Episode 030 - Only A Limited Number of Combinations Of Atoms Is Possible
Date: 08/07/20
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1640-episode-thirty-only-a-limited-number-of-combinations-of-atoms-is-possible/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Episode 030 covers a passage from Book Two in which Lucretius argues that atoms cannot combine in every possible way — only a limited (though vast) number of combinations is possible. Elaine reads the text, which opens with the observation that different animals retain the nature of their sires, then uses the letter/word analogy to explain how the same atomic “letters” can be rearranged into entirely different “words” (men, crops, trees) while still sharing many common elements. A comparison of Daniel Brown’s translation with Martin Ferguson Smith’s reveals that Brown’s rendering makes it sound as though no atoms are shared between different species — a misreading MFS corrects. A puzzling reference to sacrificial offerings made to atone for “something unjustly acquired” is investigated: MFS notes a lacuna (at least one line of the original is lost), likely explaining Daniel Brown’s interpolation. The passage closes with Lucretius extending his argument beyond living things to all of nature: the same atomic principles that keep species true to kind also hold the heavens separate from the earth.
The discussion turns to Lucretius’s claim that atoms cannot combine in every possible way and therefore chimeras, fire-breathing monsters, and spontaneous hybrids do not arise in nature. Elaine raises the point that genetic engineering now allows chimeras the ancient world never saw, and Charles introduces the modern concept of “cryptids” (Bigfoot, Mothman, the Loch Ness Monster) as the contemporary equivalent of Lucretian monsters. Cassius draws out the practical importance of the argument: the regularity of nature — what we would call natural law — is precisely what makes planning possible and fear of supernatural monsters irrational. He quotes Book One on Epicurus having explored past “the flaming limits of the world” and returned with knowledge of what can and cannot have being. The episode connects this to a critique of the “anything can happen” attitude Cassius associates with certain Buddhist and Pyrrhonist interpretations of 2020’s upheavals: such a view, if taken literally, destroys the basis for practical action and collapses into nihilism.
The episode closes with a wide-ranging debate on whether a person must consciously hold an Epicurean philosophy in order to live happily. Martin argues that if geometry reliably produces pleasure for someone, there is no philosophical objection to pursuing it. Elaine observes that many people live effectively Epicurean lives without ever articulating the philosophy, relying instead on habitual practical rationality. Cassius counters that in a world saturated with bad ideas from religion and competing philosophies, a correct framework is nearly indispensable as a practical matter. The Polyaenus example — the brilliant geometer who became an Epicurean — is raised as the ancient test case for the debate, and Charles suggests the Hermann Usener Epicurea fragments as a source for following up on Polyaenus’s story. Elaine’s closing thought draws on Epicurus’s practice of offering simpler formulations to those who needed them: what matters is that hedonically correct choices are being made, not that the full philosophical framework is consciously understood.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 30 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. Now let’s join today’s episode with Elaine reading today’s text.
Elaine: That to return we see the wooly sheep, the warlike breed of horses and horned bulls living under the same covert of the sky, grazing together in the same field and quenching their thirst in the same stream of water, yet they are each of a different species and retain the nature of their sires, and every kind imitates the dispositions of the race from which they came — so different is the nature of the seeds in every herb, so various are the principles of the water in every stream. Now the blood, bones, veins, heat, moisture, bowels, nerves, go to the formation of every animal, yet of what variety of figures widely different in themselves do their seeds consist? And then all bodies that are combustible and burned by fire, if they agree on nothing else, yet discharge from themselves such parts by which they spread about their flame and light, from whence they raise sparkles and scatter their embers all abroad. So if you examine other things by the same rule, you will find seeds of different kinds lie concealed in all bodies within, and show themselves of a different figure. Lastly, you observe many things that emit both smell and taste, especially those victims you offer when your mind is religiously moved for something you have unjustly acquired. These sensations therefore must be raised by seeds of different figure, for smell pierces through pores where taste can find no passage. Principles therefore of various shape make up every particular mass, and things in general are composed of mingled seeds. For in these verses of mine you may all along observe that many letters are common to many words, and yet you must confess that some verses and some words consist of very different letters — not because the number of letters are few or no two words are formed of the same letters, but because every verse and every word is composed of letters altogether different. So though the same principles are common to many things, yet the things remain very different among themselves, and it may properly enough be said that men and fruits and pleasant trees are made up of different seeds. Yet we are not to suppose that all seeds of whatever figure do mutually unite to the production of beings, for then you would observe monsters springing up every day — creatures half man, half horse, the lofty boughs of trees growing out of a living body, and the limbs of land animals joined to the bodies of fish, and nature forming everywhere out of the earth, the mother of all things, chimeras breathing out flames from their dreadful mouths — but to this plainly nothing of this happens, since we see all things are formed from certain seeds and regular principles, and to preserve their kind as they grow up and increase. Nor indeed can it, by the fixed rules of reason, be otherwise, for out of the several sorts of food, the particles of that which is proper to every animal descend into the limbs, and being united produce the motion suitable to that animal. But on the contrary, those particles of food that are destructive — some of them we find nature throws off through open passages, others are insensibly to us forced out of the body through the pores, such as it would admit of no union with others, nor agree to promote the vital motions and purposes of life. But lest you should think that living creatures are only bound by these laws, the same reason holds with regard to all other beings. For as all bodies are in their nature different in themselves, so it is necessary that each should consist of principles of a different figure — not but that many seeds are the same in shape, but they do not all agree and form perfectly alike. Since then the seeds differ, it is necessary that their intervals, their courses, connections, weights, strokes, concussions, and motions should differ likewise — properties that not only make a distinction between animals but divide the earth and the sea and preserve the heavens separate from the earth, and secure all things from being confusedly mixed together.
Cassius: Okay, thank you Elaine for reading that. There are some pretty big themes in this section today. We can start at the top, but maybe I should remind us that last week we were talking about the allegory of the earth as the mother of all things, and then next week he’s going to move into talking about how the atoms don’t have properties and colors of their own — but this week in general he’s talking about how the atoms provide the mechanism by which we see the regular birth of animals like their parents, and how things continue on a regular basis because of the individual nature of the atoms themselves. But there’s a lot more detail than that, so where would you like to start?
Elaine: So this is the beginning of the argument we’re focusing on today — that each being has to be made out of different seeds because they look different.
Cassius: Yes, and that’s a repetitive theme, but I think the implication of it is that we’re concluding that they’re made up of different things, but we’re also looking for the mechanism by which the regularity maintains itself even in living things — and of course that mechanism not being supernatural control.
Elaine: The issue that atomism in general explains is the way the universe operates on a regular basis without divine intervention. So he’s tracing down — when he talks about the woolly flocks or the martial breed of horses and the horned herds — to me I think he’s leading into the emphasis that the unique attributes of everything we see ultimately derive from unique seeds. You’d call that a genetic theory, but that’s where he’s going, I think.
Cassius: So all of this he has said before, but where he gets to me to the point where he’s adding something this time is actually in the third paragraph — where it starts “Lastly, you observe many things.” Before I get to that, though, I want to ask about another passage.
Elaine: Before I get to that, I just thought that the taste and the separation of smell was really interesting — that obviously there had to be some seeds from the object that allowed us to have taste and some for smell. We know that a good part of our taste is actually from smell because our brain is combining those things, but there are different sense organs involved and different receptors, so I thought that was perceptive.
Cassius: Well, when you talk about that sentence — you’re talking about the one that is very interesting to me, in the second part of the passage: “especially those victims you offer when your mind is religiously moved for something you have unjustly acquired.”
Elaine: Yeah, right — I think this is a sacrificial victim. The smell and the taste — these are animals. I’m assuming the sacrificial animals that you’re burning — maybe when you’re trying to atone — but the “unjustly acquired” part: where in the world does that come from? It’s kind of like — he’s not being exactly joking or sarcastic, maybe it is sarcasm — because he’s talking about atoms and the unique characteristics of living things, and that really doesn’t have an awful lot to do with the unjust acquisition of anything.
Cassius: Bailey is saying that there are offerings burnt on the altars of the gods — that’s what I immediately thought of.
Elaine: Yes, yes, and I agree with that. But the point being about burning those particular offerings: it really doesn’t matter whether you’re atoning for a sin or just trying to worship a god. Why did he throw that in there? Why did he pick that particular example and even say “especially”?
Cassius: You mean — why are you especially moved by the smell or the taste of a burnt offering at a time when you are atoning for sin? Because I would think that it’s going to be the same smell and taste whether you’re atoning for sin or just eating dinner.
Elaine: Yes — what’s the motivation? Oh, that is interesting.
Martin: I don’t know — it’s almost like he’s implying that whenever you give up something, or provide an offering and burn it, you’re more keen to its smell as it’s creeping away.
Cassius: I don’t see that in Munro. I don’t know if I’ve got an error there or there’s a difference in the text. But it isn’t Bailey either. Martin Ferguson Smith puts an ellipsis there. He says: “Furthermore, you see many objects that are endowed with the qualities of color, taste, and smell” — so that’s three things: color, taste, and smell together — “in the first place, most offerings…” and then the ellipsis, and then his footnote: “at least one line describing offerings burned upon altars is lost.” But how does he know it’s describing offerings burned on altars if it’s lost?
Elaine: I don’t know if that’s Daniel Brown filling it in on his own.
Cassius: Yeah, I don’t know. Well, it wouldn’t make too much of that then, if it’s something that’s fragmentary — maybe not even there. So — pass that. But where I thought he really gets into something different is toward the end of the passage: “because every verse and every word is composed of letters altogether different.” So — “though the same principles are common to many things, yet the things may remain very different among themselves” — it sounds to me like he’s saying there aren’t seeds in common. Am I reading that wrong?
Is the letter the seed — so that the letters are altogether different, meaning there wouldn’t be common elements between different creatures? Or maybe the letters are the common element and their combination is what makes things distinct? But then why does he say “every verse and every word is composed of letters altogether different”? He says “not because the number of letters are few, or no two words are formed of the same letters, but because every verse and every word is composed of letters altogether different.” That makes it sound like they’re not repeating — that men, fruits, and trees have different seeds; not that they have some letters in common and are rearranged, but that even the letters are different.
Elaine: I guess it’s wrongly translated, because the way it’s written here doesn’t make sense.
Cassius: Yeah. Elaine, do you have the Martin Ferguson Smith you were reading?
Elaine: Let me look. Okay. “Therefore atoms of dissimilar shapes unite to form a single mass and compound bodies consist of a mixture of seeds. Similarly, throughout these verses of mine you see many letters common to many words, even though you must concede that different verses and words are composed of different letters. I do not mean to suggest that they have only a few letters in common or that no two words are composed of the very same letters, but only that in general they are not all alike. Okay, this analogy is equally applicable to other things: although many objects have many primary elements in common, as aggregates they can differ from one another. So it can legitimately be said that the human race, crops, and exuberant trees consist of different atoms.”
Cassius: So that is more consistent than what he said before. I think the way Daniel Brown translates it makes it sound like there aren’t atoms — seeds — in common between men, fruits, and trees. But Martin Ferguson Smith doesn’t really say that.
Martin: That’s probably an example of trying to read too closely into a translation, especially in the scientific passages. These are probably harder to be sure of than others.
Cassius: This also isn’t the first time we’ve seen the analogy between atoms and combinations and letters — I think it was around Anaxagoras. We talked about it before. And this is the first time that — if he had actually said what Daniel Brown translated him as saying — that would have been the first time he said they didn’t have seeds in common. But it doesn’t look like he said that, so that’s good, because it wouldn’t make any sense.
Yeah. Well, maybe if we move to the next passage that Elaine is looking at — I think this next one is a particularly important one, because we’ve been talking about how the different atoms form different resulting bodies, but now he’s asserting that they cannot be combined in every possible way. There’s a limit to the number of ways they can be combined.
Elaine: There are a lot of implications of that. Obviously, you haven’t been everywhere, you haven’t seen everything on earth, but you’re making an assertion that they can only be linked in a certain number of ways — and thinking about the limitations of that statement would be pretty important. Isn’t that what we discussed about the innumerable? It’s related to when we discussed whether the atoms were innumerable versus infinite.
This wouldn’t be true if we were really getting down to elementary particles, but if you’re looking at elements, then it makes more sense. I wonder what Lucretius would say about genetic engineering — just because nature hasn’t made some of these chimeras, they haven’t happened to have arisen on their own, doesn’t mean that they can’t be made. But he didn’t know that there were things we could do at that time.
Cassius: Yeah, and I think it’s an important one to really think about, because for practical purposes it does seem to me pretty useful. It also goes along with — people used to say, “If men were meant to fly, they’d have wings,” or something like that. Obviously things can be changed. But even so, there appear to be practical limits in what we can do. And for sort of practical purposes of living — I think back to Martin talking about the practical time involved in the existence of the universe within our own horizon — there appear to be limits on what nature is going to do. Surely you can look at the percentages: in the great magnitude of things, most things happen along a pattern or along existing lines. That doesn’t mean there won’t be deviations, but most of the time the sun rises in the east. In the world as we live in it, it may not always do that, but clearly it does most of the time.
But he’s talking about monsters and combining living things with flame coming from their mouths, and I think this kind of reasoning would be important from a practical point of view — you’ve got normal people out there who are thinking about demons and goblins and monsters inhabiting the next county over, and this kind of reasoning gives people practical confidence that that’s probably not true. There’s no need to be concerned about a fire-breathing dragon burning down your house tomorrow.
Charles: For a more relatable word, we could say cryptids.
Cassius: That’s a good example. It’s not relatable to me. Did you say cryptid?
Charles: Yeah. Things like Bigfoot and Mothman.
Cassius: Oh, okay — Yeti and the Loch Ness Monster.
Charles: Yeah, our modern-day mythology.
Cassius: Go ahead.
Elaine: I’m assuming that Lucretius is referencing the chimera as a kind of cultural nod — or not a cultural nod, but a mythological creature that was common in his audience’s understanding. I mean, there are actual chimeras in biology. It’s a known thing, but he didn’t know about it. You see all these pictures of things that exist at the very bottom of the deep oceans that appear almost to look like monsters. Those kinds of things really make you realize that a lot of strange things can happen that you’ve not seen before.
Cassius: But this passage and this line of reasoning — the last sentence I’m looking at right now says “you may be sure that that must needs come to pass by fixed law.” And the reason I quoted that is that this is probably a description of natural law: nature does operate generally according to its own rules and doesn’t generally violate its own rules — which is a useful proposition as a basic orientation to life, especially if you’re teaching a young person. You’re not necessarily holding a class on astronomy, but the basic orientation, the initial predisposition, is that generally the sun is going to rise in the east, generally the grass is going to be green.
Elaine: So as far as monsters go, I would say: if I were a person who believed the universe were material, and somebody came to me and said there’s a fire-breathing monster over those hills, and I felt that they were a credible witness — nothing Lucretius has said would make me think that something like that was impossible. But I would think that it had to be made out of matter, had to have been formed through physical interactions of matter, and would be susceptible to death.
Cassius: Right, right — but you also built into your statement some sort of analysis, when you said “if you thought they were otherwise credible.”
Elaine: Yes — that means they have a reputation for credibility, because they generally don’t describe things that I haven’t then verified by my own observation. If they tell me something and I verify it to be true, and then they tell me something like that, I wouldn’t necessarily discount it — because as you say, there are some very strange-looking critters that we know about. But my automatic assumption is always that whatever creature somebody has seen, it’s made out of matter. It’s not supernatural.
Cassius: Right. If Charles says to me that on the other side of the river there’s a half man, half horse walking up and down with a bow and arrow and shooting people, I would think that Charles is pretty credible most of the time, but this one is going to take a little more verification than normal.
Elaine: I would also think that if there were such a centaur out there, it would be material. It would have to be.
Cassius: Okay. In the next passage, I think he’s extending the proposition — saying not just that atoms control how living things continue their kind and limit what kind of living things can be born, but that the same condition sets a limit to all things. Did we skip the part about excretion?
Charles: I wasn’t sure where to get to that — what do you think about that part?
Elaine: The last sentence I think is important: “whatever particles would not admit a union with the other particles, nor agree to promote the vital motions and purposes of life” — we would just say there’s a little anthropomorphization of the particles there. But things that couldn’t bind to a receptor — that’s not completely wrong, it’s not exactly right in terms of what happens biologically, but we do excrete particles, and transpiration does happen. So it’s interesting to me that he knew that we lose a lot of our body water through the skin during the day. It’s called — and still called — insensible perspiration, the same word Daniel Brown used. That’s kind of neat.
I don’t have anything else to say about that. I just thought it was interesting.
Cassius: Yeah. Martin, do you have any thoughts so far today?
Martin: Not on this text so far. I’ve been reading that passage, and I mean, there’s a little bit about mechanism, but I think it’s more of an assumption on Lucretius’s part — because if excretion through the skin is not perceived by the senses, he’s probably assuming it’s expelled through the skin, or maybe he did observe animal sweating. But yeah, there’s not a whole lot there to work off of.
Cassius: Anything in the last passage or paragraph we want to focus on?
Charles: I thought it was a little interesting how he made the effort to describe the heavens being separate from the earth.
Cassius: You’re talking about — “the passages, the connections, the weights, the blows, the clashing, and the motions — all of which not only disjoin living bodies but hold apart the lands and the whole sea and keep all heaven away from the earth” — just as a minor aside there. When I’ve gone through the poem in the past and compare the Latin to the English, it seems to me odd — or it’s just part of being able to understand his method of communication — when he strings together a lot of different words like that. I keep looking for a verb or an adjective or something in my English to try to translate it, but a lot of times they seem to just emphasize things by repetition. That list right there is a good example — when you’re just reading the Latin text, you’ve got these nouns or words that are not doing anything but repeating the same point.
Charles: Well, I guess important points you have to repeat more than once.
Cassius: I’m not really sure he has said anything significantly different here — he’s maybe just kind of restating pieces of things he’s already said otherwise.
Martin: Which is quite possible. He does emphasize things through repetition — and not only by listing examples, but by repeating the argument in different ways over and over.
Charles: That’s a poetic strategy as well. There’s a lot of repetition in poetry, so considering the form he’s using, that makes sense.
Cassius: I’m trying to think of something new we can say, but I read something posted by somebody that was from a Buddhist standpoint — a writer had said that one of the things about her interpretation of Buddhism was that “anything can happen.” And people are talking about that a lot because 2020 — I mean, dang, it’s been a year. We’ve had all these things. All of them are really not unpredictable — even the murder hornets. So there’s nothing that’s actually happened that’s bizarre. There’s a lot of dramatic events, things that have affected us dramatically, and I see people using that as: “Just remember, anything can happen.”
Elaine: Well, no — not really. A lot of things can happen, but not just absolutely anything, because there are material events, there are causes, and there are processes that are not unpredictable. None of these things just happened out of the blue supernaturally. They all had causes.
Cassius: That is exactly the point I think is important about this section. It’s not unpredictable, and in many cases — as much as it might be strange to us — it’s not unprecedented in human history. These people who think that “anything can happen” — if you literally applied that as stated, that would imply there’s no way to predict from moment to moment what’s going to happen. It’s the opposite of the sun rising in the east. You could say, it’s possible the sun’s going to rise in the west tomorrow. It would make it completely useless to even try to make plans.
Elaine: Which was kind of the point that they arrived at — just accept things as they happen and don’t focus on predicting or trying to control your circumstances. I mean, we can observe that there are probabilities. Obviously we don’t have control over everything; you have to use your brain. But to just throw it all to the wind and say, “Well, it doesn’t matter, because anything can happen, so there’s no point in trying to make plans at all” — that seems so obviously ridiculous to me.
Cassius: I completely agree. I think it’s a huge problem for a lot of people in the world today, and probably always has been. You get confused, you lose your connection and your ability to have confidence that you know what’s going to happen tomorrow, and so you throw up your hands and say it’s all useless — you go nihilist or whatever, and crawl in your hole and wait to die. And that’s an attitude I constantly seem to pick up in certain interpretations from people who like to talk about Epicurus, and I just think it’s absolutely the opposite of what Epicurus was talking about. The ability to study, come up with natural laws, and apply them in technology or science is the foundation of so much that we have today. And if you give that up because “anything could happen,” you’re not going to be very happy.
I pulled up in front of me — this kind of discussion always takes me back to the opening of Book One, where he first talks about Epicurus and says that he explored the universe and went past the flaming limits of the world, and came back and told us what may have a being and what cannot, and how a finite power is fixed to each, a bound it cannot break. And so we talk about the word “limits” a lot — and I think one of the subtleties of the word is what we’re talking about right now: as a great percentage of the time, there is a limit on what is possible, brought about by the nature of the atoms. Anything cannot just happen as a rule. And that’s the key. If you go back to that paragraph, that’s the key to breaking the bounds of religion: “things may have a being and what cannot, and how a finite power is fixed to each a bound it cannot break — and so religion, which we feared before, by him subdued, we tread upon in turn; his conquest makes us equal to the gods.” A lot of that conquest, a lot of that insight they were praising Epicurus for, was the explanation of how things work on a regular basis through what we might think of as natural laws that are predictable and that we can therefore use to our benefit.
I’m going to stop on that point, but the “anything can happen” attitude is very, very damaging.
Elaine: It’s another example of how, if you start from incorrect ideas about reality, your life decisions are going to be made on a different basis, and you’re less likely to have pleasure — because you’re basing your decisions on inaccurate information. Sometimes, when you’re in such a bad situation that you see no way out, you can at least think: “Well, anything can happen — I’m going to hold out to the last minute.” In those situations, that may be a reasonable strategy. But that’s not the normal way of life.
So I’ll say it’s sort of an analogy with the innumerable versus the infinite. There are a lot of things that could happen — practically speaking, a whole lot of possibilities — we don’t have a bird’s-eye view of all the causes and effects, so we can’t predict completely accurately, even with the weather. But there’s not an infinite number of possibilities, and there’s a big difference between those two things.
Cassius: Also, at least in my experience and observation, the “anything can happen” argument gets blurred into “well, God can make anything happen.” It’s not necessarily the case that those two are connected, but in a lot of people’s minds they get connected — just anything can happen at any moment, and that’s just how God works. And that’s not a valid method of analysis.
Right. Martin — we haven’t had much from you today. Do you run into that where you are — people saying “anything can happen” and having this misunderstanding?
Martin: No, not personally. So this is something I read about. But a person I know doesn’t personally encounter people with that attitude. Oh, maybe it’s more of a United States problem — that would be interesting.
Charles: I have an aunt who’s like that — very spiritual and all that. But I’ve also come across a lot of skeptics, and in academic skepticism and among Pyrrhonists, who have sort of taken that idea and used it to say: “Well, then nothing can be known for certain,” or “We should give up trying to learn.” And so they take on a very nihilistic or fatalistic approach to living.
Cassius: I think in talking with Martin about it, and following up on his comment a minute ago — within our panel here, Martin sort of represents the person who is most immersed in a scientific community and a scientific life orientation, and of course I would put Elaine in the same category as a doctor. But it’s not a mistake to read Lucretius from a scientific perspective — it’s certainly part of history. Still, I’m not so sure that Lucretius or the Epicureans would have looked at it quite that way — that what they were doing was mainly science. It’s a combination of science with also ethics and epistemology. Sometimes when we dive too deeply into the specific scientific theory he’s stating at a particular moment, we can’t let the fact that it’s been superseded get in the way of understanding the significance of the method of analysis. I feel confident that Lucretius and Epicurus would have loved to have the information that we have today, and you could count on people like them to come to the same scientific conclusions we do — but being the best scientist is not, from their point of view, the goal.
Martin: That’s not the general goal. It can be a particular person’s goal.
Cassius: Well, you’re saying that it can be a particular person’s goal — to do what?
Martin: To become an excellent, leading, or pioneering scientist.
Cassius: But I think Epicurus would say that would be a mistake. That would be the example of — who’s the geometer? That’s the story — the best geometer in the world. He might set that as his goal, and he might really, really enjoy doing that. But if he doesn’t understand that it’s more important for him to understand his own life than it is to understand geometry, then he’s making a mistake, right? Martin, what do you think about that?
Martin: Yeah, I don’t know. I think this is wrongly interpreted. The thing is that if you’re into geometry and following Plato’s misinterpretations, yes, then you’re off on the wrong path. And if you take it as the only part of life, that’s also wrong. But if you take it more like the goal of a profession or a hobby, then this is perfectly adequate.
Cassius: Well, I’m totally in agreement with the way you’ve just said that, because you limited it to say that’s not the only thing you’re doing. But if you were to somehow put blinders on — narrow your focus so that every moment you were just thinking, “I want to know more geometry” — I think that’s the point of that story, not of Pythocles, but of what’s his name — Charles? — Polyaenus?
Charles: That’s Polyaenus.
Martin: Okay, but Cassius — if that was the thing that gave you the most pleasure, why wouldn’t you do it?
Cassius: Well, that’s interesting to ask it that way. Because pleasure is always at the top. So most people would not enjoy that. But to say that there’s nobody who would, and that even if they did, they shouldn’t do it because of some kind of theoretical notion — I think that’s a mistake.
Martin: How do you know that pleasure is always at the top unless you first analyze the issue of realizing that pleasure is at the top?
Cassius: I don’t think you have to analyze it. I think you can feel it. Otherwise it wouldn’t be intrinsic, right?
Martin: It’s not something that you can logic out, because it’s a feeling. So if someone has reliably gotten pleasure that way, why wouldn’t they continue to do it? I mean, obviously they would have to have observed that they got pleasure that way, but they don’t even have to know the philosophy. If that has worked for them empirically, they should keep doing it.
Cassius: I think this is a very interesting tangent to be on, because yes, ultimately the goal is pleasure — but it’s like the observation that Epicurus made that you sometimes choose pain in order to accomplish more pleasure. Are you not going to have to know that?
Martin: No, you don’t. You don’t have to know it. I don’t think you have to be an analyst at all. I mean, you can be a dog and not be analyzing things and naturally choose pleasure. And if there could be a person out there who reliably gets pleasure that way, and they told me that, and I observed that it seemed to be true, there’s no way I would tell them, “Well, you need a framework, dude, because it isn’t working.” I know of a person like that — someone who has an IQ of about 80, applies sound hedonic principles, has no real Epicurean philosophy, but intuitively does the right thing in most situations by feeling. It always works out for him.
Cassius: I think we’ve stumbled on a fascinating issue that we’ll have to come back to. At least in my own mind, I’m thinking that Epicurus might be asserting that it is impossible. You’re talking about “as long as they don’t have incorrect ideas, it’s okay” — but is it possible to get rid of those incorrect ideas, or to prevent incorrect ideas from coming in, without some level of philosophical background? Identifying the goal based on feeling — I’m totally with that. I’ve seen people like that. They’re just not interested in philosophy the same way some people aren’t interested in the opera. They don’t want to talk about it; it’s not interesting to them. But they’re living the same way, using those same principles to make their life decisions.
Elaine: You don’t have to have a conscious philosophical framework. Absolutely not. But if you’re going to have a philosophy, you need to have the right one. There are plenty of people who just naturally live pleasurable lives — ordinary people who are probably unconscious of the same process we’re talking about. People who are not religious, but just practical; they do things they enjoy and don’t think about it too hard. There are lots of people like that. And so as long as they don’t have the wrong philosophical framework and they’re making decisions for pleasure, it doesn’t really matter. Why does it matter, as long as they don’t have incorrect ideas leading them in the wrong way? Some people, it’s just not their personality to analyze and take things apart. But if it’s working for them, I don’t know. I would say they’re people who can live out the philosophy without ever really putting a lot of systematic thought into it.
Martin: And it’s somehow natural. You pick sustainable pleasure as your life goal and organize your life according to that. That is essentially what you need. And that one people can figure out by themselves without having an explicit Epicurean philosophy.
Cassius: Right. And of course no one would ever assert, I don’t think, that only because Epicurus lived and gave us his philosophy is it possible to live a happy life. Obviously nature did not mandate that Epicurus was the essential key to understanding happiness. Words like “essential” and “necessary” are part of the issue of what we’re discussing here, I think. There’s no absolute standard of what’s necessary, no absolute definition of what the best life is.
Elaine: Yeah, there’s nothing preordained about it. So like if our hypothetical scientist gets extreme pleasure from pursuing science, and because there are always new questions to ask, he’s never running out — and he’s also not thinking about all these other things like religion. So there are definitely people who enjoy their lives fully and don’t have to be philosophers.
Cassius: Well, I think this question is almost exactly what is intended to be debated within the Polyaenus example. Maybe in the future we can come back to the specifics of what we know about him. I know there’s a passage in Frances Wright’s A Few Days in Athens about it, but that’s just her opinion versus the ancient text. That story about him supposedly being a brilliant geometer and supposedly shifting his focus away from it — at least exclusively — is really, I think, what we’re talking about. But was he enjoying it? He didn’t say anything about Polyaenus having a lot of pleasure doing geometry, did he?
Elaine: Well, that’s the issue, I think — nobody asserted that he was not getting pleasure from it. I think the assertion was that by being so narrowly focused, he needed to expand his horizon to understand the rest of the philosophy. So it’s almost exactly on point with the issue we’re debating, because nobody said he wasn’t happy being a geometer. The issue was whether that was sufficient or not.
Cassius: So we’ll try to find some of the text, and rather than me butcher my memory of it, we can go back to that in the future. Okay — closing thoughts for today.
Martin: None from me today.
Cassius: Okay. So mine would be — oh, go ahead, Charles.
Charles: Well, as for the Polyaenus thing, you could probably cross-reference a lot of different texts within the Epicurean sources. The Hermann Usener Epicurea fragments is probably a good place to start.
Cassius: All right. My takeaway would be: remember that a lot of things are possible and a lot of things can happen — but not everything is possible. And I just want to repeat how important I think that is. It has tremendous implications and tremendous practical value, and it’s a big problem in the world today. If people can get part of that out of this passage, I think they’ve gotten an awful lot. Okay, unless somebody has something else, we’ll close for today.
Elaine: Oh, I do. We’ve talked before about how Epicurus had levels of information — that some of the people who were more simple-minded, he wasn’t going to give them all the in-depth material. They just needed enough to be reassured. They’re not really studying the full philosophy, and yet he thought they could be happy because they had enough to satisfy themselves. So I think that’s similar to what I’m saying. You don’t really have to — as long as you’re practicing hedonic choices accurately, it’s not necessary for a person to have an understanding of all the underpinnings. Because what they were being told wasn’t even right, a lot of it — like we’ve talked about. But if they were happy with it and they were making good choices, then it’s fine. It was working. So just think about that.
Charles: I agree with that. That reminds me of the Epicurean criticism of Socrates, which we were talking about last week. That’s the criticism there — that Socrates was going around saying, “I don’t know what the best life is; well, let’s talk about it; I’ll ask you questions for five hours and maybe you’ll come up with something.” Right. But everybody can’t do that. Children aren’t going to do that. Not everybody has to have an identified philosophy or a systematic approach or having really thought about it in depth, as long as they’re making decisions for pleasure. In a lot of cases, it doesn’t matter if they know exactly why.
Cassius: Yeah. Some cases you really do need to know, but some cases you don’t. I guess that’s what I would say. Okay, any more today? Okay. As always, I enjoyed it and appreciate everyone’s participation. We’ll talk again next week.