Episode 021 - The Universe Has No Center
Date: 06/06/20
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1582-episode-twenty-one-the-universe-has-no-center/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Episode 021 completes Book One of Lucretius by addressing the final corollary of an infinite universe: there is no center. Elaine reads Daniel Brown’s translation of the closing passages, which first recap the infinite supply of matter needed to sustain any local system (comparing atoms to food that sustains an animal), then argue against any “tendency toward the center”: since void yields equally to motion in all directions, there is no privileged center point, no absolute “down,” and no fixed place where heavy bodies might come to rest. The episode closes Book One with Lucretius’s famous transition passage — rendered by Munro as “things will light the torch for other things” and by Bailey as “so things kindle all light for others” — affirming that each truth uncovered illuminates the next.
A substantial portion of the discussion wrestles with a textual puzzle: Lucretius’s language appears to say that “many seeds must still arise from time to time for a supply,” which seems to contradict the foundational premise that nothing comes from nothing. All four major translations — Daniel Brown, Munro, Bailey, and Martin Ferguson Smith — use “arise” or “rise up,” making the problem worse rather than better. Martin offers a resolution supported by his check of the Latin: the word in question may simply mean “come into view from beyond,” not “be generated from nothing.” The panel concludes that the most consistent reading is one of statistical replenishment — atoms migrate into a given region from the infinite surrounding universe at the same rate that others disperse outward — with no creation from nothing.
The wider discussion addresses the philosophical stakes of the “no center” claim. Cassius argues it is one of Epicurus’s most potent weapons against anthropocentric and theistic cosmologies: if the universe has no center and no directed order, there is no basis for the prime mover argument. Martin confirms that “no center” is what ultimately demolishes medieval geocentrism, and the panel notes that Martin Ferguson Smith’s commentary suggests Lucretius is targeting both the Peripatetics (Aristotle’s geocentric finite cosmos) and the Stoics. The survey of ancient heliocentric proposals arrives at Aristarchus of Samos (third century BC) as the first explicit heliocentric argument, with a brief digression on Brahmagupta (sixth century AD, initially misidentified) and the scarcity of surviving primary sources for Indian astronomy. The episode closes with each panelist’s summary, and Cassius previews Book Two’s opening — the well-known “sweet it is to watch from shore” passage — before the physics resumes.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 21 of Lucretius Today. 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’ 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 go back to the original text to bring you an accurate presentation of classical Epicurean philosophy as the ancient Epicureans understood it, and not simply repeat for you what passes for conventional wisdom about Epicurus today. Second, we won’t be talking about Lucretius with the goal of promoting modern political perspectives. Epicurus must be understood on his own and not in terms of competitive schools which may seem similar to Epicurus but are fundamentally different and incompatible, such as Stoicism, Humanism, Buddhism, Taoism, and others. Third, we’ll be approaching Epicurus with the goal of understanding the fundamental nature of the universe as the essential basis of Epicurean philosophy. From this perspective, you’ll see that Epicurus taught neither the pursuit of luxury nor the pursuit of simple living as ends in themselves, but rather he taught the pursuit of pleasure, using feeling as the guide of life, and not supernatural gods, idealism, or virtue ethics. As important as anything else, Epicurus taught that there’s no life after death, and any happiness we’ll ever have must come in this life, which is why it is so important not to waste time in confusion. Now for today in this Episode 21, we close Book One with a discussion of how the Earth does not reside at the center of the universe, and how in fact the universe, being infinite in size, has no center anywhere. Now let’s join our discussion with Elaine reading today’s text from Book One.
Elaine: “For as the animal creation deprived of food must perish and be quite destroyed, so things must be dissolved as soon as matter, turning from its course, fails to afford supply, and save the whole. Nor, as some may object, can outward blows on all sides given preserve this all of things we see compounded from falling into pieces. They may indeed beat thick and stay some part till other items come and so supply the universe, but often they are compelled to bound and leap back, and so afford the seeds both time and place to fly away, and thus regain their former liberty again. Therefore it is fit that many seeds should still arise from time to time for a supply, and that these blows might never cease to beat, the force of matter must be on all sides infinite.
“And these inquiries see that you avoid, my Memmius, to believe with some that say all bodies strive to reach the middle place of this great all, and so the nature of the world stands fixed, not struck at all by outward blows, nor can the upper or lower parts be scattered any way abroad, since all things by nature to the center tend. As if you could believe that anything could stay and rest upon itself — that heavy bodies tend upward and fix their rest upon the surface of the Earth opposite to us, just as we see the images of bodies show themselves in water. By the same reason they contend that creatures walk underneath as we above, nor can they fall into the regions of the air below, then can our bodies naturally fly upward to heaven, and when they see the sun we view the stars of night, and so by turns they share with us the seasons of the heavens, and with us still divide night and days. But vain mistake hath formed this scheme for fools who judge perversely of the seeds of things. For there can be no middle where there is a void or space that’s infinite; or if there was, can bodies for this reason rather stop their course in this medium than take up their abode in any part of space that’s further off? For place or empty space, which we call void, must equally give way to heavy movement through a medium or through none — which way soever their motions tend. Nor is there any place where bodies, when they come, throw off their weight and stand fixed in void and take their rest, nor can void support the weight of bodies, but must by its own nature still give way. It follows then that things are not preserved or held together by this means, as if they finally strove to reach a middle space.
“Besides, all bodies, they pretend, do not incline towards the center, but those of earth and water, the sea, the rivers rolling from the hills, and those that are composed of earthy parts. But the thin air, they say, and the hot fire are carried upward from the middle, and hence it is the sky, spangled every way with stars, and the sun’s flame in his celestial course is fed, because the fire flying from the center there gathers up all its heat. So from the earth all mortal things are fed, nor can the trees adorn their lofty heads with leaves unless the earth to every kind affords its due support. They say a sort of heavenly canopy above covers the whole and holds it in, lest the world’s walls, their parts being all dissolved, should instantly be scattered through the void like swiftest flames, and all things be overwhelmed in this great ruin — lest the thundering vaults of heaven should tumble from above and earth should fail our trembling feet, and the whole race of men their bodies broken and dissolved should wander through the boundless void amid mingled ruins of earth and heaven, and in a moment nothing would be left but desert empty space and its listless seeds. For in whatever part you will suppose the seeds to separate, here will be the gate of death to bodies, for matter through the breach will rush abroad and press with mighty force. If this you thoroughly know and little pains will serve, for one thing by another you’ll explain. No more shall darkness interrupt your way, but you shall view the utmost depths of nature, for things will show themselves by mutual light.”
Cassius: Amazing. That last passage in Munro is: “If you will thoroughly con these things then, carried to the end with slight trouble, you will be able by yourself to understand all the rest, for one thing after another will grow clear, and dark night will not rob you of the road, and keep you from surveying the utmost ends of nature — in such wise things will light the torch for other things.” I like the Bailey translation of that as well. Go ahead with that one, Charles.
Charles: “These things you will learn thus with little trouble, for one thing after another shall grow clear, nor will blind night snatch away your path from you, but there you shall see all the utmost truths of nature — so things kindle all light for others.”
Cassius: So he’s chosen to end Book One with the statement that the Earth is not the center of the universe, which is correct. On the other hand, he has not understood gravity and he has thought that perhaps if you’re on the other side of the Earth you would fall off.
Martin: On the other hand, he has not understood gravity, and he has thought that perhaps if you’re on the other side of the Earth you would fall off.
Elaine: I think it’s more than just saying that the Earth is not the center. I think he’s saying that the universe isn’t made of a scheme where things gravitate towards the center of it.
Cassius: Yeah, that reminds me of what we discussed last week too — it depends on whether we are looking at this as sort of an astronomer, interested in the absolute truth of it, or whether we’re looking at it as a common person who really needs assurance that the Earth is not somehow specially created by God at the center of the universe.
Elaine: Right. I mean, it’s both things. But he’s not saying the sun is the center of the universe either. That’s what I mean — in his scheme, his argument actually goes against anything being a center where everything is pulled.
Cassius: It certainly does. The part that we read today actually had a little bit of material that goes with what we discussed last week — the issue of how the animal creation deprived of food must perish. There was a little bit of passage here about how the universe, in order to continue in existence, must have a basically limitless supply of seeds. I don’t know if there’s anything else in that part that added anything to what we discussed last week.
Charles: I mean, there’s some minor detail explanations about how, say, an animal decomposes, and he says therefore from time to time there are so many seeds that should still arise — so parts of the matter will sort of be recycled from time to time, even if that whole hasn’t quite wasted away or been used up. The seeds are still there, right?
Cassius: So even though he says that there’s no beginning — he’s not a Big Bang person — he’s not saying that the individual particles have no beginning? He’s continually adding, or at least from time to time adding, new particles?
Martin: Yeah — where does this come from, that the particles would be generated?
Cassius: Maybe. I mean, he says that. Let me pull up the Martin Ferguson Smith version online, around line 1050: “I insist that multitudinous atoms must rise up out of space; in fact, there could not even be a succession of blows if there were not infinite resources of matter on all sides.”
Elaine: I think he’s talking about new atoms coming to this part of the universe from another part of the universe — they’re not exactly created.
Cassius: That’s the thing. Is that what he’s saying?
Elaine: Yes. For example —
Cassius: Go ahead, Martin.
Martin: Yeah. So I mean, I’m really impressed that even though he is not at all inclined to mathematics, when he thinks about infinity he gets things right. So in an infinite universe there is no center, and in order for the universe to behave as we observe, we essentially need on a large scale basically an almost constant density of particles. Of course locally there can be big differences, but so that always from further portions new particles will come in, and on average we lose the same number of particles going elsewhere. So this is how these things would work. So there are no new particles being made — and this has been stated in the previous part very clearly: nothing is generated from nothing. Otherwise it would cease to be infinite, right?
Cassius: Again, I think the wording here — Lucretius kind of fumbled a little bit — because he sure does. It looks like it’s not clear.
Elaine: Yeah, not clear. But that would be inconsistent with what he said before. But it looked like he’s saying that there’s new things.
Cassius: When I’m looking at it in the Daniel Brown edition, his specific example to start this passage was looking at animal creation: “deprived of food must perish.” So he’s basically talking about if you’ve got a bear who has no food, he’s going to die, his body will eventually dissipate. But those atoms from his body go somewhere else. And that’s not what he said — he says “therefore it is fit that many seeds should still arise from time to time for a supply.” I don’t mean — I think you can’t say that if you look at the whole of what we’ve read so far; obviously that can’t be what he means. But it’s the way he’s worded it poorly. Poor Lucretius.
Cassius: Yeah, the word “arise” causes problems. Let’s look at the other translations. I’ve seen Munro says — Munro says “must rise up.” And: “again and again I repeat, many bodies must rise up.” Okay. And then Bailey: “must be that many things rise up.”
Elaine: Well, is he talking about the issue of up versus down? Because you know, he is also saying that that second passage talks about all things being held together by blows from outside, so maybe he’s talking about the difference between blows from outside the thing versus blows from inside the thing.
Cassius: You know, they’ve all translated it similarly — something comes, rises up. I just think he messed up. It’s okay. No poet is perfect. There are clearly going to be parts that are less clear than others. So did you read Martin Ferguson Smith, Elaine? What does that last sentence say?
Elaine: Let me go — did you already do that? I apologize. He says: “so I insist that multitudinous atoms must rise up out of space; in fact, there could not even be a succession of blows if there were not infinite resources of matter on all sides.”
Cassius: So that’s even worse-looking — it looks like they’re translating to say that the seeds are coming out of the void, when he’s just spent all these verses explaining how that doesn’t happen. I think it’s important to point this out because somebody reading it might forget that he’s already said that doesn’t happen, because he’s been unclear, and it looks like that’s what he’s saying here. But that can’t be right.
Elaine: Well, gosh — if there’s one thing we’ve come across in our study of Epicurus, it’s that if you go to one particular isolated passage and read it out of context, you can end up being confused about what he means.
Cassius: You have to keep the initial premises in view, and clearly one of the first initial premises is that nothing comes from nothing. So there’s not really new atoms arising from nothing — there’s new bodies, new combinations, when you consider bodies to be combinations of atoms.
Cassius: Right, right. It’s interesting that virtually every translation talks about the atoms and particles having to be coming in from all sides. Yeah, Charles, I’m agreeing with you there. I’m looking at the Bailey version right now, and I’m thinking that this paragraph that’s causing this trouble — it seems to be focusing on blows from all sides and talking about directions. So in that context it might be easier to understand that when he’s talking about “arising” he means coming from a particular direction, as opposed to coming from nothing. It may be directionally focused here.
Martin: As opposed to coming from nothing. You would need to look at the Latin word.
Cassius: Yeah, we say that. I would fix it for him if it weren’t for the provenance — the Latin text.
Cassius: So let’s see — it’s like in Velleius’s section in Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods, where he talks about how the Epicurean gods have a constant stream of atoms flowing towards them — that’s how they sustain themselves indefinitely, that they can replenish themselves from these exterior streams. In fact, that’s one of the perplexing parts of that passage in Velleius, if I remember correctly, because when he talks about the atoms streaming towards the gods as opposed to the atoms streaming from the gods — I may be confused about the exact one I’m talking about. But I know there’s a passage with them.
Martin: I do. I do remember that. Yeah — something about the stream of atoms causing the influx of images when we dream, right? It seems to be reversed, but that’s apparently what the Latin implies. So yeah, I don’t know that I’ve got easy access to the Latin to talk about right now.
Cassius: Elaine, were you trying to find it?
Elaine: Yeah, but it’s hard. I wish I remembered more of my Latin. I need to reread Book Four, because the lines are not always in the same place. But it looks like it’s around line 1050. So we could probably figure this out, but I’m not trying to resolve it right now. It looks like that line begins — it has et tamen ut plagae quoque possent suppetere ipsae — infinita opus est vis undique materiai — and I probably butchered that, people. This is probably going to end up being one of those things that we should pursue in the comments or discussions, as opposed to trying to resolve today.
Cassius: But clearly we know that there are not new atoms being created from nothing in the Epicurean universe. So whatever he means here, he doesn’t mean that. But what he does mean — as is often the case — is not entirely clear to us.
Cassius: So this is funny — this part about the people and animals walking upside down. This is a flat-Earth theory that he’s arguing against. But really, on the round Earth, that is happening — there are people right now who are walking upside down to me.
Elaine: I get the feeling that this was talking about a flat surface — that people were walking opposite to each other.
Charles: It reminded me of “the Upside Down” from the Netflix series Stranger Things.
Elaine: I was thinking like a parallel universe of Australia.
Cassius: Well, clearly we’ve got a big-picture issue in Epicurean physics — the Epicureans were not aware of the force of gravity, and how planets can generate their own gravity, and so you can have locally things tending towards the center while in the wider space things do not tend towards a center and the universe itself has no center. This is why they thought the atoms were just all streaming downward indefinitely. We’ll get to that. Is that in the next book where he talks about that?
Elaine: I think he may have already talked about it to some degree. Well, it may be — no, you’re right, Elaine — I think it’s not there yet. That would be the creation of the universe, yeah. And that would be connected with the swerve, because that would be the discussion of where the universe comes into being by the atoms swerving instead of falling in one direction.
Cassius: And you know, I connect this in my mind with the issue of the size of the sun debate. Because people who want to criticize Epicurus are always going to say, “Ha — he was so ridiculous, he thought you could fall off the other edge of the Earth, and he thought the sun was the size of a basketball.” Well, you know, he probably did get the size of the sun wrong, and I say probably because I would cut him some slack in terms of what words we actually have today. I don’t know that we have Epicurus’s clear statement about exactly what the size of the sun is, because he talks about it appearing — he says it’s the size that it appears to be.
Elaine: Well also, he immediately follows up saying that in reality it’s either slightly greater than what we see or slightly less, right?
Martin: Right. For two fires on Earth, when looked at from a distance, appear to the senses — he had a good reason for it: the sharpness of objects at a distance. He said if something is tremendously far away it always gets blurry, except for fire, which tends to not get blurry so quickly.
Cassius: And I apologize for this tangent. The only reason I brought all that up was to say that yes, there are certain aspects of Epicurean physics that we now see to be incorrect, but not changing the final conclusions. Even though there are certain aspects that have to be adjusted, he got many important things right. From the point of view of a common person who thinks about gods and his place in the universe, the issue of whether the Earth is the center of the universe is just hugely important. Because if the Earth is the center of the universe, and if the stars and everything revolve around the Earth, then in my simple mind that means it’s very likely there’s a God who set it up that way, and a lot of people will be led down that path towards error. Epicurus solves it by pointing out that there’s a good reason why the Earth is not the center of the universe, and therefore there is no reason to think there’s a supernatural God who put everything into that order.
Elaine: But now — was that even an argument at that time? I presume it was — but you know, because they weren’t into monotheism, they didn’t have that “humans at the center of God’s creation” kind of thing going on back then.
Charles: I thought they did. Common religions back then in the Hellenistic area were yeah, mostly polytheistic. But some philosophy, like the Eleatics, and I think — don’t quote me on this — but I think even Plato had instances where the universe was influenced or possibly even wholly created by what we call a Demiurge, or an artisan god.
Elaine: But that wouldn’t have been the common person’s religion the way it was in Galileo’s time, when that was a really big deal. I don’t think Lucretius was having to face that specific kind of argument.
Cassius: So it would have been useful in those times. It’s not really useful for most people now, because most Christians — there are a few that probably think the Earth is the center of the universe, or some that think the Earth is flat, but most religious people now still think of things as being human-centric without thinking that that has anything to do with astronomy the way it’s set up.
Elaine: So I’d question you there, Cassius — whether that was Lucretius’s intent. I may be — what’s the word — is it anachronistic?
Cassius: I may be, yeah, yeah. I think so. I may be superimposing my own views. But this is — I would be frank and say this is one of the issues that appeals to me most about Epicurean philosophy. Maybe it’s because of my reading into Deism and backgrounds and things like that, that I consider the prime mover argument and so forth all to be variations of just the issue that everything is organized with humanity at its center. Anthropocentrism. I think the infinite universe and the observation that there can be no center is one of the best responses to that, whether it was made back then or not, whether it’s made today, or whether it’s just made in the halls of the common person across the world.
Cassius: But Martin, you haven’t said anything. Any thoughts on that part?
Martin: You’re basically right — I agree. There is no center astronomically, and that really takes out this medieval position that it was made by God. But I also agree, as pointed out, that this is a later thing. This was not at the time of Epicurus. And look at — look at geocentric — geocentric.
Cassius: Yeah, yeah — that was Aristotle.
Charles: Yeah, I guess. I always start the podcast off by saying we’re not professional philosophers, so we don’t have the ability to just pull examples immediately to mind. I mean, there were tons of competing theories in astronomy that competed with each other. And I would say around the time of Epicurus that the most common would be the Peripatetic or Aristotelian view — you know, geocentric and all that. Because Aristotle believed in a form of gravity, but he wasn’t the only one. I mean, look at — third century, a little bit after Epicurus — Archimedes also believed in gravity, or a form of it.
Elaine: I don’t know the name of the person — I want to say two or three centuries prior to Epicurus and Aristotle and even Plato — who believed in a heliocentric model of the universe.
Cassius: I just posted a link there for our discussion to the geocentric model page on Wikipedia. It says: “The geocentric model was the dominant description of the cosmos in many ancient civilizations, such as those of Aristotle in classical Greece and Ptolemy in Roman Egypt,” and “ancient Greek, Roman, and medieval philosophers usually combined the geocentric model with a spherical Earth.” So — who was the first to put forward that the sun might be the center of the universe? Or even just that neither the Earth nor the sun was the center? I don’t have my timeline for that firmly in mind. Martin, you’re probably the one who’s most likely to know.
Martin: The Copernican system — and so forth, 1543. It says in 1543 the geocentric system met its first serious challenge.
Cassius: Hold on — because Lucretius and Epicurus were clearly saying the geocentric system was wrong.
Elaine: Oh man, I’m terrible with pronouncing these ancient names — from Sanskrit to English I am going to butcher this. But there was a philosopher — he was a mathematician and astronomer — named Brahmagupta, born circa 598 CE and died circa 668 CE.
Elaine: Oh, so I’m thinking of a different person. Never mind — that’s way after. I was thinking BC, not CE.
Cassius: Well, to try to bring it back to where we were — I guess the point that Elaine has raised is accurate: it’s total speculation on my part to say that your average Greek or average Roman is reaching these conclusions on his own. He’s got this preset religious framework that establishes all these other things based on divine revelation and not on the issue of whether the Earth is the center of the universe or not. I guess it’s probably just a certain type of person who — well, Aristotle was saying the Earth was the center, so part of this could be an argument against Aristotle, right?
Cassius: Let’s see — I’m reading here: “The heliocentric — the third-century BC Greek astronomer and mathematician Aristarchus of Samos was the first to present an explicit argument for a heliocentric model of the solar system.” So — I’m not going to suggest that Epicurus was the first. We don’t know where Democritus was, or some of the other guys. But this must be among the original challenges to the idea that either the Earth or the sun was the center of the universe.
Elaine: Yeah, I got my dates wrong on that Indian astronomer — he was a thousand years behind. Oh well. That caught my attention. Yeah — he lived in like 598 to 668. I misinterpreted, I thought that was BC. It’s not — he was way after.
Charles: Okay, yeah. The sad thing is that almost everything the Indians came up with has no primary source left. I know. There’s a lot of indication that they figured it out, but there is no primary source. And it’s — it’s like our problem with the swerve and Epicurus. Yes. There really is a lot from India that has survived, but it’s very little overall. Yeah.
Charles: And I think there’s a medical text by them that survived in fragments. But I’m mostly concerned about their ethics — they’re hedonistic and I don’t want to say proto-Epicurean, but there’s definitely some resemblance.
Cassius: Hey guys, let me ask the question or approach it from a different direction. I have my observation about why I think it is so important to Epicurus to point out that the Earth is not the center of the universe. But what other reasons might there be for this to be significant to Epicurus? I think we’re pretty clear that he’s not just writing a general scientific textbook for the sake of — we’re not after wisdom just for the sake of wisdom, and we’re not after astronomical knowledge just for the sake of astronomical knowledge. What other implications are there of the fact that the Earth is not the center of the universe?
Elaine: Well, it is possible that part of this is because that was a position that Aristotle held — discrediting competing philosophies and pointing out ways in which they were inaccurate.
Elaine: Maybe Epicurus never really strikes me as much of a contrarian for the sake of contradicting Plato. I would say that it has to do with his insistence on the many worlds in his letters.
Cassius: Well — down to Pythocles and Herodotus —
Elaine: Now you’re going to get me started again on the issue of many worlds also being of major interest because it shows that we’re not the special pets of God.
Cassius: Yeah, bring everything back to that particular question. I think you kind of captured what I was getting at. But Charles, don’t let me cut you off — what other implications do you see of this?
Charles: Clearly he’s got to inoculate his students against the positions of other schools, and what Aristotle and presumably Plato had taught would be something he’d want to comment on. So I agree with you that he’s not primarily just a contrarian. But if there are major premises that his students had been taught in other schools that he thought were wrong, he’s going to want to correct that.
Cassius: But are there other implications of this that we might be overlooking, or that we ought to discuss?
Elaine: It wouldn’t make sense in the context of the Epicurean gods. It would not make sense for the Earth to be the center. Is that what you’re saying?
Cassius: Yeah — and for humans also to be at the very center. So looking at Martin Ferguson Smith, he says there’s an argument that Lucretius is arguing against the Peripatetics — that’s the Aristotelians, yes. Okay. And then Martin Ferguson Smith thinks that he’s also targeting the Stoics.
Cassius: So we have to remember Lucretius was after Epicurus, so he can attack people that weren’t available to Epicurus to attack. Yes, yes.
Cassius: Yeah, because clearly with the rise of Stoicism there would have been much more challenge from that direction that Epicurus himself had not had to face. So I think it would be consistent. I found out when I read DeWitt how many of the specific Principal Doctrines were not just assertions of “okay, this is how it is,” but were also arguments against specific rival positions. So I actually think he did a lot of that, and if Martin Ferguson Smith holds that view, I think we should at least consider that that may have been the purpose of this.
Elaine: Well, I’d certainly agree that there’s part of that going on here.
Cassius: Okay, here’s an example — and I’m not sure I can articulate it well. But what about the issue of the directional aspect of the atoms? Maybe another implication of this is: since things are not tending towards the center, they are also dispersing. Maybe this reinforces his conclusion that there are no eternal bodies — that everything is going to eventually at some point decompose, dissipate, be destroyed, including the Earth. Because I know that he’s going to go into that part more specifically as we go forward in the coming books — that the Earth itself is not eternal. So maybe this is a preliminary to that observation.
Elaine: Yeah, also I think that coincides directly with how there can really be no center if the universe is always expanding and if it is infinite. Just trying to organize it in my mind.
Cassius: I don’t know that this has any direct implication for the mechanism of pleasure, but the orientation of Epicurean philosophy toward the dismissal of supernatural gods — that’s what I’ve been trying to hammer today — is how it undermines the idea that everything was created supernaturally. What are the other premises of Epicurean philosophy? That there’s no life after death — maybe that’s where I’m going with that last point: since everything doesn’t tend towards the center and isn’t constantly replenished, eventually things do end. Go ahead, Charles.
Charles: I guess if we’re going along that route, it also wouldn’t make sense if we were the center of the universe — basically us being at the center would imply that it would be by design, right?
Cassius: Okay, so maybe you’re saying there that it might not necessarily be a design by a supernatural God — maybe there’s some other source of design in the world?
Charles: He’s just making a flat point that there is no design of any kind.
Elaine: I don’t — yeah, I think we’re reading stuff into it. I think this is another superimposition. I think it’s useful in some ways now, maybe. But I don’t think — if he had wanted to say that, he would have said it. He’s been pretty clear about who he’s arguing against.
Cassius: I think he’s pretty clearly arguing against current philosophies, and look at line 1067 — “but vain mistake hath formed this scheme for fools who judge perversely.” He’s pretty down on rival philosophies, Lucretius is. And I think we have evidence that Epicurus liked to insult them. I think he’s saying: look, this is stupid, it cannot work this way, and it takes apart the rest of their philosophy.
Elaine: I think you’re making something out of it that’s not there.
Cassius: How does it take apart the rest of their philosophy? Well, if you have a philosophy that is consistent and coherent, if you make a serious mistake in part of it, everything you’ve built on it will be wrong. Now, we have seen that even though Epicurus and Lucretius didn’t have the understanding of gravity that we have now — and we don’t completely understand gravity either — even so, it didn’t undo everything. But there are some bricks you’re building with, and if they’re messed up, things will not work. In fact, in the conclusion here — “these things you will learn with little trouble, for one thing after another shall grow clearer” — if the one thing you’re building on is wrong, the rest will take you in the wrong direction. That’s how I would take this.
Cassius: Okay, any other implications of this section for daily life in 2020? Well, it’s pretty clear that the conclusion here is that the Earth or the sun is not the center of the universe, and that in fact the universe as a whole does not have a center. Is there anything that we haven’t covered today that we ought to observe about how that fits into Epicurean philosophy?
Charles: In any system of philosophy that is anthropocentric, there’s usually other arbitrary or supernatural or even religious explanations behind physics and astronomy. But for those that aren’t anthropocentric, we have this element of chance or free will, as well as an emphasis — I don’t want to say an emphasis on science, but — Epicurean philosophy is not anthropocentric and there’s no reason to believe that it could be. And I think that believing that humans are the center of everything is a bit arrogant — more than a bit, in my mind.
Cassius: Well, okay. I don’t have a problem with arrogance somewhere. I mean — but is it wrong? Yeah, it’s probably wrong. It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, it doesn’t offend me on a virtue basis; it’s just not right. You see lots of graphics and memes on the different parts of the internet with some representation of the hugeness of space, and then you’ve got a little speck here and you’ve got an arrow that says “you are here,” which is always kind of addressing Charles’s point.
Elaine: And I don’t particularly like those myself, because it’s kind of demeaning as well.
Cassius: No, I don’t — I don’t think it’s meant to be humbling. I don’t — I don’t want to get into it.
Charles: Yeah, that’s what I was — when you said arrogance, I was thinking about humility versus arrogance. That gets to be kind of one of those social virtue things, and I don’t know — it didn’t bother me. But it’s just not right.
Cassius: Well, we’re kind of in concluding mode today. So Elaine, you’ve got a lot to say today — where would you begin to frame some concluding thoughts?
Elaine: I would conclude where Lucretius concluded — that one piece of understanding leads to another. So make sure that your building blocks of philosophy are right, and keep going with the tools that you’re getting from Epicurus, and you’re more likely to go in the direction that’s accurate and then you can make accurate choices.
Martin: Oh yeah, I don’t have much of a summary. I rather want to come back to the “arise” question. So I checked a bit in the dictionaries, and there is a reading which means just “to come.” And so that’s why I don’t think that we necessarily have to read this text as if the particles in a certain area have been formed there. It’s really that they come from where we didn’t see them before. So I think “arise” in this case emphasizes: we were not aware of these particles before, because they were too far away, and then they came to replace — and statistically replace — those which we lost.
Cassius: So maybe the problem is in the translators — that all of the translators we’ve got have made the same mistake, which is kind of funny. That does happen — you get an expert cascade and everybody will misread something the same way. Well, good. I can’t find a good immediate example of this, but I know in some translations — especially in Book One — there is a phrase that has always interested me about how things, I think “rising” is part of the phrasing, but “coming to the shores of light.” I don’t know if anybody else remembers that phrase, but it’s always struck me — “shores of light” — as if almost there’s a beach or something that was significant in the way they were describing things. And I don’t know whether that relates to the “arise” or “rising” or whatever. But anybody have any thoughts on why you would end Book One at this particular point?
Elaine: I would need to see Book Two — yeah, right. I was meaning to say that.
Cassius: Well, we can spend just a second at least in looking at what the topic is. The beginning of Book Two, like most of the books, starts with another general discussion of Epicurus and general ethical issues. So for those people who are a little bit tired of hearing us discuss the atoms, we’re going to be going — in the beginning of Book Two — back to some major ethical perspectives about the significance of Epicurus for a little while.
Charles: Well, I was going to say that Book One sort of establishes the tone for the rest of the book, as well as getting the point across that before we get into ethics, the groundwork for the foundations of the physics has to be established first — and a huge part of that includes dismissing religious superstition.
Cassius: It does. But as far as why stop right here — I’m looking at the beginning of Book Two, and it looks like as soon as he finishes his opening discussion of the ethical significance of Epicurus, he goes back almost immediately into the same train of thought we’re discussing now about how bodies break up. I guess the next part is going to be how bodies come together and break up.
Elaine: Well, that’s what we were mostly confused on today, right?
Cassius: Well, we will have a break, because we’ll be discussing the well-known sections about how Epicureans can look down from the hilltops at the wandering men in error as to how to live their lives, and how great a value it is to understand the benefits of not doing that. “It is sweet when on the great sea the winds trouble the waters, to behold from land another’s deep distress — not that it’s a pleasure and delight that any should be afflicted, but because it is sweet to see from what evils you are yourself exempt.” The opening for next week, which is very well known.
Cassius: I think that’s it from all of us. Okay, Elaine, any final thoughts?
Elaine: No, I think I’ve given mine.
Cassius: Okay, great. All right — well, it probably should be marked that we’ve finished Book One. I very much appreciate all the participation from you guys. It’s been tremendously valuable for me, and I hope our listeners have gotten some things out of this, and we will continue on next week.
Martin: All right, thanks everybody.
Charles: Thank you.
Elaine: Yeah, thanks. Bye.