Episode 036 - No Single Thing of A Kind: Earth Not The Only Home of Life
Date: 09/19/20
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1688-episode-thirty-six-no-single-thing-of-a-kind-earth-not-the-only-home-of-life/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”This four-person episode (Cassius, Elaine, Martin, and Charles) covers Lucretius Book Two lines 1048–1104, approaching the end of Book Two. Elaine reads the main text, which opens by reprising the passage about novelty and wonder — urging the reader not to reject ideas because of their unfamiliarity but to weigh them with piercing judgment and either embrace what is true or gird for battle against what is false. The main body of the passage argues for the existence of other worlds and other life across the infinite universe: since space is infinite, matter is infinite, and nature operates the same way everywhere, there is no reason why atomic combinations that produced this world — and its plants, animals, and humans — would not produce similar results elsewhere. Cassius then reads the same passage in the Alicia Stallings translation, which the group finds especially vivid and poetic. This episode is called the “Star Trek episode” by Elaine, connecting the multiple-worlds argument to earlier discussions of alien life.
Discussion focuses on the isonomia principle — that nature never creates just one specimen of any kind, a point Lucretius applies equally to organisms and to worlds — and on evaluating the quality of Lucretius’s reasoning in this section. The group notes that, unlike some earlier passages where conjectures about atomic shapes ventured into unobservable micro-level territory, this section extrapolates at the macro level from processes we can directly observe, making its conclusions sounder and less at risk of contradiction by later science. Martin comments that Lucretius avoids the rigid-body model assumptions that caused errors in earlier sections. Charles brings in the Wordsworth sonnet “The World Is Too Much With Us” as a parallel reflection on how familiarity dulls the capacity for wonder. Elaine connects the joy of scientific awe to Epicurean pleasure, and the group notes that the capacity to look at the universe with fresh eyes — rather than ho-hum complacency — is itself a form of Epicurean vitality.
The episode closes with the passage on the undisturbed gods, which the group reads as a logical extension of everything developed in Book Two: if the gods exist and maximize pleasure, they cannot be burdened with governing an infinite universe, intervening in human affairs, or personally directing thunderbolts — especially ones that strike their own temples and innocent bystanders. Cassius connects this to the “Riddle of Epicurus” and to the modern apologetic response (“who are you to understand God’s ways?”), which the group finds self-defeating, since that same inscrutability would make divine revelation impossible to read or follow. Elaine notes she is somewhat distracted (has a call) but calls the section one of the most poetic in the poem. Next week will complete Book Two.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 36 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. Today we’ll be discussing Latin text locations starting at approximately line 1048 and continuing through 1104, which is near the end of Book Two. And today Elaine will read the text for us. So let’s join the discussion for today.
Elaine: Now turn your mind, I pray, to a true reasoning. For a truth wondrously new is struggling to fall upon your ears, and a new face of things to reveal itself. Yet neither is anything so easy, but that at first it is more difficult to believe. And likewise, nothing is so great or so marvelous, but that little by little all decrease their wonder at it.
First of all, the bright clear color of the sky and all it holds within — the stars that wander here and there, the moon, and the sheen of the sun with its brilliant light. All of these, if now they had come to being for the first time for mortals, if all unforeseen they were in a moment placed before their eyes, what story could be told more marvelous than these things, or what that the nations would less dare to believe beforehand? Nothing, I trow. So worthy of wonder would this sight have been. Yet think how no one now, wearied with satiety of seeing, deigns to gaze up at the shining quarters of the sky. Wherefore cease to spew out reason from your mind struck with terror and mere newness, but rather with eager judgment weigh things, and if you see them true, lift your hands and yield, or if it is false, gird yourself to battle.
Now I should be glad to know, since without the walls of this world, the visible heavens, there lies an infinite space — what is contained there? This the mind desires eagerly to search into, and by its own vigor to range over freely and without obstruction. And first, since there is no bound to space in any part of it, on no side of it, neither above or below it, as I have proved, and the thing itself proclaims it, and the very nature of space confirms it — we are not to suppose, since this space is infinitely extended every way, and the seeds innumerable fly about this mighty void in various manners, urged on by an eternal motion, that this one globe of earth, and the visible heavens only, were created, and that so many seeds of matter that lie beyond do nothing. Especially since this world was made naturally and without design, and the seeds of things of their own accord, just linked together by variety of motions, rashly sometimes, in vain often, and to no purpose — at length suddenly agreed and united and became the beginning of mighty productions of the earth, the sea, and the heavens, and the whole animal creation.
Wherefore, needs must be allowed, there were in many other places agreements and unions of the seeds of the same nature with this world of ours, surrounded as it is with the vast embraces of the heavens above. Besides, since there is a large stock of matter already and a place suitable, nor is there anything or cause to hinder and delay — things must necessarily be produced and come into being. Now, since there is so great a plenty of seeds that all the ages of men would not be sufficient to number them, and the same power, the same nature remains that can dispose the seeds of things in any other place by the same rule as that united in this world of ours — we must needs confess that there are other worlds in other parts of the universe, possessed by other kinds of inhabitants, both of men and beasts.
Add to this that in the universe there is no species that has but one of a sort, that is produced alone, that remains single and grows up by itself. But whatever species things are of, there are many more individuals of the same kind. This you may observe in the animal creation; this you will find to be the state of the wild beasts, of the human race, of the silent fish, and the whole brood of birds. By the same reason you must own that the heavens, the earth, the sun, the moon, the sea, and all other beings that are, do not exist singly, but are rather innumerable in their kind — for every one of these have a proper limit fixed to their beings, and are equally bound by the general laws of nature with all those whose species include a numerous train of individuals under them.
These things, if you rightly apprehend, nature will appear free in her operations, wholly from under the power of domineering deities, and to act all things voluntarily and of herself, without the assistance of gods. For — oh, the undisturbed bosoms of the powers above, blessed with sacred peace — how they live in everlasting ease, a life void of care! Who can rule this infinite universe? Who has the power to hold the mighty reins of government in his hands over this whole mass? Who likewise can turn about all these heavens, and cherish all these fruitful globes of earth with celestial heat? Who can be present at all times and in all places, to darken the world with clouds, to shake the vast expansion of the serene heavens with noise, to dart the thunder, and often overturn his own temples? To fly into the wilderness and furiously brandish that fiery bolt which often passes by the guilty and strikes dead the innocent and undeserving?
Cassius: Thanks for reading that, Elaine — that was a lot of text and several of those sentences were extremely long, but you did a great job reading it, so appreciate that. We’re closing in on the end of Book Two, so we’re coming to some summary passages and going to be out today from under the detailed discussion of how the atoms come together and moving to some higher-level conclusions it looks like.
But I particularly appreciate, Elaine, that you read the first passage. We touched on it last week as well, but it’s always been one of the most memorable passages in the book to me — the part about the newness of certain arguments and how you should react to those, and either embrace them if you agree with them or reject them if you don’t. It’s a sort of a general paragraph that could be inserted just about anywhere in the book. But it seems to me very poetic and very important for those people who want to assert that Epicurus is a dogmatic philosopher who simply wants you to believe what he says — this is one of the best evidences that that’s not the case. He’s telling people to always test what they consider to be the truth before they embrace it.
Martin: Some of it is a repeat from maybe Book One, or much earlier — I don’t need a comment right now.
Charles: Elaine briefly touched on the dogmatism from the first section she read of last week’s text. But I’m not sure if it’s been brought up too many times before — maybe I just don’t remember it. But this is at least so far the most upfront or most obvious text talking about other worlds and other life.
Elaine: Yes, I started to call this our Star Trek episode, because that’s what came into my mind while I was reading.
Cassius: Oh yes, and so as you’d expect it’s one of my favorites — not only the introduction about rejecting or embracing new truths, but I guess that’s the equivalent of boldly going where no man has gone before.
Elaine: Yes — new life and new civilizations.
Cassius: Go ahead, Charles.
Charles: As I say, we talked about Star Trek before with the gods, which are briefly touched upon here. But the passage we have after the opening — talking about how nature never creates only a single thing of its kind — that’s apparently the concept that’s termed “isonomia” by some of the commentators. And it would be a very important one for the development of Epicurus’s viewpoint on the evolution of life, not only on Earth but also on other planets. The same things that have happened here on Earth can — because of the evidence that we see that they’ve happened here — that itself is evidence that it could happen other places as well, and probably does. That appears to be his reasoning here.
So I see why you wanted to read that first passage from last week and then connect it with this one, because it just reminds us that if we’re trying to consider ideas that are maybe really new to us, we should think about how you get used to seeing things and don’t really question them anymore. You think you’ve got it solved. So it’s important to kind of start over again and think about your previously unquestioned assumptions before you go on building new understandings.
Cassius: And this is one of the most poetic sections — he’s gone back into that kind of mode, which is interesting how he goes in and out of the poetry. This particular paragraph is one that to me he could almost put at the very beginning of the poem. It really is a very high-level summary of the position that Elaine said: that we come to take for granted all sorts of things that we should not take for granted, and that we should be willing to question. And at the same time, because he believes that knowledge is possible and that it’s possible to know at least a certain number of things, you’re going to embrace some part of what you’ve accepted as true — and you should work with it. So just because something comes to your attention for the first time does not necessarily mean that it’s either true or false. It’s got to be examined.
All right, so I can read the Stallings translation now.
Cassius: I need your full attention here:
A revolutionary thing strives hard to reach your ear, A new side of the universe struggles to come to light, For no fact is so simple we believe it at first sight, And there is nothing that exists so great or marvelous That over time mankind does not admire it less and less. Behold the pure blue of the heavens and all that they possess, The roving stars, the moon, the sun’s light brilliant and sublime — Imagine if these were shown to men now for the first time, Suddenly and with no warning: what could be declared More wondrous than these miracles no one before had dared Believe could even exist? Nothing — nothing could be quite As remarkable as this, so wonderful would be the sight. Now however people hardly bother to lift their eyes To the glittering heavens — they’re so accustomed to the skies. That’s why you should let go of any terror of the new, But don’t spit out my reason — weigh with care. If it seems true What I’m about to say, then throw your hands up and surrender; But if it should seem false, then arm yourself as truth’s defender. The mind seeks explanation, since the universe extends Forever out beyond those ramparts at which our world ends — The mind forever yearns to peer into infinity, To project beyond and outside of itself, and there soar free.
Cassius: Yeah, that’s very memorable wording. One part of that I stumble over is the part about where it says nothing is at first so simple but that it seems hard to understand when it’s new. I guess that’s the point about that section — that newness can by itself be disconcerting.
Charles: Yes, but once you get past the newness, what you may find is that the new thing is so absolutely blindingly simple that it becomes commonplace very quickly.
Cassius: Yes. I think that’s exactly it, with the example being the stars and the sky especially at night — how impressive that is when you look at it. But I hardly ever look up at night anymore and look at the stars or the moon.
Charles: This reminds me of Wordsworth a bit — “The World Is Too Much With Us.” I wonder, when you read these passages, if Lucretius inspired him at all. So here I found it:
The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers — Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.
You know, it’s not exactly the same point, but I just wonder if Wordsworth happened to have had Lucretius in mind a little bit.
Cassius: Yeah, it’s very similar.
Elaine: And of course the analogy applies to Epicurean philosophy itself — to people of that time, and even today, who are just so used to thinking that God’s hand is in everything and that everything is divinely motivated. It can seem bizarrely disconcerting to think about atoms and void combining and producing the results that we do see. But over time that’s kind of the way we are today, and many of us who have any degree of scientific background at all just don’t even think about the atoms and the way things work as being as miraculous or awe-inspiring as the religious viewpoint.
Martin: Scientific awe is one of the driving forces for scientists. It’s that experience of “wow” — but you need something new most of the time to provoke it.
Elaine: And what is that — scientific awe? It’s pleasure. It’s a pleasurable feeling. You can’t look up at the sky and just say, “okay, that’s the sky.” I guess people do that over time — they get complacent and jaded and cynical. But the heart of it is the emotion or the feeling that you get when you observe these things. Because if you’ve gotten to the point where you can look at some incredibly majestic sight and just say, “uh-huh, ho-hum” — then you’re pretty close to the point of death, I would think.
Cassius: Right, right. Your feelings are a pain. And so the novelty — I won’t say it’s always a pleasure because it depends on what the novelty is — but we seem to have a need for the pleasures of novelty to some degree. And I like this: “the mind desires eagerly to search into, and by its own vigor to range over freely and without obstruction” — into what’s going on out there. That’s a pleasure: vigorous inquiry, and not being blocked, and not being told “this is forbidden to think about or talk about.”
And some people might want to argue that an attitude of ho-hum — “I think I’d just like to stay in bed today, I think I’d just like to sleep the rest of my life away” — well, that’s pretty close to a pain of a certain type, and it’s close to death to me as well.
There’s so much of an orientation — and something we talk about constantly — about how you tell me that this man who sees all these things about the majestic nature of the universe, who sees the pleasure of motion, all the different things, the joy and delight that’s possible in the world — you tell me that this man who sees all these things reduces the ultimate goal of life to painlessness? That’s just not the direction I can take this.
Charles: They need to read Book Four.
Cassius: I mean, to be childlike can be a negative thing in some situations, but just the newness of everything and the enthusiasm that children are associated with — exploring things and just the joy of life that they get out of it — that’s a feeling. It’s not just a book-learning kind of experience. You don’t even appreciate it without feeling, basically — that’s the bottom line.
Yeah. But at any rate, so his reasoning to repeat: we’ve seen how the atoms have come together on Earth and produced all the different things that we see here, including the animal creation. And therefore he is taking the presumption that if it’s happened once it can happen again, probably has, and so it happens throughout the universe. Would be his reasoning — right?
Martin: That means that the rest of the universe is possessed by other kinds of inhabitants, both of men and beasts.
Cassius: Yeah, I mean that seems very reasonable. I’m not going to say that we can know it for a hundred percent sure, but that seems so reasonable as to be something I wouldn’t bother poking at. I think that makes sense. To imply the opposite — that we’re sort of special in this regard — yeah, it gives more credence to there being a supernatural god or deity or demiurge or something.
Martin: Yeah, you’d pretty much have to be that way, wouldn’t you.
Cassius: Yeah. I think we’re back on solid reasoning ground in this section. I don’t really see anything in here that sounds unreasonable. Martin, are you together with Elaine on that?
Martin: Oh, sorry — I guess the all of the universe was not sufficient to keep you awake this morning.
Cassius: Oh my gosh! Well, you’re the one who’s in quarantine on the opposite side of the world at an ungodly time of day probably, so thank you for being here at all.
I was just saying, Martin, that there’s nothing in the basic reasoning process that seems extreme to me here. It seems very practical, and I don’t have any argument with the reasoning process he’s used in this section. Do you agree with that?
Martin: I mean, we need to be sure — this is again something based on logic, and it’s only partly justified by observation. So it’s putting together something which can explain what you see, but it’s again not something we would consider equivalent to what we today consider proven science.
Cassius: So then how is it different? Because I didn’t see anything in here that seemed as much of a leap. I mean, I wouldn’t say we definitely know it, but if we would think it was probable — it just pragmatically seems like a reasonable conclusion. But what do you see in there that you think is not in accordance with what we think now?
Martin: No, it’s not in contradiction with what we know today. But at that time, you couldn’t really know it.
Cassius: But even at that time, it seems to me like this is a more practical type of conclusion — it doesn’t seem like he’s taken as many leaps as he has in other sections. Or do you think he’s taken just as many leaps?
Martin: No, no. He’s just basing this on the basic level of the model. He’s just taking the primary consequences of an atomic model — if the world is made of atoms and void, then this is what you get.
Cassius: Yeah. So maybe it’s me just knowing that he hasn’t been contradicted yet that is affecting my assessment of his reasoning process.
Charles: That’s interesting. Well, that would be like trying to prove a negative, and especially back then that would be impossible. Even today we still can’t prove it.
Cassius: Yeah, this is the continuing question of how do we assess things that we’ve not been able to observe directly. Do we just draw a bright line and say that because we have not observed something directly we must hold it to be unproven? Or do we rank things as more probable or less probable even when we have never been there to see them directly?
Charles: Well, those two things aren’t contradictory — they aren’t in conflict. You can say that it’s unproven and yet appears to be more probable. Those are not contradictory positions. I think the big thing is to not make an assertion that it has to be this way if you don’t have evidence.
Cassius: That’s interesting. I guess it is really hard to keep your heuristics from affecting your assessment of the reasoning process. Martin is probably better at keeping those heuristics separate than I am, because this didn’t bother me — but maybe that’s just because it hadn’t been contradicted.
Martin: Even then, as Charles just said, it’s not making an assertion that it has to be this way. And in a system of atomism, Lucretius has already observed and come to conclusions about the atom — so they’re just saying, well, if the world and humans and beasts are made of atoms, who’s to say it can’t happen elsewhere? So what they’re positing that does or could exist beyond Earth would just be in a very similar process if not the exact same one. I think it’s just the only possible sort of conclusion you could draw on it.
Cassius: I think in some of the cases where I had a big problem with leaps not evidenced, it seemed to be when he was inquiring into the micro levels — levels smaller than what we can see. In this case he’s talking more about what we observe at the macro level, and why even though he does mention seeds, this seems to be more of a macro kind of reasoning process. And I get less irritated by that because it just seems like he is going from things that we observe. But I’m willing to say that I may be using a bias here that I didn’t realize. It’s not an easy question to answer.
Martin: Not easy to draw general conclusions about where you draw these lines. The thing is, what was in error about what we know now — in previous sections, he was basically trying to explain in more detail how things happen. Whereas in this section now, he’s just looking at the very basic conclusions we get from atomism. And then it is less likely to run into something that is false — if atomism is correct at all. He doesn’t make any additional assumptions. He just looks at things right in front of him. In those false models, he made the basic assumption that the elementary particles behave like rigid bodies which cannot overlap — this is wrong — and there are a number of other things which were wrong. But at the level he’s discussing now, he doesn’t go into detail. So what he states now doesn’t assume a rigid-body model for these particles.
Cassius: Right. Yeah. I agree with that. Does that make sense? I think it does. In my less scientific and more generalist mind it basically boils down to a question of quantity and quality of evidence. The more evidence and the better quality of evidence, the stronger your conclusions drawn from those are going to be. And it’s a sliding scale — when you have less evidence and what evidence you do have is of less quality, then you’re much more apt to come out on the short end and come up with a conclusion that’s not correct.
So what continues to interest me is: if you were teaching this to a young person, or just trying to distill it into the most general form — I don’t know a better way right now than to simply say that the evidence of the senses and the anticipations and the feelings always has to be your primary starting point. You want as much of that and as well-verified as you can possibly get, and you never want to deviate from the evidence that those things do provide. So you use analogy and logical constructs to some extent, but you always have to underpin them and keep them in line with the observations that you do have.
And I would say: let’s add to that, that when your conclusions are in part based on analogy and logic — when they’re not completely evidenced — be aware of where those spots are. If you know where your points are that are not yet finished with, that’s fine to me. Just state that clearly. Where you get into weeds is forgetting: what do I have evidence for, and what do I not have evidence for? When people forget those parts, they’re more likely to go even further and develop even more incorrect conclusions.
And that’s about as far as you can possibly get from the attitude of people who say things like, “the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it” — and take that as a fact of nature and never examine it again. Which again takes us back to the opening section from today: no matter how awesome something might be at first glance, you can get used to it, and you have to gird yourself for battle with the things you believe to be untrue.
Elaine: And of course “belief” is probably the wrong word there — you’re trying to reason based on evidence. That’s the process. I guess “accepting evidence” might be a better phrase. The issue is the conclusions that are drawn from the evidence.
Charles: Yeah, and that’s where the error comes in — the conclusions you draw from the evidence. But just because you can draw multiple conclusions from the evidence does not mean you abandon your faculties of evidence. You can’t abandon the senses or your feelings or anticipations, because those are all you have. And if you try to abandon them by saying “well, I’m just going to pray about it” — well, yeah, you’ve lost your criteria of judgment when you abandon the only faculties of evidence that nature gave you.
Cassius: Right. And although we’re not really at the final end of Book Two, the next passage we have for today is probably the ultimate conclusion about the nature of the universe and the gods anyway, because he comes back to the fact that once you understand and accept these things — even though they’re new and awesome to you — you can see that nature is not under the heel of gods, nature is not mandated by gods. And of course we’re part of nature, so we’re not under the heel of gods either.
This last section today — I think it’s important to remember it’s built on prior conclusions about the gods that we’ve already dealt with. We’ve decided that there are beings that have maximized pleasure, because we see that things happen on a spectrum and that some beings have more pleasure than others. So somewhere out there are beings that have maximized their pleasure completely, and this has to be the gods. And they couldn’t be enjoying themselves if they were stressing over little human affairs — that’s not pleasurable.
So here we’ve got “undisturbed bosoms of the powers above, blessed with sacred peace, how they live in everlasting ease, a life void of care.” And then imagine saying that these gods are having to keep track and make happen everything that’s going on in the entire universe — which we can’t even see, and which we think is probably at least as complicated as what we’re seeing here on Earth. Is that really something that would be pleasurable?
Elaine: No. So he’s bringing in the evidence of our feelings, along with all of the physics he’s developed so far, to make us see how preposterous that kind of idea would be. I really don’t even think he has to bring in the entire infinite universe — even just the amount of piddly detail there would be in one state or city, or family — oh my gosh. You go to Facebook and spend a little bit of time with all the squabbling, and I’m like — okay, that would not be fun to micromanage.
Cassius: That’s right. But it does really bring home the point. I think he does that effectively. I see this point made by the commentators pretty regularly, but to me this is an example of how Epicurus — or maybe the Greeks and Romans in general — thought of the gods as being like superhuman people in a sense, but still something they could relate to. And we’ve never seen people who can manage even their own household or their city or their state or their country without putting tremendous effort into it.
And I guess this is another example of the difference between Epicurean logic and the other type. How do people today deal with that? They say, “well, God’s all-powerful, don’t you know that?” What is the evidence that anything is all-powerful? What is that other than just a total abstraction that we assert exists but have no proof whatsoever of? No matter how far out you extrapolate a human being, you’re going to have these natural reactions that Elaine has just been discussing — how burdensome or unpleasant it is to do certain things. But to say that you can answer all those problems by asserting that God is omnipotent and omniscient — well, there’s no evidence of a spectrum on which you approach that level of abstraction. That’s just a pure word game, it seems to me.
Charles: Yeah, and of course this last paragraph sneaks in a lot of detail, including the one about how the gods throw thunderbolts and hit their own temples and things like that. I don’t know that that issue is discussed in detail a lot, but a lot of people use that as an example of the gods obviously not being in total control of their own domain — if they are destroying their own temples and their own innocent people, passing by the guilty and striking dead the innocent and undeserving. That’s almost a little bit of an echo of the so-called Riddle of Epicurus — about how the gods do not deserve respect because of the things that they do or appear to do.
Cassius: Well, you know, the modern answer to that is just, “who are you, puny mortal, to understand the ways of God?” So they managed to get out of that by just asserting the existence of a type of being that we have no knowledge of, no evidence of, that we can’t even imagine understanding. Yeah — that contradicts our own experience, it contradicts our own —
Elaine: Yep. And who are we to judge? We didn’t make it all, so we don’t know. And yet we’re going to think that we can read a book explaining what that God wants us to do? If we’re also saying we can’t even really imagine it — well, if we were that far disconnected from understanding the reality of the god, we wouldn’t be able to read it and understand it. So it just falls apart for me, but it does not for everybody.
Cassius: Yeah. “Who can be present at all times and in all places” — that’s a very specific example of eliminating the type of supernatural being that lots of people today, and for the last thousands of years, think is a very real possibility. But when you apply practical reasoning to the question, it doesn’t turn out that way.
Charles: This section right here with these series of questions does kind of echo in my mind the Riddle of Epicurus that supposedly comes to us through one of the church fathers.
Cassius: Well, Martin and Charles — more thoughts for today, or shall we save them for next week and finish Book Two?
I think there are a few more concluding remarks that come at the end of Book Two, but we are hitting the high point of the discussion about atoms and their relationship to the gods over the universe, probably at the end of Book Two here.
Elaine: I am going to have to apologize — today I consider these to be some extremely important and urgent sections and I think we’ve done a pretty good job with it today. But I know I’ve got a call, so my enthusiasm level is a little below par today.
Cassius: Well, I think we’ve made some important points. Charles, do you have more today?
Charles: There’s nothing too deep within the text that we covered today — it was much more generalized, and I guess that’s more fitting of the beginning of the conclusions of Book Two.
Cassius: Yeah, the books don’t always seem to come to an end at what might seem to us to be a logical place. But this one is pretty clearly sort of building to a climax as it approaches the end. It’s much easier to understand that we’re coming to the end of Book Two than it is to understand the end of Book Six, when he starts talking about the plague of Athens. That one just kind of tails off — it doesn’t even have a conclusion; it just abruptly cuts off.
Charles: That’s right, that’s right.
Cassius: Well, Martin, anything else?
Martin: No.
Cassius: Okay. Elaine?
Elaine: I just think this is a beautiful section — poetic and it brought several different threads of thinking together that we’ve gone over before, like the gods, to strengthen Lucretius’s and Epicurus’s conclusions.
Cassius: Okay, well, thank you very much. Hopefully I’ll be at one hundred percent next week and we will conclude Book Two. Unless anybody has something else, we’ll wrap it up.
Charles: Nope.
Cassius: Okay. Martin, wrap up?
Martin: Yeah, I think I’ve said everything I can think of.
Cassius: Okay, Martin?
Martin: Awesome. Thank you, guys.
Cassius: Very good. See you next week. Thanks all, right, bye y’all.
Elaine: Bye.