in this part yet.
Cassius:
I believe in the 20s, in the Principal Doctrines, there are several about trusting the senses — yeah, never rejecting a particular sensation but always incorporating it into your final conclusion about something. And then of course there’s — go ahead, Julie, I’m sorry.
Julie:
It also points out that if you don’t use your sense perceptions as your point of reference, you really have nothing to go on. You can’t compare back to anything.
Cassius:
Yes — that’s the point which is made several times in the poem as we go further, including — I always get confused as to whether it’s Book Four or Book Five — but the book that discusses the nature of images, and then continues on to the conclusions about how you must trust the senses. And if you don’t, then you’re subject to all sorts of hazards and ways of getting killed in life. And how everything, including reason itself, is ultimately grounded in trusting the senses.
This is a huge continuing theme of the poem, of Epicurean philosophy. This kind of analysis we’ve been doing — this is the benefit of going through the book. It’s so easy to get tired of just reading examples about hurricanes and tornadoes and wind and rain and so forth — you think to yourself: well, this is so mundane that it just has no relationship to anything. But every part of this discussion is ultimately targeted at what we’ve just been discussing: what are you going to believe in life, and how are you going to decide how to live? Are you going to base your thoughts and life on evidence, the senses, and observation — or are you going to just say: well, faith overcomes all that, I don’t need any of those things, and I will choose to suppress and burn books and do all that’s necessary to focus my mind on having faith above all?
Which I will say — that to me is a very Stoic attitude. It’s a mind-over-matter attitude that people and philosophies can sometimes take. And in fact, that’s one of the themes that I think much of philosophical reading repeats over and over: that Plato, and different other philosophers, emphatically reject observation and the senses as ever able to reach any conclusion about anything at all. Even Aristotle — according to some of the material we’ve been going over — ultimately was not willing to say that something should be considered true unless it could be validated by syllogistic logic, by reason.
Julie:
I wonder how that fares with his works on biology. I’m not too familiar with most of Aristotle.
Cassius:
Right. The reference work I always point to on that particular topic is the translation of Philodemus’s On Methods of Inference by Philip De Lacy and his wife Estelle. And he has an appendix that talks a lot about Epicurean epistemology and makes the point that — although Aristotle had made significant changes and progress in his views of observation and the senses beyond what Plato had taught — he still required validation by syllogistic logic before he would accept something to be considered true. That’s De Lacy’s point, and he has footnotes in his appendix that go into all that.
Well, we could be beginning to wind up for today. Anybody have other comments?
Martin:
I wish I could have been more active today, but it’s been a pretty long morning already.
Cassius:
And this was our first daylight savings time session — that’s true. Which should have made the day shorter so far.
Elaine:
But it will feel longer because we’re tired.
Cassius:
I expected that since we were an hour earlier, that would give us more input from Martin at his current location in the Far East. Well, next episode we’ll start talking about the void, which is a very interesting topic with lots of ins and outs and arguments involved with it — but it’s the one part of the physics I really need to brush up on.
Elaine:
Yeah, and I’m interested to hear what Martin has to say about that too. You get into so many twists and turns about whether the void exists or not. Does the absence of matter — is that something that should be considered to exist on its own, or is that just some other conceptual category?
Cassius:
But we can discuss all that next week. We’ve basically at this point concluded the opening discussion: nothing comes from nothing, nothing goes to nothing, and thereby we have deduced that there is something that is eternally there — and these are the atoms.
So, Julie — how much in these podcasts do you want to educate about Epicurean philosophy, as well as going through the poem?
Julie:
Well, because I was thinking maybe a way to summarize what we talked about today is that you have to decide what your reference point is — whether it is faith, logic, or sensations. And in Epicurean terms, to be an Epicurean you would make sensation your primary reference point. But I also wanted to point out that it’s not like we completely throw out logic or reason. But I was thinking: where is it in Diogenes Laertius where he kind of explains how the Epicureans determine truth? You know what I’m talking about?
Cassius:
The criterion, right. Look for the second-to-last paragraph before he introduces the letters.
Elaine:
Second-to-last paragraph before the letters… is that what you’re looking for? No… all right, I think it was after the letters. Let me see if I can find it. I’m sorry — I probably shouldn’t have said anything without having it in front of me.
Cassius:
No, that’s fine. Well, here’s where he says — I’ll quote: “Logic they reject as misleading; for they say it is sufficient for physicists to be guided by what things say of themselves.” And then: “Thus in the Canon, Epicurus says that the criteria of truth are the sensations and concepts and feelings.”
There’s also a statement in here somewhere about opinion — I think that’s the one you were getting at?
Elaine:
The opinion one, okay.
Cassius:
Here we go — it’s in close to that same section. It’s the discussion of the horse and the cow: “The concepts are clear and immediate evidence. Further, the decision of opinion depends on some previous clear and immediate evidence to which we refer when we express it. For instance: how do we know whether this is a man? Opinion, they also call supposition, and they say that it may be true or false. If it is confirmed or not contradicted, it is true. If it is not confirmed, or is contradicted, it is false. For this reason was introduced the notion of the problem awaiting confirmation — for example, waiting to come near the tower and see how it looks to the near view.”
Is that the part you’re talking about?
Julie:
Yes, yes — thank you. It’s just the whole part about truth: it’s testified for or not testified against. But that’s based on your senses — because technically, you know, this whole atoms thing is a theory. But so far, everything that our senses can pick up doesn’t testify against it. Right?
Cassius:
Yes. I think he would also say that the things the senses pick up do confirm it by deductive reasoning. So you’re right: both confirmation and contradiction are going to be the test of whether it is true or not. There must be positive evidence to confirm it, and then none of the evidence must contradict it. And if you’ve got both of those components, then you should conclude that something is true.
Let’s go ahead and refer to the main Principal Doctrine on that point. In this context, we can quickly look at them:
22 says: “We must consider both the real purpose and all the evidence of direct perception, to which we always refer the conclusions of opinion; otherwise all will be full of doubt and confusion.”
Then 23: “If you fight against all sensations, you will have no standard by which to judge even those of them which you say are false.”
And then 24 — which is probably the most important one for this topic: “If you reject any single sensation and fail to distinguish between the conclusion of opinion as to the appearance awaiting confirmation and that which is actually given by the sensation or feeling or each intuitive apprehension of the mind, you will confound all other sensations as well with the same groundless opinion — so that you will reject every standard of judgment. And if among the mental images created by your opinion you affirm both that which awaits confirmation and that which does not, you will not escape error, since you will have preserved the whole cause of doubt in every judgment between what is right and what is wrong.”
So absolutely — that’s the summary high-level observation of the process that we’re going through here.
Elaine:
Now I feel like our discussion is complete.
Cassius:
Yeah — no, that was important. It may be complete, and it is complete for this episode as we wrap up. But boy, there’s more to come, and we need even a separate podcast at some point to go through each of the Principal Doctrines. But absolutely — these Principal Doctrines summarize the conclusion that you’re supposed to reach: if you reject any single sensation, that’s telling you that if your senses produce evidence to you of something and you decide just to reject that evidence, you’re really on dangerous ground. You’re rejecting the standard of judgment and sentencing yourself to basically endless confusion — since you’ve preserved the cause of doubt by not getting to the bottom of it.
I have to say — that’s why he goes into such detail in, I think, Book Four about images. Because obviously, illusions and inaccurate opinions that come from viewing things occur every day, every moment. There are mirages, there are distortions, there are all sorts of things that we have to take account of in the way the eyes operate. And if we fail to understand that these illusions can occur, and if we fail to understand why they occur, then we have no grounds for deciding when they’re occurring and when they’re not. Then we can conclude that everything is an illusion if we don’t take the time to study the faculty of vision and think about how it operates.
And that’s exactly what was described in that section of Laertius about the horse and the cow. Right — you had to have the image of what those two animals look like to get an idea. But at that current moment when you saw them in the distance, it was something of a mirage — you couldn’t tell the detail. You have to understand how vision operates: that things are less clear at a distance than up close, that if you’re looking through a fog or some other distorting medium you have to account for that distortion. And if you don’t think about those things, then you have no idea whether your vision is to be trusted or not. You can’t trust the senses unless you understand how they operate, and how they may produce information that needs to be analyzed in any particular context. So Lucretius will get into that as the poem goes on.
Okay — we probably are getting to the point where we ought to wrap up for this episode. Any final thoughts?
Martin:
Nope.
Cassius:
Okay — well, thanks, everybody. We’ll do it again next week.
All:
Okay, bye-bye. Bye.