Episode 023 - The Motion Of The Atoms Continues Without Resting Place, and At Great Speed
Date: 06/24/20
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1597-episode-twenty-three-the-motion-of-the-atoms-continues-without-resting-place-and/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Episode 023 returns to the physics of atomic motion in Book Two, with Elaine absent. Charles reads Daniel Brown’s translation of the opening passages: the torch-relay analogy (atoms passing the “lamp of life” between successive generations like relay racers), the argument that since the universe has no edge or floor where atoms could come to rest they must be in perpetual motion, and the definition of “first seeds” as the elementary particles (atoms) themselves. Martin reads the second passage, which describes atoms wandering through the void in isolation, the dust-in-sunbeam observation as a visible analogy for atomic motion, and a key contrast: the sun’s light ray travels relatively slowly because it is composed of compound bodies of atoms jostling against each other and against air, while the atoms themselves move faster than light because they are simple, uncompounded, and meet no resistance in empty void.
The episode’s most technically sustained discussion concerns Brownian motion. Martin identifies the dust-in-sunbeam passage as an anticipation of Robert Brown’s 1827 observation of pollen spores jittering in water, explained by statistical molecular bombardment — a hierarchy in which elementary particles jostle compound ones, which jostle slightly larger ones, and so on until the jitter becomes observable under a microscope. Martin also notes Lucretius anticipates the law of refraction. A digression concerns David Sedley’s article “Epicurus’ Refutation of Determinism,” which argues the swerve was an afterthought added later to allow free will. Martin rejects this: a single original bounce would give the universe a definite point of origin in time and space — resembling the Big Bang — rather than the eternal, distributed motion that Epicurean physics requires. Radioactive decay (uranium nuclei taking billions of years, excited electrons decaying in picoseconds) is offered as a modern analog for the swerve’s variable frequency across different particle types.
The final portion of the episode addresses DeWitt’s reconstruction of Epicurus’s twelve fundamental principles of nature, which Cassius argues are designed to demolish Platonic idealism by showing that atoms are always in motion — ruling out any eternal, unchanging realm of ideal forms. The group then debates whether “atoms of pleasure” or “atoms of blueness” could exist, concluding they cannot: pleasure is a feeling, not a substance, and blueness is a human organizational category applied to particular wavelengths of light, not an essence that exists independently. Martin distinguishes a wavelength convention (which humans can define precisely) from any Platonic ideal. Cassius extends the point to the cave analogy: ideal forms would have to exist as originals somewhere casting shadows on the wall, but in an Epicurean universe there is no such room. Cassius notes Elaine’s absence and looks forward to her return next week.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 23 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, here are 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 may or may not be the same as what you hear about Epicurus at other places today. Second, we aren’t talking about Lucretius with the goal of promoting any modern political perspective — 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, Atheism, or Marxism. Third, the essential base of Epicurean philosophy is a fundamental view of the nature of the universe. When you read the words of Lucretius, you’ll find that Epicurus did not teach the pursuit of virtue, or luxury, or simple living, as ends in themselves, but rather he taught the pursuit of pleasure. From this perspective, it is feeling which is the guide of life, and not supernatural gods, idealism, or virtue ethics. And as important as anything else, Epicurus taught that there’s no life after death, and that 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 let’s join today’s discussion with Charles reading the text from Book Two.
Charles: “But now, come, remember, you attend while I’m explaining by what motion the genial seeds of matter produce the various kinds of bodies and dissolve them when produced, and by what force compelled they act, and what celerity of motion they possess to force their way through all the mighty void. For certain, it is that no seeds of matter stick close and unmoved among themselves, for we see everything grows less and perceive all things wear away by a long tract of time, and by old age removes them quite from our sight, and yet the mass of things still remains safe and entire. And for this reason, because the particles of matter which fall off lessen the bodies from which they fall but add to those to which they join. Were they forced to decay, those, on the contrary, they increase, nor do they remain in his posture. And thus the universe of things is continually renewing, generations succeed when another, one kind of animal increases another wastes away, and in a short time the living creation is entirely changed, and like racers, delivers the lamp of life to those that are behind.
“But if you think the seeds of things can be at rest, and being themselves unmoved can give motion to bodies, you wander wildly from the way of true reason. For since all the seeds of things are rambling through the void, they must necessarily be borne along either by their own natural gravity or by the outward stroke of something else. For when these seeds tending downward meet with others, they must all fly off and rebound a different way — and no wonder, since they are hard bodies and of solid weight, nor is there anything behind to stop the motion. But that you may perceive more plainly how all the seeds of matter are tossed about, you must recollect that there is no such thing in the universe as the lowest place where the first seeds may remain fixed, because I have shown fully, and proved by certain reason, that spaces without end, without bounds, immense, lies extended every way. This being plain, there can be no rest possibly allowed to these first seeds, forever wandering through the empty void — but being tossed about with constant and different motion, and striking against other bodies, some rebound to a great distance, others fly off but not so far. Such of them as rebound but for a small distance, their contexture being more close, and being hindered by their natural twinings, these compose a solid root of rocks and the hard bodies of iron, and a few other things of the same nature. But such as wander widely through the void and moved by the blow fly further off and rebound to greater distances — these compose the thin air and the sun’s bright light.”
Cassius: Okay, thank you, Charles. So he’s introducing the topic — he switched away from talking about the issue of it being sweet to observe the ills from which we are immune, and now has gone back to discussing the atoms again. Is this the first time he’s mentioned the atoms moving downward? I’m thinking not, but I can’t remember exactly from Book One.
Martin: I certainly think he did this before, because this is one of the refuted parts of Epicurean physics, and we had this before, I think, already.
Cassius: And so maybe it’s really in the second passage here where he is explaining why he is concerned about this — that he wants to explain how some things increase and others decrease, and how the explanation arises from the movement of atoms from one place to the other. How things are continually renewed. I think we made a comment earlier in our discussion about one of the sections we may talk about today — the dust analogy. I think this analogy that’s in this paragraph, about how things are like racers who deliver the lamp from one racer to another — I guess that’s maybe the Olympic model, the carrying of the torch. That’s another analogy that I think is very familiar to many people.
Charles: Oh, now it makes sense — I didn’t even understand this part of the allegory. Yeah, I think that’s what he’s talking about. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense, truly.
Cassius: Yeah, I was thinking like a baton race.
Charles: I think “baton” — somewhere along in one of these sections — is used as another example as well. Yeah. I think this happens a lot — we read a passage and we really don’t even have a clue what he’s talking about at first. I know people who would listen in — that’s what I do, I have no clue what he’s talking about, until I go through it and try to put it in some kind of a context.
Cassius: And so in order to explain how the race or baton analogy works, he then has another paragraph about how things are constantly in motion. Now I guess the main part of the next paragraph would be that there is no resting place for the atoms to come to rest. And so since there is no resting place — now he’s thinking in terms of them all falling downward — because there’s no resting place to support them, they’re constantly moving.
Martin: Here I’m stuck again. What does this mean? What does “the first” mean?
Cassius: Which part, Martin?
Martin: “This being plain, there can be no rest possibly allowed to these first seeds.” So what does “first” mean? That did cross my mind. Yeah. So what does “first” mean?
Cassius: I’m sorry, Martin — I don’t understand your question. He’s saying that there’s no boundary to the universe — no floor, no ceiling, no walls against which an atom could come to rest, right?
Martin: Yeah, but in an infinite universe, there are no “first” seeds. If we take “first” as meaning first in time — “these are also the first which are there” — it doesn’t make sense.
Cassius: Okay, now you’re putting “first” in terms of time. I did not read it that way. When I read him talking about first seeds, I don’t consider those to be anything other than the atoms themselves, because we know that all of the atoms are eternal. But I think it would be sort of normal language to say “first seed” — meaning, again, bodies being composed of combinations of seeds, the first seeds being the atoms themselves.
Martin: Okay, okay. So these are the smallest particles we have — the elementary particles.
Cassius: Yeah, that’s my impression, because Bailey’s translation says “first bodies.” You know, that’s one of the complications of all this — we’re constantly switching back and forth in context between atoms being the very smallest ones, but we also know that they come together to form the bodies that form the things that we see and interact with. We talked about that, I think, in connection with seeds last week or one of the recent podcasts. We tend to think of seeds as — Elaine was making this point — we think of seeds as being oak tree seeds or vegetable seeds, and of course we know that those are composed of all sorts of many types of atoms. Nevertheless, they are seeds. But on the other hand, Lucretius and Epicurus talk about the atoms being those things which are ultimately the seeds of everything else.
Martin: Not even just them — “seeds” was kind of the common language to describe this.
Cassius: Right. And “can give motion to bodies” — I’m reading that paragraph — “if you think that the seeds of things can be at rest and being themselves unmoved can give motion to bodies.” So even in that sentence, he’s talking about obviously both atoms and combinations of atoms when he’s talking about “bodies” there.
Cassius: You know, this reminds me of a passage from the David Sedley article we were talking about recently — the one entitled “Epicurus’ Refutation of Determinism.” And I think, Martin, you made a comment about that. Did you read that, Martin?
Martin: Yeah, the second article — I didn’t read it, or I may have read it in the past but I don’t remember it.
Cassius: I see. I need to read the one that you posted about. I’ve read the one. I’m a big fan of David Sedley’s work in general. Nobody’s going to agree with everybody all the time, but David Sedley in my view seems to be very sympathetic with Epicurus and takes a very productive tack toward interpreting what he says. And it’s Sedley’s position in that article on determinism that he thinks that the swerve theory was an afterthought by Epicurus — which explains why it’s not included in the Letter to Herodotus. And he thinks that — this would certainly be controversial, I’m not sure I completely agree with it, but I have respect for his opinion — he thinks that Epicurus developed the idea of the swerve later on, basically to allow free will to take place, because it sort of breaks you out of the billiard-ball mechanistic model. But he doesn’t think that Epicurus really started at that position with thinking that the swerve existed. And the reason I go into all that is that it’s Sedley’s position that all you have to do is think about these atoms bouncing against each other, like he’s talking about in this paragraph. All you really need is one bounce at some point, and then everything — you’d have unlimited presumably other bounces going on as they go off in different directions and interfere with each other’s paths. So to wrap up what I was trying to say: Sedley kind of thinks that the atoms bouncing against themselves and rebounding as described in this passage was really all that Epicurus ever needed to come up with in terms of how worlds were formed. And in that respect, he really only needed one bounce somewhere in order to get all these other bounces into a chain reaction, so that it’s not really necessary for Epicurus to have concluded that every atom all the time can be swerving.
Martin: No, that is wrong. That is wrong.
Cassius: Tell me why — that would be very interesting, Martin.
Martin: Yeah, because if just one bounce is enough — it’s not enough — because this would happen if it’s just one: it would happen at least locally, at a defined time and at a locally defined place, and then it would spread out with a limited speed. This would be a defined origin for the universe. That one would be something like a defined origin of the universe. It would be something which would resemble our Big Bang, and this is not what we see.
Cassius: That’s a very interesting point. And are you saying, Martin, also — would it be implicit that if it was just one bounce, would the bouncing as it spread out become more and more subdued and eventually peter out entirely?
Martin: This is possible. It depends on the density of the particles — how much it spreads, how dense they are. So if that happens in a part of the universe where things are not dense, then it may really peter out, or these would persist for a very long time. So just one is not enough. And also, to be observable, it has to happen quite often, and that’s what we actually see. It happens all the time.
Cassius: Again, further risk of going off on a tangent — I’ve thought about that several times in the past myself, in terms of: do we think that every atom is constantly swerving, or is there some limited number of them swerving? Are there types of atoms which would not have the capacity to swerve versus types of atoms which do? Is there anything that gives us a hint about that?
Martin: Yes. The thing is, it’s not really that some atoms don’t swerve at all and the others swerve all the time. There is no particle doing it all the time — it just does it sometimes, because occasionally they do this. So if we observe a particle long enough, it does it. For simplicity, we can look at slightly more composed parts, like the radioactive nucleus. So if we take one with a short lifetime, then many of them will do this very quickly. But if you look at uranium — one of the common uranium isotopes — they take on average billions of years to decay.
Cassius: You just said something at the end there that I have no capacity to absorb or agree with or disagree with. Did you just say something about a uranium atom — some part of it only changes at a very low rate?
Martin: No — the uranium nucleus. It’s a decay. It’s a radioactive decay.
Cassius: Oh, yes. Okay, so you’re talking about things with longer half-lives.
Martin: And then electrons in an excited state — they have a similar behavior, but that is typically much faster. So their half-life is determined by picoseconds or something like that. They need to decay much faster. From the excited state, the electron doesn’t decay as such — it’s just that they jump from the excited state to a lower state. And it ranges from picoseconds to several minutes, depending on what are the properties of the two states they connect.
Cassius: We’re not at it yet, but as we go into Book Two further on, I think when he starts talking about the atoms that compose the spirit or the mind, there’s a comment that those atoms within the body are among the lightest or fastest or most — I want to say lightest, I’m not sure what the right word is. I don’t know if Charles or Martin, if you remember where I’m going there.
Martin: Yes, yes.
Charles: Swift? Swiftest?
Cassius: Swiftest, swiftest maybe. And then there’s an unnamed element. This may be what we’re talking about — atoms of spirit as well. And I know that —
Martin: Yeah. And this is a refuted part of Epicurean physics. So our models are away from that. So this one we can consider as — no longer viable.
Cassius: We should probably read the rest of the section. We were at “besides.”
Martin: Yeah. Okay. Go ahead. Yes, go ahead.
Martin: “Besides, there are many seeds that keep wandering through the void that are refused all union with other seeds, nor could ever be admitted to join their motion to anything else. An instance or representation of this, as I conceive, is always at hand and visibly before our eyes. When the sun’s light shoots its rays through a narrow chink into a darkened room, you shall see a thousand little atoms dance a thousand ways through the empty space and mingle in the very rays of light, engaging as it were in endless war, drawing up their little troops, never taking breath, but meeting and exercising their hostile fury with constant blows. And hence you may collect in what manner the principles of things are tossed in this empty void. So small an instance will give you an example of these extraordinary motions and open a way to your knowledge of greater events. But here it is fit you should apply yourself more closely to observe these bodies which seem so disturbed in the sun’s beams. For it appears that these disorders there are certain principles of motion in the seeds themselves. So it is invisible to us. For some of these motes you will see struck by secret blows and forced to change their course, sometimes driven back and again returning — now this way, now that way, and every other way. And this variety of motion is certainly in the very seeds, for the first principles of things first move of themselves, then compound bodies that are of the least size and approach nearest, as it were, to the smallness of the first seeds are by them struck with blows unseen and put into motion, and this again strikes those that are something larger. So from first seeds all motion still goes on till at length it becomes sensible to us, and thus we see how these motes that play in the sun’s beams are moved. So the blows by which they are driven about do not so plainly appear to us.
“And now, Memmius, you may in brief from the following instance collect how rapid is the motion of the first seeds. For when the morning spreads the earth with rising light, and sweet variety of birds frequent the woods and fill each grove with music through the soft air — everyone perceives and the thing we see is plain — how suddenly and in a moment the rising sun covers the world and shines with instant light. But rather, that glittering ray which the sun sends forth does not pass through near-empty space, and therefore is forced to move more slowly, as it has resisting air to part and divide as it goes. More are the principles that compose this ray — not simple first seeds, but certain little globular bodies made up of these first seeds — that pass through the air. And these first seeds, being agitated by various motions, these little bodies which are formed of them are retarded by different motions within themselves, and are likewise hindered from without by other bodies, and so are obliged to move the slower. But seeds that are solid and simple in their nature, when they pass through a pure void, having nothing to stop them from without, and being one and uncompounded through all their paths, are carried at once by an instant force to the point to which they first set out. Such seeds must exceed the rays of the sun in their motion and be carried on with much more celerity. They must pierce through longer tracks of space in the same time in which the sun’s beams pass through the air. For these seeds cannot agree together by design to move slowly, nor stop in the air to search into particulars and be satisfied with for what reason the several motions are thus carried on and disposed.”
Cassius: Thanks, Martin. You’re probably the best one to comment on that.
Martin: Yeah, okay. Now — when I read it, I focus on grammar and things like that, so I don’t always follow what I read. So let me now read it again as I understand it. I see a lot of analogies to modern physics in there — not only this one, there are a lot of analogies in there. Go ahead then. Okay, but let me finish. It’s definitely reminiscent of Brownian motion again.
Cassius: And Brownian motion means what?
Charles: I’ll let Martin explain.
Martin: That is what we can see in microscopically visible particles. What he shows here is the dust. If you see dust in sun rays, it also does what we call Brownian motion. I mean, partly it’s overwhelmed by air stream, but if there is not much air stream you can see the original Brownian motion. But it’s more easy to see and quantify under a microscope. If you look at small things like pollen spores suspended in water, you can see the motion, quantify it, and then describe it. So that motion comes from the water molecules impinging on them statistically, and this leaves them with some erratic path — some erratic movement, some jitter. And this shows what happens even at the atomic scale.
Cassius: Is this the bouncing aspect of things?
Martin: More along the lines of motion in the space. Yes, yes. So this is just bouncing that is just between the elementary particles. So they’re in the way of each other and then they’re bouncing forth and back. And then, depending on their complex shapes — so an assembly of parts with complex shapes, even if they approach each other as hard bodies, they can still stay together for quite some time, but they keep bouncing inside that assembly. But what he mentions here now is more this hierarchy of what happens. So he really sees it completely through. What he now calls the first bodies — the elementary particles — they may hit the larger ones and cause jitter in them. The movement of these larger ones then causes jitter of an even larger hierarchy of parts, and so on until it reaches the spore size of bodies which we can observe under a microscope — and there we can actually observe it experimentally. Interestingly, the next hierarchy up is no more easily visible. So what you might do for the next one is use a laser and an interference method to detect the motion of an even larger body on which the spores impinge. But then we’re already at the limit. We cannot detect our own Brownian motion. We are too big for that. Even though theoretically at a very small scale it happens, it’s just not visible — and also because we are so extended and soft on the outside that our outside is not well enough defined that we could easily measure it.
Cassius: Martin, I always have a tendency when I’m reading this material to try to apply it to someone who is relatively uneducated in physics — like myself — and I tend to think of it as: he wants to simply reinforce in people that things we observe and we ourselves are composed of atoms, and that this is the way that atoms work. So that even though someone like myself who’s not a physicist doesn’t necessarily have to grasp the details of why or what’s going on exactly, some level of detail is helpful just to give us confidence that we have a reasonable theory for how things are working. And so I can see much of this here being an explanation that just gives us confidence that the atomic theory is workable and consistent. But there’s so much detail here and so much precision — do you think he’s going in other directions? What do you think about where he’s going and why? I mean he’s pretty clear in the philosophy that we’re not interested in wisdom for the sake of wisdom — we’re always looking for the practical implications. Do you see practical implications of these points that might not be obvious to somebody who’s not trained in physics?
Martin: I mean, what he gives in these paragraphs is examples which we can observe, and which are all somehow explainable by this particle movement. So for example, another interesting thing is — he basically anticipates the law of refraction without stating it explicitly. He really states that the light of the sun is slowed down so the rays — the particles of the light rays — they’re slowed down when they move through a medium. And this is correct.
Cassius: Charles, what are you thinking about the implications of this at the same point I was making a minute ago — that I don’t think he was writing a science textbook for the sake of writing a science textbook?
Charles: No, this book was introductory to Roman audiences. I mean, I am agreeing wholeheartedly with what Martin’s saying, but I would like to capitalize on the dust comparison as a good example of how this is made easily relatable to somebody who’s not a trained physicist, because that’s something that just about everyone has seen and is able to see.
Cassius: What we’re talking about there — I know in my own instance, especially when I was younger as a child, I would be lying somewhere looking in a direction where you’d see a beam of light coming through a window, and the beam of light would just highlight these pieces of dust that you would not otherwise have seen — you can’t see them except in the beam of light — and you see them moving around, dancing basically, within the beam of light. I mean, I guess that’s what we’re talking about here, right? Or is there another way in which we see the dust?
Martin: No, but just very similar. I mean, you can make it — if you are in a dark room and you stir things up, you breathe it in and then you sense it, because you know from past experience that if you breathe in dust you start coughing right away. And so even if you don’t see anything, and when we dust off things and then breathe in what we’ve stirred up — then we experience this dust.
Cassius: Yeah. The passage that struck my memory is the one that says: “when the sun’s light shoots its rays through a narrow chink into a darkened room, you shall see a thousand little atoms dance a thousand ways through the empty space.” I know I’ve observed that kind of thing myself, and I guess most people have at different times in their lives. It’s not something you see every day, but it’s certainly something that you see.
Martin: Yeah, it doesn’t have to be completely dark. I remember in the living room of my parents when the sun came in through the window, you could easily see this from the side. So it doesn’t really have to be that dark — it just depends on what angle you see it from. This stuff will shine in some areas, where from our vantage point the light rays are reflected specularly, going into our eyes, and we see these shiny pieces moving around in that sunlight. So it doesn’t need to be as dark as in Newton’s experiments.
Cassius: And another passage that catches my eye: “from first seeds all motion still goes on till at length it becomes sensible to us, and thus we see how these motes that play in the sun’s beams are moved.” The part that strikes me as important is “till at length it becomes sensible to us.” I mean, it’s not like this is another dimension of magic or something. This is going on all the time in our own reality — it’s just that it becomes sensible to us only when it reaches a certain size or ability to be seen. I guess it would be possible that some people would think that atoms are magical, or that there’s something spiritual or a different dimension involved in these things, when really it’s not.
Cassius: This is a section that in my mind — I don’t know whether I’m right or not — I connect it to observations made in the DeWitt book about how what we’re really talking about here are the twelve fundamental principles of physics. Supposedly there was a list — in much the same way that there were the forty Principal Doctrines — there was a separate book or scroll called the Twelve Fundamentals of Nature. And the people who attempt to reconstruct these twelve fundamentals go through these sections of Lucretius and the Letter to Herodotus and pick out the major items — kind of like what we’re doing in reading through Lucretius — and summarize them into something like “the atoms are always in motion.” And probably according to DeWitt and others who have reconstructed the list of twelve, that’s pretty much what that list was. And then DeWitt makes the point that many of these twelve fundamentals are destructive of the principles of Plato — the principles of idealism — that there is another dimension where there is a firm reality that never changes, where God is, where your ideal horse is, while all the horses here on Earth are just projections of the ideal. All of these twelve fundamentals, including the atoms always being in motion, are destructive of the idea that anywhere in the universe there is an ultimate eternal reality of ideal forms — because if the atoms are always moving everywhere all the time, the universe cannot be made up of something unchanging.
Martin: And they don’t take on the properties of horses, or of abstractions like an ideal sense of justice or morality.
Cassius: Yes, yes, yes, yes. And when you use the word “abstraction” — that will probably have to wait for a later discussion — but that’s something I think is wrapped up into this issue of what is an abstraction. Maybe being another word for an ideal form or concept. Yes — do concepts exist? If you want to use the word “exist” for concepts — do they exist outside the human mind? Is a concept real? Is an abstraction real? What is your definition of real and how does it fit into all that? Clearly in my mind, one of the directions I go with that is that I think abstractions are extremely useful and they generate pleasure and pain when we contemplate them or deal with them. But that doesn’t mean that they are themselves composed of atoms. It certainly doesn’t mean that there is a concept — say, a concept of happiness — that exists as a set of atoms arranged in a particular way somewhere in the universe, or where God lives. There is no ideal happiness that exists out there. And any concept that you want to talk about is not a set of atoms that exists in an unchanging form somewhere in the universe. Otherwise we would hear notions of atoms of pleasure within these sections of Lucretius by now.
Cassius: That’s a great point, Martin — that is — and Charles, that is a great point. There is no atom of pleasure that I can identify, and that almost sets me off in that same direction. Because last week one of the things we were talking about was the issue of, for example, gold. Elaine was making the point — gold is pretty. Does that mean that gold is an atom of pleasure? And I think the answer is no. But there are certainly generalizations you can make that certain combinations of atoms are generally going to lead to human existence in a particular direction. But it’s probably the exception that proves the rule — even gold itself is not always going to generate pleasure in your particular context. And so if it doesn’t always do something, then I don’t think you can say that an atom of gold is a pleasure atom any more than any other kind of atom can be a pleasure or a pain.
Cassius: Okay, I’m really out there. Martin, what do you think — going back to the more practical question of the implications of the atoms constantly moving and bouncing off each other — can you relate that to Plato?
Martin: Yeah, not that one — that doesn’t really work directly. Unless we really go into a mathematical description, as in theoretical physics. So those mathematicians sometimes are Platonists, and they see in their mathematical concepts examples of Platonic ideas.
Cassius: Martin, let me follow up with you there. What about Charles’s comment a moment ago about atoms of pleasure — does an atom of pleasure exist?
Martin: No. I don’t think so either.
Cassius: We are together on that. I don’t think — I think the answer is no. But I’m not sure that it’s an obvious point. And whether we’ll resolve anything today or even go on at length about it — I think there are tremendous implications of the point that there is no such thing as a pleasure atom or a pain atom. Because if there was, then we would instantly recognize it through nature. And so pleasure therefore cannot be a particular type of atom, or perhaps even a particular arrangement of atoms.
Charles: Even then — let’s see — if we go back to the previous sections of Lucretius — if atoms were to exhibit some form of pleasure, remember Anaxagoras’s homeomeria: then a little bit of everything would have or would exhibit some form of pleasure. That’s a little far-fetched and it doesn’t fit anywhere else, and it kind of throws this whole thing out of balance.
Cassius: Have we already gone over the point about how atoms don’t even have color? There’s a section of Lucretius — and we may not have hit that yet, but maybe it was already — I think we did, I think it was towards the end of Book One. So there’s no such thing as a blue atom or an atom of blueness. An atom doesn’t have an essence that gives it blueness, or an essence that makes it pleasurable or unpleasurable. And yet that is kind of essential to the theories of anybody — Aristotle, Plato, or anybody who wants to say that there’s an eternal ideal form of pleasure, or that there’s any one standard of what “blue” means. If there is such a thing — if there’s an ideal definition of the word “blue” — it must exist somewhere in the universe, as a reference point we are trying to find and identify. And I think the Epicurean answer would be: there is no such thing as an ideal blue or an atom of blue. And blueness is something that is — what’s the right way to say that — a creation of the human mind?
Martin: Product of the human mind, right.
Cassius: Product of the human mind. Or something that the human mind generates within itself — which is extremely useful, and I’m not saying anything derogatory about it. But it’s not something that has an independent existence outside of the human mind. Blueness doesn’t. The way that the atoms are moving, the way that the light is functioning, the way that everything is coming together — yes, all of that exists whether we acknowledge it or not. But to call it “blue,” or to call it “pleasure” or “pain” — is that something that is not just subjective within human minds or animal minds?
Charles: I think pain is a bit more inflexible in comparison to pleasure. I’m willing to give pain a bit more leeway in that regard.
Cassius: I think that’s interesting. But you see — I think that without allowing ourselves to go too far in any tangent direction — I do think it’s an important central point: whether an atom of blueness, an atom of pleasure, or an atom of pain exists. Every time we identify such an atom — no matter what context we’re in, no matter who identifies it, no matter where it’s identified — it’s going to have some kind of essence of pleasure or essence of pain within it.
Martin: Yeah, with blueness that one we can construct something. So of course the origin is just that we agree on calling a certain color range in the spectrum we perceive as “blue.” But we can make a more precise definition — there’s a standard international color chart which can be traced back to a particular wavelength. So we can then define this particular wavelength in the center of the blue range as the ideal blue, and then we can have a composed unit — what we call nowadays an “atom” in the non-Epicurean sense, a non-elementary particle — which has a wavelength that makes it something like an ideal blue. But like you said, it all starts at the beginning point of humans having sort of a consensus or a proposal to do something. And it has a motivation in the kind of perception of our eye. So from there it just makes sense to divide it in some way like this and then to make a convention. We could choose any other word and just define this as “blue.” But it somehow makes sense, and other species which develop the ability to do some rudimentary science might come up with something similar.
Cassius: But again, that would be something that we are organizing in our minds. And of course, if you’re talking about blue and a particular object appearing to us to be blue within a certain lighting and setting — I mean, all of those things exist independent of us: the setting, the light, the object we’re talking about. If we all of a sudden ceased to exist, those things we’re talking about are still going to exist. So they have an independent existence of their own. But “blue” is a name, or a category, or a description that we apply to those things that exist outside of us. The universe itself has not given it that name, given it that color, given it that description. It’s human organization, human conceptualization, that has produced it. It’s a very deep subject — a very deep subject — to discuss that. And the Platonic interpretation is that we characterize these things through an essence that is — well, I think “essence” is where I associate with Aristotle. But yes, Plato is saying that there’s an ideal blue that exists in some other dimension — where presumably the God or the first mover is living — and in that dimension there is an absolute blue to which all other things that we see as blue are just reflections. That’s the cave analogy: they’re dim shadows on the wall of the thing that out there in eternity somewhere is really the blue.
Cassius: I guess through that comparison, “blue” is interchangeable with the light from the fire behind the prisoners — to the sun outside above the cave. What is it that casts the shadows? Because of course the thing they’re seeing on the wall in the cave analogy is shadows moving. So something must exist that casts the shadow on the wall.
Charles: And I guess really convincing hand puppets.
Cassius: That’s right. Well, it’s been less exciting than it normally would be not to have Elaine with us today. Maybe we should begin to think about whether we have any concluding comments on this section today, and hopefully we’ll have Elaine back next week and we’ll get her to talk with us about some of this as well. Why don’t we — is there any other concluding comment on today’s sections?
Martin: I can’t think of any. No. No. In this section that we read today, Lucretius gives a number of examples which in principle can all be traced back to the motion of elementary particles. And like I said during the podcast — beyond the capacity of many people to have as much physics information as we’d like to have — but this level of detail does provide a connection that we can understand: how even though atoms cannot be seen or touched or individually observed, they do ultimately combine and generate the things that we can touch and see.
Cassius: Okay, with that — anybody else?
Charles: Not me.
Cassius: Okay, well — thanks for today, and we’ll come back and do it again next week. Thanks, and bye.
Martin: Okay. Thank you. Bye.
Charles: Bye.