Episode 026 - The Atoms Are Not Uniform In Shape
Date: 07/11/20
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1609-episode-twenty-six-the-atoms-are-not-uniform/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Episode 026 covers Book Two’s argument that the first seeds of things are not all of uniform shape, but differ widely in figure, as proven by the vast variety of phenomena they produce. Charles reads Daniel Brown’s translation of the passage, which moves from the philosophical argument — that the sheer number of atomic types requires variety in form — through the famous poetic interlude of the bereft cow searching the fields for her slaughtered calf, then through a series of illustrative examples: varieties of grain, the penetrating power of lightning versus ordinary fire, the flow of oil versus wine, smooth versus hooked shapes producing pleasant versus harsh sensations, and finally to the memorable exclamation that touch — the body’s sense of contact with reality — is the foundation of all sensation. The episode also highlights the key phrase noting that the first seeds are formed by nature and “not made by art” after any fixed design, which the panel identifies as a pointed anti-Platonic argument lost in the Daniel Brown rendering but preserved in Munro, Bailey, and Martin Ferguson Smith.
The panel discusses the analogy between Epicurean atomic variety and modern particle physics (quarks, fermions, bosons), with Martin noting the general consonance between Epicurus’s broad insight and what physics has since confirmed. Elaine, whose father was a physicist, notes that DeWitt’s enumeration of the three ways atoms differ — by weight, shape, and size — is all that Epicurus himself claimed, making the model more constrained than it might appear. The bereft cow passage generates discussion of the philosophy’s appeal to feeling as the basis of understanding, paralleling the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s daughter in Book One; this leads into a digression on vegetarianism and factory farming as a contemporary application of Epicurean ethics, handled through the framework of individual feelings rather than absolute rules. The “smooth motion” theory of pleasure is introduced and linked to the Kyrenaics — Aristippus, Arete of Cyrene, and Aristippus the Younger — who held that pleasure consists in smooth motion and pain in rough motion, connecting to the passage’s description of smooth-shaped seeds producing pleasant sensations and hooked seeds producing harsh ones.
Closing remarks highlight that Lucretius is offering these physical details as foundation for the ethical arguments to come, particularly the denial of life after death. Martin observes that the episode again shows Lucretius using varied examples to demonstrate the consistent explanatory power of atomism. Elaine closes by wishing Epicurus could have seen what modern neuroscience has revealed about sense receptors and neurotransmitters, which would have confirmed and extended his intuitions about pleasure and sensation.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 26 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 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 competing 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 is 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 the discussion with Charles reading today’s text.
Charles: Now learn at length the form of these first seeds, these principles of things, how widely different is their shape, of what variety of figure their frame consists. For though many are endowed with a form not much alike, yet all are far from being of the same figure. And no wonder, for since, as I have said, their number is so great that no end, no bound is to be set to them, they ought for the same reason to be all of a different contexture, and not fashioned alike of the same form. Besides, consider well mankind, the scaly fry of silent fish that swim the flood, the verdant trees, wild beasts, the various kinds of birds, such as flock about the banks of pleasant streams, the fountains and the lakes, and those who frequent the thick covers of the woods. Consider all these, and there are several kinds, and you will find them all consist of forms different among themselves. ‘Tis by nothing else the tender young knows its own dam, and thus the dam distinguishes her young. Thus we see each creature knows its own kind no less than men, and so unite together. For often before the gilded temples of the gods, a young heifer falls a slain victim beside the altar, flaming with incense, and breathes from her heart a reeking stream of blood. The dam, robbed of her young, beats over the fields and leaves the marks of her divided hoofs upon the pressed grass, and searches every place with careful eyes to find her, the young she lost; then stops and fills the branched woods with her complaints, and often returns back to her stall, distracted with the love of her dear young. No more the tender willows or the herbs freshened with dew, nor can the running streams within their full banks divert her mind or turn away her care. Nor can a thousand other heifers, as they play wantonly over the grass, take off her eye or ease the pain she feels. So plain it is that she searches for her own, for what she knows full well. And thus the tender kids find by their bleat their horned dams, and so the sporting lambs know their own flocks, and, as by nature taught, each hastes to the full bag of its own dam. Observe again the various sorts of corn. You’ll find each grain, though of the same kind, not so much alike but there will be a difference in their figure. And so a great variety of shells we see paints the earth’s lap, where the sea’s gentle waves spread the moist sand along the winding shore. And thus, by parity of reason, it must follow that the first seeds of things, as they are formed by nature, not made by art in any certain figure, must fly about in shapes various and different among themselves.
It is easy for us now to unfold the difficulty why the flame of lightning is much more penetrating than our common fire raised from fuel here below. You may give this reason: that the subtle celestial fire of lightning consists of particles much smaller, and so passes through pores which fire made from wood cannot. Besides, light, we perceive, finds a way through horn, but water does not, because the principles of light are smaller than those of which water is composed. So we see wine passes swiftly through a strainer. On the contrary, heavy oil moves slowly through, either because it is made up of larger seeds, or its principles are more hooked and entangled among themselves, and thus it happens that the several particles cannot be so soon separated from one another so as to flow through the little holes with the same ease. Thus it is that honey and milk pass in the mouth with a pleasing sensation over the tongue. On the contrary, the bitter juice of wormwood and sharp centaury torment the palate with a loathsome taste. From whence you collect easily that those things which agreeably affect the senses are composed of particles smooth and round, and such again as seem rough and bitter are bound together by parts more hooked and closer twined, and therefore they tear the way to our senses and wound the body as they enter through the skin. And in short, such things as are agreeable to our senses, and those that are rough and unpleasant to the touch, are opposite and formed of a figure very different from one another. Lest you should think perhaps that the grating sound of a saw was made of parts equally smooth with the soft note of a lute, which the musician forms upon the strings, awakened, as it were, by the gentle strokes of his fingers. Nor are you to suppose that the seeds are of the same form which strike upon our nerves of smell when a filthy carcass is burning, or when the stage is fresh sprinkled with Sicilian saffron, or the altar sweetens the air with the odor of Arabian incense. And so in colors you must not imagine such as are agreeable and delight our eyes are composed of the same fashioned seeds as those which prick our sense and force us to weep, or seem dark and ugly and shocking in appearance to us. For whatever pleases and delights our senses cannot be composed but of smooth particles; and on the contrary, things that are hurtful and harsh cannot be formed without seeds that are rough and disagreeable.
There are other seeds, likewise, which you cannot properly call smooth, nor are altogether hooked with their point bent, but are rather shaped like small angles, a little jutting out, and may be said rather to tickle than hurt the senses — such as the somewhat acid flavor of a wine-lees sauce, or the somewhat bitter root of elecampane. Lastly, that burning heat and freezing cold, being formed of seeds of different figures, do affect the body with different sensations — of this there are evident touches sufficient to evince. For touch — touch, blessed be the gods above — is the sense of the body, either when something from without enters through the pores, or when something from within hurts us as it forces its way out, or pleases as the effect of energy tickles as it passes through, or when the seeds, by striking against each other, raise a tumult in the body and in that agitation confound the sense. In this you may soon experience, if you strike yourself in any part with a blow of your hand. It is necessary, therefore, that the principles of things should consist of figures very different in themselves, since they affect the senses in so different a manner.
Cassius: Okay, thank you, Charles. Wow, that was a mouthful. And there are several really interesting sections in here, including right in there where he talks about — “blessed be the gods above for the sense of touch.” That’s really interesting to me, that he says it that way. The other translations I have are pretty much the same kind of exclamation. But let’s go back in order and start from the top. Who’d like to start? Either at the very beginning, or on what I think is a very famous section: the cow whose calf has been sacrificed to the gods and the pain that the cow feels — he calls her “the dam” here, meaning we would just say cow.
Elaine: I mean, the first section really here is introducing the topic, right? It’s just that the seeds — the elementary particles — are different. Which is a specific difference from some of the other competing models that we’ve already discussed. By having different seeds, some of the problems in the other models are overcome. And I just want to point out, before we get into the next section, that that lines up as far as I know with what we think about elementary particles now — not all the specific things he said, but just the fact that there are different particles. My dad used to tell me about those, you know. My dad is a physicist, and I always thought it was cool that the quarks and anti-quarks — the physicists named them not just “up and down” and “top and bottom” but “charm” and “strange.” I feel like Lucretius would have appreciated that.
Cassius: So of course there you’re not talking about the periodic table of the elements at an atomic level; you’re talking about the subatomic level.
Elaine: Yes, the elementary particles — the fermions and the bosons. These are things you don’t hear talked about a lot in popular literature, but it’s pretty remarkable, and it seems consistent with Epicurus’s ideas about different kinds of particles to me.
Cassius: I’m interested in what Martin thinks about that.
Martin: So there’s a certain analogy between the broad characterization that Epicurus gives here — or Lucretius — and what we see now in the models of modern physics. Right, I mean yes, an analogous kind of situation. He had the general idea. His particles are not the same obviously, but I think he was really thinking more about something like what we might think of as atoms. But I don’t know — what matters so much to me is that he is so fascinating in having thought that, and so far it still seems basically correct in spirit.
Cassius: Yeah. The distinction being what you raised earlier, Elaine, is that some people were suggesting that perhaps there’s only one ultimate thing from which everything is made. And he says no, no — there’s more than that. So now we don’t have as many types of elementary particles as Epicurus apparently thought; it sounds like he thought there were a lot more than we’re currently thinking of. But still interesting.
Cassius: So to really get into that first passage — he’s talking about them differing in shape, and he’s really not saying anything further. But when you say they differ in shape, implicitly you’re saying they don’t differ in terms of some being magical and some non-magical, or some being natural or supernatural. Well, you’re eliminating what some people might allege to be an important difference — with some essence within the atoms themselves beyond that of shape.
Martin: I think though that shape is not the only difference. Right? In the list of his basic principles there are a couple of different categories. Shape is not the only one — we haven’t really gotten to that yet.
Cassius: Right, we’ll get to that. Yeah, these parts are mostly focused on shape and texture — which is part of shape. And hey, before we jump to the next section — I want to correct something I said a minute ago. I found DeWitt’s twelve fundamentals, and there appear to be only three differences in atoms: weight, shape, and size are apparently the only things that Epicurus mentioned. So yeah, don’t jump past that. The next passage is very emotional.
Elaine: I’m glad you said that, because I was going to point out — when does Lucretius go poetic? Because some of these parts are really not poetry; they’re more like a textbook. But it’s not like he mixes his poetry in so much with the other parts. There are poetic sections and less poetic sections. I don’t know if that’s the translation, but it really seems like that. And when he gets to metaphors and so on, that is when we need to remember that feeling is fundamental to our understanding of this whole philosophy. And poetry is a great way to evoke feeling. So he’s talking about this dam — the cow that’s missing her young. Most of us could have that feeling. He’s using that to support the idea of things recognizing each other. He’s reminding us about feeling. Don’t get so far into the weeds of the sense descriptions that you forget about the feeling.
Cassius: Charles, I’m just reading the text again, and I’m drawing a comparison to one of the earlier sections of the first book about the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s daughter.
Charles: Yes.
Cassius: I would relate those two by saying exactly what Elaine said: the significance of all these details is that you drive home the significance through emotion and through feeling. No matter how long you stare at words on a page, if it doesn’t have a relationship to you personally, if you don’t feel the implications of what you’re talking about, then in the end it’s nothing to you. And that’s why he personifies the cow.
Elaine: Yeah — the evil of religion with Agamemnon sacrificing his child is personally powerful to just about anybody. If you can’t feel the emotion in such a situation, then there’s something atypical going on. And this is why I think, just based on my observation so far, that someone who does not experience those feelings is never going to get this philosophy.
Cassius: Yeah, I agree. There’s always going to be a context, and we talked about in discussing Agamemnon’s daughter that there’s no way to say that there’s an absolute rule that killing a young person is always the wrong thing to do. But there’s still the emotion involved in many circumstances that helps us decide when that’s the thing we should do and when it’s not. Not to go too far into the animal welfare arguments and so forth, but it’s very difficult for me anyway to think about the conditions existing in many of these factory farms — if you want to talk about cows and calves, or pigs and piglets. The factory farming methods are very controversial nowadays and I think probably should be. But you know, that doesn’t stop me from having breakfast every morning, or having lunch and eating things that I know, if I thought about it, were raised in conditions I would find very difficult to accept if I were personally involved in them.
Cassius: I don’t know — I think I’d still be eating a rare steak in all these circumstances. That’s right, I understand.
Charles: So I did not know that this passage was used for that. That’s very interesting.
Cassius: There are only a couple of passages in the Epicurean texts that get brought up. There’s one other one in Philodemus somewhere about whether it’s appropriate to be a vegetarian or not. But generally when I read commentaries about this section, they’ll talk about how emotionally heart-string-pulling it is — to think about the cow missing and looking for its young calf and not being able to find it. That’s a very emotional thing to identify with. But nevertheless, those things go on every day and we don’t live our lives constantly mesmerized by the awfulness of it.
Charles: I have heard some commentary — it’s niche — about the context of Epicurean philosophy and vegetarianism.
Cassius: I was about to say that. I don’t want to go too far off on a tangent, but is anybody here a vegetarian?
Martin: No, I’m not. I don’t think I could.
Elaine: I have done it. There was an inflammatory arthritis, and there was a period of time when meat, chicken, fish — fish the least, but definitely meat and chicken — caused me to have flares. And it irritated me that that was the case. I was a kind of reluctant vegetarian. But after menopause, it doesn’t seem to be connected anymore. I have no idea — weird. But you know, there are people who now, if you get bitten by the lone star tick, can become allergic to red meat. That was a horror story in middle school because hunting is such a big thing up here.
Cassius: Martin, how does vegetarianism fly in your area?
Martin: Yeah, my brother is a vegetarian, but me not. There are certainly multiple motivations to be a vegetarian — health reasons, like Elaine said, versus ethical considerations. I don’t know what percentage of vegetarians are motivated by health reasons versus ethical ones.
Elaine: Most people who are very conscious about their sources of food and the ethics around it tend to be vegan. Well, you could say that if we are against pain and in favor of pleasure, is it appropriate for us to raise animals in conditions that are probably pretty clearly painful for them? Where do we draw the line?
Elaine: Let’s look back to human pain, because this is not a humanist philosophy — we don’t see all humans as equal in our own feeling, because that’s just not how it happens. So we have to stay descriptive about this, not prescriptive. Most of us have different feelings about different humans: powerful emotional affinities to a fairly small group, decreasing as proximity decreases, and then some people we really don’t like. This is not right or wrong; it’s how the feelings are. And the same thing with animals. If I’m a person who feels an intense sense of pain contemplating factory farming — or maybe any use of animals for my needs — then if I’m not vegan, I’m making a mistake, because I’m causing myself pain that I can possibly avoid. But if I’m not a person who feels that level of pain, maybe I do feel some pain about factory farming and I don’t want to eat that meat — then the smart thing for me to do would be to avoid those kinds of products. So we can’t say one feeling is right and one is wrong, because we have no absolute basis. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have super strong feelings, because we have them, and that we won’t want to convince other people to share our feelings — showing them pictures and things like that.
Charles: Yeah. And I don’t have any sources to immediately back this up, but it’s generally inferred that animals that aren’t raised in factories have higher quality meat. Better taste and more nutrition.
Elaine: Yeah, I don’t know about that either. But I personally belong to a CSA that has a permaculture farm, and I like their meat.
Cassius: CSA means community-supported agriculture — where you buy a share. So you’re not going to get a predetermined amount of food; you’re going to get whatever share it is of the food. If they have more success one season than another, you’re going to get more food. Well, before we go off too far — and I could easily go further on this — it’s probable that what Lucretius is doing here with this analogy is just driving home the point of the uniqueness of a mother and calf, and the uniqueness of things generally: how unique things can identify each other by means of these individual atoms. He certainly does not continue on to say anything about how we should never sacrifice calves or kill cows. He’s obviously using it in the context of religion, so there’s probably an implicit slam against how ridiculous it is to put these animals through this for the sake of gods who couldn’t care less. But he doesn’t extend it to talk about not eating animals. You could go on and ask questions about lifeboat scenarios and even cannibalism — at what point do you eat other people as opposed to eating animals? Are there contexts in which that’s appropriate? But I think we should leave that to the early Stoics and their republic.
Cassius: All right, now let’s go back in order: the varieties of corn and lightning and so forth. What’s the next point that you guys see here, Elaine?
Elaine: I think the corn section is obviously a less emotional part where he’s just talking about the variety of different kinds of corn and the variety of shells, and by analogy there must be a variety in the shapes of the elementary particles. You could say that applies to several passages here — it’s all basically the same point until you get to what’s next.
Cassius: Does anybody have a comment before we get to the “blessed be the gods above” part? Yeah — what is Lucretius referring to by “corn”? It’s not just corn.
Martin: Well, corn is native to the Americas, isn’t it?
Cassius: I thought… you know, like the Italians have polenta and everything. I’m not sure about that. Let’s see — it could be that this is an older meaning, more general for grain. Because he does say “grain” immediately after.
Charles: On the Reddit thread — you generally mean barley or cereal grains, which the British translated as “corn.” Like cornmeal or some kind of kerneled grain — the cereal grain.
Cassius: One of the things that sticks out to me: isn’t there a passage that says “call upon Ceres” — C-E-R-E-S — which is a word that eventually mutates into “cereal,” or something like that? That’s a whole other section of the book, but Ceres was the goddess of grain and crops.
Martin: Ceres, yes — goddess of agriculture, grain crops, fertility, and motherly relationships. The Greek equivalent is Demeter.
Cassius: Yeah. Let’s see what Martin Ferguson Smith uses. Yeah, he says “corn” also. Interesting. And Bailey and Munro both say “corn.” I just felt like bringing it up. It looks like that’s just going to be the thing they say. But certainly, Wikipedia says maize was domesticated in the Mexico area ten thousand years ago, so maybe Lucretius was sending ships to South America or something.
Elaine: The corn dolly — which is a traditional thing in England — has no relation to maize. That’s also a grain which is used for that.
Cassius: Well, I learned something for today. Now I can finish — I don’t have to learn anything else. Okay, he’s continuing after the corn and talking about wormwood and giving example after example of how different things move, based in large part on the shapes of their particles: distinct things arise from distinct types of particles. And it’s interesting, this thing about lightning versus fire. What is he missing? I mean, he’s obviously missing something there. But from a simplistic perspective — is he talking about the difference between, say, holding a flame against a piece of wood (the flame kind of bounces off), versus a lightning strike that would go right through the wood and maybe explode it? Is that the observation he’s making, trying to explain why lightning is more penetrating?
Martin: Right. I would say that’s what he’s observing. But he’s got the observation of the difference in effect, and then he’s putting them in the same category, which they’re not. So he’s trying to say that the particles of lightning are smaller than the particles of fire. But there are no such particles. What you actually see are photons, and photons that carry the same color are exactly the same photons whether they come from a fire or from a lightning bolt. So it’s completely off on this one.
Charles: I’d like to bring up the previous paragraph — the last sentence where he says that the first seeds are formed by nature and not by art.
Cassius: Oh yeah. And Munro and Bailey both mention that they’re made by nature and not fitted by a hand to a fixed design. I think there are some very important theological elements there that were lost in the Daniel Brown translation. Great catch — that’s a very good point. Are you looking at the translation, Charles, from either Munro or Bailey?
Charles: Yeah, I can read the Munro one. I’m looking at Bailey — Bailey says: “Wherefore again and again, in the same way, it must needs be, since the first beginnings of things are made by nature and not fashioned by hand to fixed form of one pattern, that some of them fly about with shapes unlike one another.”
Cassius: I mean, that’s almost Platonic when he talks about a “pattern” there — and “fashioned by hand” — a single fixed form. No, no. I’m talking about the form being singular and fashioned as if off some kind of ideal original. Those are two important related points.
Charles: And Martin Ferguson Smith uses “by hand” as well. Here’s the Munro again: “And again I say it is necessary for like reasons that first beginnings of things, since they exist by nature and are not made by hand after the exact model of one, should fly about with shapes in some cases differing one from the others.”
Cassius: Yeah, that’s a good one. And Martin Ferguson Smith says: “So I insist that the same must apply to the primary elements of things, since they are natural formations and are not modelled by hand after a single fixed pattern.” Yeah — the “single” is a good word to add in there. That certainly seems to me like a core principle of Epicurean physics right there. We constantly go back to this issue that everything is not supernaturally created, or created after an ideal form in some other dimension.
Cassius: And then we have the next paragraph — this is so interesting. Now he’s getting to the shapes and how they cause pleasure or pain. He associates a smooth shape with pleasure and a hooked or rough shape with pain. That sounds exactly like the Kyrenaic interpretation. I see commentators who will sometimes say that the Epicurean goal of life reduces down to smooth motion. I don’t know if it was mentioned in the threads about the Greeks on pleasure and the Kyrenaics, but an article on Aristippus that I was looking at talked about how one of the core foundations of at least the original Kyrenaics — so that would be Aristippus, then Arete of Cyrene, then Aristippus the Younger — those first three before the school diverged into multiple factions — believed that pleasure consisted in smooth motion and pain in rough motion.
Elaine: Yeah, or maybe it’s not motion — oh, it is. I pulled up Diogenes Laertius earlier when I first read this. There’s nothing that I know of in our current understanding of physics that would support this idea, but it’s interesting. It’s still interesting.
Cassius: Well, it does show how they were attempting to relate everything back to matter and void — there’s not a spirit, not a third dimension or anything. You know, I tried — I don’t have a good text to cite right this second — but if you look up “Epicurus” and “smooth motion,” you pretty easily find one of the references. One that comes up is Usener 67, where Epicurus is reported to have said: “I cannot conceive the good if I take away the pleasures due to taste, and pleasures due to sex, the pleasures due to sounds, and the pleasant visual motions due to shape.” That section from On Ends gets brought up a lot by Cicero. This is a huge and very deep subject we could really dig into. The whole issue of where pleasure comes from is something I do find very interesting, because when you extrapolate everything back to Epicurean theory — holding that the universe is eternal — there really is no first example of something. The processes we see now have been operating for an eternity, so there was never any spark or outside force that generated pleasure. Therefore, pleasure must be a property of things that exist and have always existed.
Charles: Earlier a few minutes ago I searched the smooth motion thing on Google — I made sure to use quotation marks to pull up the exact wording — and I found an article called “Health and Hedonism in Plato and Epicurus,” with a section on smooth motion comparing the Kyrenaics and the Epicureans. But it says there are only vague notions of it in both schools. The author writes, in quotes: “We can say that both Epicureans and Kyrenaics hold that the smoothness of change or motion involved in pleasure entails conformity to nature, and the roughness of change in pain non-conformity with nature.”
Cassius: Well, listen — we’re almost at the end of the period, and before we start talking about closing comments let’s not forget this last paragraph. Let’s talk about “touch, blessed be the gods above” — is that where we’ve been heading in our discussion today? That the atoms and their relationship to smooth motion and pleasure is so significant that Lucretius is motivated to say “blessed be the gods above” that it occurs? Is the whole issue of touch, and the movement of the motions, and their involvement in the senses of the body — is that so significant that that is where we should focus our attention in being thankful that nature has arranged things this way?
Cassius: It looks to me like touch — and I could be wrong here — that he’s not necessarily only talking about tactile sense.
Elaine: Certainly agree. Yeah. So he’s talking about contact with reality. That is our only way of experiencing reality. If we don’t contact it through the senses, through the feelings, we wouldn’t be able to perceive anything. So it’s fundamental to being able to know anything about what’s going on.
Cassius: Yeah, he does wrap it up pretty well. The part about “the principles of things should consist of figures very different since they affect the senses in so different a manner” — that part is true of molecules, for sure. But not true of elementary particles. Our nervous system is, as far as I know, not quite that precise.
Cassius: Elaine, do you have the Martin Ferguson Smith on that passage about touch? Because I’m thinking your point is really, really important. We’re certainly not just talking about what your tactile fingers touching something. It seems to me like he’s almost embracing all sensation — it’s almost like sensation itself, arising from these atoms coming together, is the source of all important things.
Elaine: Okay, so the language is a bit complicated, but he very clearly states the sense of the body, or the body’s feeling. Here it is: “Furthermore, scorching fire and icy frost prick our bodily senses with different kinds of denticles, as is proved to us by the touch of each. For the holy gods are my witnesses that touch — yes, touch — is the sense of the body: when something extraneous insinuates itself into it, or when something born within affects it, either inflicting pain or giving pleasure when admitted in the creative acts of Venus, or again when in consequence of a collision the atoms are disturbed within the body itself and the commotion confuses our senses. You can test this yourself by striking any part of your body with your hand.”
Cassius: There are some differences there — “the holy gods are my witnesses” is different from “blessed be the gods above” in the other translations. That’s interesting, that Martin Ferguson Smith would take that direction. You know, the Daniel Brown “blessed be the gods above” is supposed to convey the same thing. Elaine, let me read this — I see that in the Munro notes there is a section for what he says is line 434, on the issue of touch. And I think it goes along with what you just said. Munro says: “This point is put with emphasis to show the vast importance of touch, for as nothing can — ” and he uses the Latin — “nothing can touch or be touched without body, so nothing can without touch be sensed. All the senses” — and this is the part I see as consistent with what you said, Elaine — “all the senses are but different forms of touch.” He then enumerates the different ways in which the body can feel: either something enters from without and gives pain or pleasure, or something takes place in the body and gives pain or pleasure, or thirdly the atoms in the body before quiescent are troubled by some collision and so disturb the body’s feelings — for instance when you strike any part of the body. So the conclusion is: all senses are but different forms of touch — with these atoms touching each other being the fundamental mechanism.
Elaine: Yes — that kind of touch. Yeah.
Cassius: The parts about the atoms and striking each other — that solidifies it, I think. I don’t see that Martin Ferguson Smith comments on the “god” part of it, so I don’t know whether Lucretius is giving thanks to the gods for giving us this faculty, or just using the gods as witnesses to the fact. But either way it seems to be an important point. Okay, in the interest of time, probably it’s now time for closing comments for today. Who would like to start? Let’s let Martin go first — I think that’s become a tradition.
Martin: Okay. Yeah, so he gives you many examples to exemplify, again, how atomism can be used to consistently explain whatever phenomena we have around us. Yeah, that’s basically it.
Cassius: Charles, or Martin — anything else?
Martin: No, no. I just wanted to say — because of the break in the subject — I’m done.
Cassius: Okay, Charles? I can’t think of any closing comment without thinking of corn and animal welfare. Oh my goodness — I was expecting you, Charles, to come up with something very poetic about touch. “Touch! The holy divinities of the gods! The body’s feeling is the source of pleasure and pain.”
Charles: Not this time.
Elaine: So it’s hard to put all this in a closing statement this time. I’d say like two things maybe: that it’s interesting that he used what was available to him at the time to come up with the idea that the elementary particles are different and that there are at least several different ones. It’s also true that there are specific molecular interactions with receptors in our bodies which result in the feelings of pleasure and pain, many of which are fairly consistent between members of the species. And I wish he could have gotten to see what we’ve learned about some of the sense receptors and the neurotransmitters. He would have just been really excited about that. That’s what I think about when I read this.
Cassius: Well, I think what I would add as we close for today is that he’s still at this point in some very basic physics, and as we get further into Book Two he’ll come back to some of the important ethical issues we deal with — whether there’s a soul and life after death and things like that. But probably the point that just continues to stick in my mind is how DeWitt identifies that so much of the physics of Epicurus is devoted to laying the groundwork for explaining why the Platonic and Aristotelian views of nature cannot be correct. There cannot be a supernatural basis for everything, and not only supernatural but also — from the Platonic view — that there are ideal forms. Even today we saw several references that would flatly contradict the idea that we, or the universe, or anything else, is created by God from some kind of single ideal form. And so a lot of the additional detail that we’re going to be getting into over the next couple of weeks is targeted towards making it impossible to accept those Platonic ideas, and planting you firmly in this world and this life as the thing to be concentrating on.
Charles: I’m glad we touched on that little sentence about art — the hand.
Cassius: Yes, I am too. I’m so glad you noticed that. Because that’s really one of the major categories of organization that a lot of the material we’re reading is intended to address. So it’s very good to pick that out of the passage today. Okay, anybody have anything else? No digression onto Robert’s Rules of Order this week. Charles, did you have something else?
Charles: I did not. Oh, actually — I did have one other thing, although I should have said it earlier. It’s not really a closing comment. But when I thought about the section where he says there are some elements which you cannot call smooth, nor are altogether hooked with their point bent, but are rather shaped like small angles, slightly jutting out, and may be said rather to tickle than hurt the senses — I was thinking about a little bit of hot pepper. Because I don’t like a lot of it. I’m not one of the people who think pain is a flavor. But I just like that little bit of bite, and it makes me wonder if that’s the kind of thing he was talking about.
Cassius: That is a good point, though a lot could be said on that. Charles, your comment is that a little spice goes a long way.
Charles: Yeah. But what Elaine said — there’s a lot that can be said about it.
Cassius: Okay, do you want to try to say any more today or are we at the end?
Elaine: I think we’re at the end.
Cassius: Well, thanks everybody again and we’ll do it next week. All right, bye-bye.
All: Bye. Bye.