Episode 037 - End of Book 2 - The Earth Too Was Born, and It Will One Day Die
Date: 09/27/20
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1689-episode-thirty-seven-end-of-book-two-the-earth-too-was-born-and-it-will-one-day/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”This three-person episode (Cassius, Charles, and Martin; Elaine absent) completes Book Two of Lucretius. Charles reads the final passage (approximately lines 1105 to end), covering: how the earth and sea grew after their formation by accumulating particles from without; how living creatures grow when intake exceeds outflow and decline when the balance reverses; how by the same rule the walls of this world will eventually fall to ruin; and how the earth was once fruitful without labor but now produces scarcely and demands ever-greater toil. Cassius then reads the final paragraph from the Martin Ferguson Smith translation, which the group uses to close out the book. The episode is rich with scientific commentary from Martin: he explains that the Earth does grow continuously from space dust and meteorite accumulation (roughly one millimeter per year, estimated from the depth of ancient Roman remains in Cologne), that much of Earth’s water was carried in by comets and meteorites, and that Jupiter protects the inner planets by sweeping up many large asteroid-belt objects. Martin also corrects Lucretius’s analogy between living creatures and the world: whereas organisms can be said to die when outflow exceeds intake, planets are not destroyed by this mechanism — they tend to accumulate more than they lose — and the actual fate of the Earth will be the expansion of the sun into a red giant in approximately five to ten billion years. The veins analogy (which Lucretius applies to both organisms and the world) is identified as wrong: planets have no veins, and the mechanism of eventual world destruction is entirely different from the mechanism of biological death.
The group discusses what Lucretius meant by “world” — likely something on the scale of a solar system or galaxy rather than just Earth, consistent with the Letter to Herodotus — and notes that the passage on the earth’s worn-out productivity is better explained as an ecological catastrophe: the Romans had deforested the Mediterranean, over-hunted game populations, and depleted soil nutrients, not noticed the underlying mechanism of soil exhaustion. Martin observes that this is a Stoic trap — accepting decline as inevitable when in fact the correct model reveals the problem is fixable. Cassius connects the opposite end of the spectrum to the Epicurean gods, which in Epicurean theory are the only entities that have mastered the art of perpetually replenishing their atoms and thus achieve effective immortality.
The closing segment reflects on Book Two as a whole. The group agrees that the central achievement of Book Two is establishing that atoms themselves do not possess the qualities they produce — people are not made of little people, colorless atoms produce all color, insensate seeds produce all sensation — and that everything operates naturally without supernatural governance. Martin observes that even where Lucretius gets specific details wrong, the overall project of demonstrating a natural explanation for phenomena is persuasive and important. Cassius distinguishes Epicurus’s physics from Democritean science-for-its-own-sake: the point is not to become the best scientist but to have a foundation sufficient for living well, resisting supernatural claims, and directing one’s life by pleasure and pain rather than by divine commands or ideal forms.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 37 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. For the last 36 episodes, we have now gone through all of Book One, and this is our last episode for Book Two. We’re going to be discussing today the Latin text that begins around line 1105 until the end of Book Two. Now let’s join the discussion with Charles reading today’s text.
Charles: Besides, after this world was formed, and the birthday of the sea, the earth, and the sun was over, there were many particles of matter added to them from without. Many seeds were received every way, which the infinite mass of the universe constantly discharged, from whence the sea and the earth grew more strong and vigorous, from whence the mansions of the heavens were enlarged, and raised their lofty arches higher from the earth, and new air was produced. For from all the parts of the universe the proper seeds are distributed, and retire severally in all places to their proper kinds — the watery to the water, the earth increases by earthy people, the fiery produce fire, the airy air — till nature, the parent and perfectress of all things, improve all beings to the utmost extent of growth they are capable of. This comes to pass when no more is received into the vital passages than what is perspired and flies off. Then it is that the growth of the creature is at a full stand, and nature restrains it from further increase.
For whatever creature you observe to thrive and grow lively and large, and by degrees climb up to a mature age, receives more particles into itself than it emits, because all the nourishment is easily distributed into the veins, and they are confined, and the particles are not so widely scattered as in any proportion to fly off, and so receive a loss faster than they are supplied. For we must allow that many particles certainly fly off from bodies, but many others ought to be coming on, till the thing arrives to its utmost pitch of bulk. Then, by degrees, its strength and maturity of vigor decays, its age melts away and dissolves. For the larger any body is, the greater it is in size — when its growth is over, it wastes the more every way, and sends out more particles from itself. Nor is the nourishment easily distributed into the veins, or nature sufficient to renew and supply those effluvia it throws off in such abundance. In proportion as the defect and the loss require it, the animal therefore must necessarily perish when it is made thin by continual perspiration, and all things must at length fall by constant strokes from without. For the supplies from food must fail in old age, nor do bodies from without ever cease to batter and break to pieces all things with strokes not to be resisted.
By the same rule, the visible heavens, the surrounding walls of this great world, must tumble down by continual attacks and fall to ruin. It is nourishment that preserves things and beings by constant supplies, but ‘tis all to no purpose, for neither are the veins capable to receive what is sufficient, nor can nature afford a proper and needful recruit.
Even now the age of the world is broken, and the earth so feeble and worn out, that it scarce produces a puny kind of creatures, when it bore formerly a lusty race, and brought forth such prodigious bodies of wild beasts.
Or, I cannot think all species of creatures descended from the sky by a golden chain upon the earth, nor were they by the sea created, nor by the waves that beat the rocks, but the same earth which now supports them, at first gave them being. At first she kindly, of her own accord, raised the rich fruits and delightful vines for the benefit of men. She freely of herself offered her sweet produce, the corn and tender grass, which now scarce rise to perfection with all our labor. We wither out our oxen and the strength of our husbandmen. We can scarce find plowshares sufficient to till the fields. Things are so averse to grow, and our labors are forever increasing.
And now the lusty plowman shakes his head and laments the pains he took was oft in vain, and when he compares the present times with the glorious days that are past, he blesses the good fortune of those that were before him. He talks loudly how the old race of men, filled with piety no doubt, spent their happy days within the narrow bounds of their own field, for then every man’s share of ground was much less than it is now, but has no notion — fond fool — that things by degrees decay, and worn out by old age, hasten to ruin to the utmost period of their duration.
Cassius: Thank you for reading that, Charles. We’ve now reached the end of Book Two and appreciate the efforts that everybody has put into getting us this far. So we come basically to the point today that everything in the universe comes together and eventually pulls apart over time. But there’s a lot of interesting stuff in these paragraphs, I think.
I noticed another callback to Anaxagoras when I was first reading this. Those stood out pretty far from the rest of the text because normally this is really linked in with a lot of poetic imagery, and I think that’s where this came in — because otherwise he’d be talking about the seeds and the elementary particles rather than the earthy particles attaching themselves to the earth or the fiery particles producing fire.
Martin: Yeah, he’s talking definitely at a higher level there than the elemental particles, because he’s basically been saying that the earth is not made of earth particles and so forth. So you have to take into account what he’s previously said, because it’s kind of poetic. It’s not as precise as what he’s been saying before when he talks about earthy particles — because he’s basically been saying that earthy particles don’t exist. Particles are particles; they come together to form earthy combinations.
Charles: And he immediately says “the proper seeds are distributed” — but even still, you would need the context from beforehand. I mean, this is a conclusion of Book Two so it makes sense.
Cassius: Right. I wonder if it’s of interest that in the very first sentence we read today, he says “after the world was formed there were many particles of matter added to them from without” — and then goes on to explain the rest of it. So I wonder if that means anything. He’s certainly saying that it was not made at a single moment in full effect.
Martin: He draws the correct conclusion. So once big objects like the Earth and the Sun are formed, then because the universe is full of particles flying around, of course new particles will just hit and grow — and this is what we actually observe. The Earth is growing — I forget the exact number, but something like a centimeter per year, or at least a millimeter per year, from space dust.
Cassius: That’s fascinating. I’ve never heard that before.
Charles: Yeah, I haven’t heard that either.
Martin: You can roughly estimate it from how deep under the Earth the remains of the ancient Romans are in Cologne — they are from about 2,000 years ago, and they are 2 meters deep, so that means roughly it’s 1 millimeter per year which accumulates. Of course you cannot really separate everything out — you will have dust from the mountainous area or from the desert, or also from space. But you can see this also in Cologne because the area around the cathedral is actually on a rock that is well above the river. Even when there was a flood, that rock was always above the level — so there is no way that sand from the water would cover what was built on that rock. And nowadays we may not observe this effect so clearly because we do daily street cleaning, so any dust gets washed away. But in the past they didn’t have that, so dust would accumulate, and the roads — they were made of rocks with gaps in between — things could sink in.
Also, this mechanism is ultimately what let the sun turn into a sun — it started off as an agglomeration of mass, and by collecting more and more it eventually became critical enough to trigger the collapse which would start the fusion. And another thing: one of the reasons it is speculated that we have life on Earth is because we have a very large other planet, Jupiter, not far from us, which collects a lot of the larger debris from the asteroid belt. A lot more of those would otherwise fall onto Earth and perhaps wreak havoc, making it more difficult for life to develop further. So there are multiple things where this plays in, and it’s quite interesting. It’s a fairly logical consequence of the way things are if you figure the universe as being built from particles — it’s an immediate consequence. And in this aspect, he’s right. Later on he writes something about nonsense, but from this aspect he’s exactly spot on, which is quite remarkable.
Cassius: Very interesting. We can go on to the second paragraph, which is basically an elaboration or a restatement of the mechanism by which the earth increases in the first paragraph.
Martin: Yeah, he just applies it on a much smaller scale. At first he was talking about the Earth; now he’s talking about individual creatures. But he’s making the same general proposition. And again, it’s largely correct. So for example, one idea is that the reason we have so much water on Earth is that it was all carried in by comets and meteorites, because the original composition of Earth would not have had that much water, or it would have evaporated.
Cassius: I’ve not heard that either — that’s another interesting thing to me. I’m very familiar with seeing pictures of meteorites crashing into the Moon, or Mars, or Venus, or whatever, and presumably into Earth as well. Of course, if they burn up in the atmosphere, that doesn’t mean their particles go to nothing — their particles are still going to be part of the Earth after that. So you definitely would have the Earth increasing in size.
Are you saying there’s some kind of scientific calculation now as to the mass of the Earth that is actually increasing?
Martin: Certainly, this data exists because they can estimate what is the average annual intake for meteorites and similar bodies and from space dust, and that should add up to something like in the order of one millimeter per year.
Cassius: Interesting. Well, if we go to the third section we have here — where he starts talking about “by the same rule, the heavens and the walls of the world must tumble down by continual attacks and fall to ruin” —
Martin: Yeah, there he gets it wrong, because he draws the wrong analogy. He doesn’t have the right model except for the basic one, and then he draws the wrong conclusion. Because this impact of the meteorites doesn’t damage the earth — it just gets redistributed, and eventually settlements will form new rocks. So nothing happens in that sense. The Earth is small — it would take too many billions of years for the Earth to become like the Sun. So we have the overarching scenario that the Sun will just grow to consume the Earth — it will approximately reach the Earth’s trajectory — and so even if it doesn’t reach it completely, the Sun will still be so hot that life on Earth will be erased. So this is what’s going to happen. I don’t recall the exact prediction of whether the Earth would then fall into the Sun or still circulate close to it, but —
Cassius: Okay. So just to be precise — the latest predictions of science as to the ultimate fate of the Earth are that the Sun will itself expand or get hotter to the point where life is not sustainable on Earth?
Martin: I mean, actually it will be cooler but it will still be hot for life, because it just grows — it turns into a red giant and expands. The calculated expansion will be approximately close to the size of the Earth’s trajectory. And this happens in something like — I don’t remember the exact number — five to ten billion years. And of course, there’s a much larger picture of what happens in the far more distant future beyond that.
Cassius: So in this case his analogy ends up being not what we would predict, because his analogy is ultimately that everything that gathers together particles eventually loses them at an ever-increasing rate to the point where it cannot sustain itself. But we’re not thinking the Earth ends up losing particles over time — something else is going to happen before that could actually occur. The Earth is going to be overwhelmed by the Sun first.
Martin: Yeah. And the other thing is that for the Earth it’s a balance — the Earth is losing particles but it wins more than it loses. It loses predominantly hydrogen —
Cassius: Out of the atmosphere, it escapes the gravitational pull?
Martin: Yes, because hydrogen has the longest tail into space and then eventually gets lost. Does it lose anything else at a slower rate? When anything acid should be replenished — rocks contain oxide — if we lose a bit of oxygen, that oxygen will in principle be replaced. The only thing I read is that there is a net loss of hydrogen.
Cassius: Now it occurs to me — and this is an area where putting too much stress on a particular word is probably a bad idea — in the beginning of this sentence I’m reading, it says “by the same rule, the visible heavens, the surrounding walls of this great world.” When he uses the word “world,” that takes us back to the issue that Epicurus apparently defined “world” in a way as to include more than just the Earth — he was talking about a particular local star system or something like that. Some commentators say so; I don’t know what the right answer to that is, and whether he intends “earth” here. But one thing to keep in mind is that apparently, like in the Letter to Herodotus, Epicurus talks about a “world” as being a combination of things like the sun and planets and stars and not just a single body. Martin, if you pick that up anywhere, do you have a comment on that?
Martin: Yes, to me that looks like a fairly clear consensus — it’s basically something on the scale of a planetary system, a solar system, or a galaxy of that size, but not bigger than a galaxy. The thing is, Epicurus was probably not aware of what is actually a solar system and what is a galaxy, because people just couldn’t see that accurately. If they had the right model, they could interpret the Milky Way as an arm of the galaxy — but for that you need to have already a more sophisticated model. It’s not obvious to go from seeing the Milky Way to the conclusion that it is the extent of the galaxy we are part of.
Charles: Now I’ve probably not read more into this than you have, but this is definitely beyond the extent of my research into Epicurus. I know there are people who have written a good bit about what Epicurus meant by worlds and how they come into being, in swirls and so forth. Only that in the Letter to Herodotus he also talked a bit about worlds, but I can’t think of anything else to add. The general consensus along the translations is to use the word “world,” which brings us back to our first point about emphasis on the translations. My expectation of what he’s talking about is that he’s starting at this picture of the universe being just floating elements among void, and he has to pick a location — a locale — where they start to form. However he sees this locale of where these atoms start to come together is what he’s talking about with “the world,” and that’s not necessarily the Earth, it’s not necessarily a solar system or a galaxy — it’s what he’s seeing as the organizing area, whatever that is.
Martin: Well, he was right in a way. I mean, he couldn’t predict exactly these objects we now identify, but the principal idea is correct: once you have an agglomeration of something, this agglomeration will grow typically. I mean, there’s one mechanism — if there’s one body orbiting another and the difference between centrifugal force and gravitational force across the diameter is too big relative to the forces holding the matter together — then it may be taken apart. We do see objects where that happens. The rings of Saturn are thought to be formed that way: there were originally moons around Saturn and those got torn apart. But other than that, any agglomerated object will typically grow — it collects space dust, it gets hit by meteorites, and the bigger an object is the more likely it is to collect more and grow further.
Also, where he goes completely wrong is that he concludes from veins in living beings that the Earth will have veins too. That’s nonsense. The way the Earth is built doesn’t need veins in the way he describes. And it’s also quite interesting that this particular error — I think it’s from Lucretius rather than from Epicurus — in ancient Rome they probably still knew how it was before they overexploited their environment. The Mediterranean was full of lush forests, and by the time of the Romans it was turned into an almost desert-like landscape where only dry bushes are still there. They probably also did increase in population and over-hunted. And so he draws the conclusion that the Earth has become feeble because it does not produce that much anymore — but instead, those were the visible signs of an ecological catastrophe that the ancient Romans had wiped out most of the game population and had destroyed their habitats.
Cassius: That’s a good point, Martin. When you’re talking about where he says “the earth is feeble and worn out,” he continues by saying “that it scarce produces a puny kind of creatures where it formerly bore a lusty race” — so they had chopped down all the trees and caused a local catastrophe as you said.
Martin: And for the climate it is too small scale, but an ecological local catastrophe — without the forest you don’t get enough water, and also if you cut down dramatically you cannot easily grow new forests. They had not figured out yet how to replenish the minerals which are used up by agriculture. It clearly indicates that they had a problem with crop yields in the Roman Empire at the time of Lucretius already. On a slower scale, but if we take this by its word, what happened in the Roman Empire is that the agriculture was done wrongly, and that means it’s not that the Earth itself has worn out — it’s just that the agriculture was done incorrectly.
Cassius: Well, there are always multiple levels of things that we talk about. At an individual local level, based on my reading, you’re very much correct about how the Romans had misused their local area and caused problems for themselves. It’s like Lucretius was looking at that local analogy and using it as an example of his philosophical point, because his philosophical point is much wider than just applying it to the local Roman environs. He’s making the general philosophical point that all things that come together eventually come apart.
Martin: There’s one thing that doesn’t have to be like that — and he’s running into a Stoic trap here, because he thinks nothing can be done. But if you have the right model, you know you need to make sure that the minerals get replenished and then you have your yields up again.
Cassius: Right. Now Martin, you’re continuing to focus on the local environmental issues, and I think you’re right to be doing that, but I thought when you said “there’s one thing that doesn’t fall for that theory” you were going to say the Epicurean gods — because in the Epicurean theory, the gods have perfected the method of replenishing their elements. I think that’s the distinguishing factor of them and their ultimate effective immortality. They replenish their own atoms continuously, which would be in contrast to any local individual — including the earth itself, from the widest point of view. Unless you are able to maintain your atomic structure consistently over time, then you are ultimately bound for destruction. And logically the only thing that in Epicurean terms is able to do that is something that has mastered the art of replenishing its atoms — which is the Epicurean gods, according to On the Nature of the Gods, the last record we have from Cicero.
But I know that’s not the point you were making. The point you’re making locally is absolutely correct: you don’t be a Stoic and just accept things as they are if you can change them. You go out and change them. You prolong your life, you live as successfully and as long as you possibly can by intelligent use of resources and by not destroying the environment around you.
Martin: Yes. The other thing is we need to really see here where he’s wrong: the observation from living beings cannot just be transferred by analogy to non-living things. The mechanism by which a planet would eventually come to an end is entirely different. We don’t have a planet losing particles more than it gains — that’s a simplified model for how one phenomenon works in living beings with a final lifetime, but this doesn’t apply to rocks or things like that. Catastrophic events from outside lead to their destruction, and that is different from living beings.
Cassius: Yeah, that’s the old issue of when you use an analogy, you’ve got to be very careful that the things you’re comparing are of the same nature and have all the same circumstances around them. It’s very difficult to make sure you’ve accounted for all of the circumstances. The Earth versus a cat have very different circumstances of means of survival, growth, and death.
Charles, your input is needed.
Charles: I mean I agree — because when Lucretius makes the analogy between Earth and creatures, he assumes that the Earth or worlds have veins, and that’s not true. But figuratively speaking, if you were defending his position, you would take the position that he’s being very figurative there — that when he’s talking about a vein in an animal, he’s really just talking about the mechanism by which the thing works. Some way for the particles to make their way through.
Cassius: Yeah. Because I do think the direction he’s going is to set the stage and acclimate everybody — because a lot of his attention is always focused on how we live our lives and how we see ourselves in the universe. I think one of the things he’s probably doing is acclimating people to understand that they themselves come to an end and die, just like everything else in the universe does, just like the world itself is not permanent. Nothing is permanent. It’s probably a means of reconciling yourself to the fact that you’re not permanent too.
We’re about to come to the end of Book Two, so we ought to think about general commentary before we launch into Book Three. It’s usually tradition for Martin to go first — maybe traditions come to pass as well.
Martin: Traditions come to an end as well, yes.
Cassius: I think it’s a good tradition, because normally by that late point there’s nothing left for me to say in addition.
Cassius: But let me read the Martin Ferguson Smith edition as the final way we close out Book Two. This is what Martin Ferguson Smith has as his last paragraph. He divides it a little bit differently:
Moreover in the beginning the earth herself spontaneously produced lustrous crops and exuberant vines for mortals. She herself gave them pleasant fruits and lush pastures which now scarcely grow in spite of our toilsome tendance. We exhaust our oxen, sap the strength of our farmers, and wear out our iron implements and fields that scarcely afford subsistence. So ungenerous is their yield and so sorely do they demand increasing toil.
Now the aged plowman shakes his head and time after time sighs that his hard labor has all come to nothing, and when he compares present times with times past he often extols his father’s fortune. His gloomy sentiments are echoed by the planter of the old shriveled vine who deplores the tendency of the times, heaps abuse upon the age, and growls that the people of olden days, paragons of piety, supported life comfortably on their narrow plots, even though the portion of land owned by each man was formerly much smaller than now. Only he fails to grasp that all things gradually decay and head for the reef of destruction, exhausted by long lapse of time.
Cassius: So in what way is that an appropriate conclusion to Book Two?
Charles: I’d have to reread the introduction to Book Three.
Cassius: Well, one thing I would say is that it’s a reminder that life comes to an end for everything, including us, and that we have to be very careful to make hay while the sun shines, because nothing is going to survive forever. It’s a good time to talk about the mortality of the soul. And that’s what we’re going to turn to very soon.
For some reason, reading that reminds me of a phrase attributed to Cicero — “Oh the times, oh the morals” — when he was decrying how Rome had decayed. But I just kind of see in this last paragraph he’s evoking how common it is for all of us as we get older to lament how times seem to be not nearly as successful and lively and happy as they were. And that that’s just something that’s part of the cycle of the universe.
Martin: Yeah. But again, we need to keep in mind his analogy is wrong. I think it’s again a hint at the ecological catastrophe — the Romans apparently did not figure out that they needed to replenish some of the minerals used up by agriculture. And it clearly indicates that they had a problem with yields in the Roman Empire at the time of Lucretius already. This tells me they did not yet know how to do that. They were still at the level of primitive older cultures in the forest, where they would just slash part of the forest, grow for a couple of years, and once the readily available minerals in that area were consumed by the plants, they could no longer efficiently grow and had to move elsewhere. On a slower scale, but if we take this passage by its word, the same thing happened in the Roman Empire too.
Cassius: Well, there’s always multiple levels, and as I said at an individual local level based on my reading you’re very much correct — but he’s making the general philosophical point, or at least asserting it, that all things that come together eventually come apart.
We need to use a moment to fall back to just a general overview of Book Two and what we’ve been discussing here, as opposed to Book One. Is there a way to summarize what we’ve done in Book Two that’s different from Book One?
Cassius: Kind of — it’s a lot more, and he’s certainly gone into much more detail about the nature of the atoms. In Book One he basically set up the system that the universe operates naturally based on atoms and void, and here in Book Two he has just done a lot more detail about how that actually occurs with the atoms and void. But are there overarching conclusions that you can say he’s drawing from what we’ve seen in Book Two?
I mean, here at the end I do think he’s making the ultimate point that everything comes to an end — everything that comes together comes to an end — which is sort of an extension of “everything comes from something and nothing goes to nothing.” And he’s just spent a lot of time in Book Two hammering home how all this can happen without the direction of supernatural beings.
Charles: Because there’s been some mention of the gods here and there that we’ve been able to sort of look through the text and know that’s what he’s alluding toward.
Cassius: Right. I’m looking at Munro’s summary and there’s a lot of discussion in this section of Book Two about color, and I think that’s a reminder of where he’s hammering home the point that the elements themselves do not have color or other qualities as a permanent attribute of them. Which DeWitt would say goes to combat the Platonic idea that there are eternal ideas, or that anything is eternal other than the atoms themselves — because you’ve got to have something eternal other than the atoms in order to erect a Platonic, theistic universe of some realm of permanent forms. And the atoms having qualities like that — it doesn’t make sense in comparison to them being a building block to be distributed to everything else, because then everything would inherit those qualities. If they have inherent qualities, they do become a bit more Platonic — like the Platonic solids, or something.
Right now, if I were forced to give a sentence or make a single point about what Book Two seems to be all about, that would probably be near the top of my list: that he is asserting that the ultimate elements of the universe are not made into little people, that people are not made of little people, that trees are not made of little trees, that the atoms themselves do not have any of the qualities that we see around us — but they are used to form all of the things that we see around us — and not from supernatural intervention. Everything we see comes from the natural interaction of atoms and void, and not from a supernatural intervention. Book Two has largely been explaining how that’s the case.
Martin, do you want to say anything in summary about Book Two?
Martin: Yeah, I still don’t have the right idea of what to say.
Cassius: Okay. I’m glad we’ve got it completed because this book was challenging.
Cassius: Yeah. I know that what we’ve been doing over the last several sessions as we’ve gone through Book Two, we’ve been talking a lot about the specifics of his observations about atoms and void, and sometimes he’s right and sometimes he’s wrong. And so we have to be very careful about getting so bogged down in the trees that we don’t see the forest. And the forest is the ultimate conclusions about how this does operate naturally, without supernatural intervention — even if he’s got certain details incorrect, he’s still come up with reasonable theories about how things work without control of the gods.
And in Book Three it looks like he’s turning to the issue of the soul and spirit and consciousness, which will be much more interesting to us. But I do think that the area where people stumble is — if you get just too caught up in the detail of what the atom is about, you lose sight of the issue that the whole purpose of discussing atoms is to show how this happens naturally. And as long as it happens naturally, it really doesn’t matter that much whether a particular item he’s got is totally on base or somewhat off base. That’s part of the distinction between Democritus and Epicurus — Epicurus wasn’t a scientist for the sake of science.
Charles: That is exactly the point I was about to make. We are not studying this because we are attempting to become the best scientists that ever lived — and that was the same with Epicurus and the people he was talking to. Wisdom is not an end in itself. Science is not an end in itself. At the end of the day, at the end of our discussion, we have to go out and live our lives, and we have to decide how we’re going to spend our time and what we’re going to pursue. We’re never going to have all of the information about science that we would like to have — we have a lot more than they did in Epicurus’s time, but we still don’t have all the answers ourselves. And so that doesn’t mean we can just absolve ourselves of all decision-making. We just can’t be a total skeptic and say “I don’t know these things and therefore there’s no way for me to know what to do, so I’m just going to stay in bed this morning.” You’ve got to get out of bed, you’ve got to live your life as best you can.
And the idea that there is a reasonable system that explains how the world operates without supernatural gods is a very useful thing for people who actually have to live their lives — as opposed to just sitting in a classroom and debating eternally. Nobody has the luxury of being in a classroom for eternity discussing possibilities. They have to ultimately make decisions about life based on what they think is the most likely answer to basic questions.
Cassius: Now I’m pontificating too much, but nevertheless that’s the way I see the significance of a lot of this in Book Two.
Okay, we can begin to come to a conclusion for today. Any final thoughts from anybody?
Charles: Nothing that hasn’t already been said. I guess there’s another thing too — what’s been kept in mind the whole time, that we can’t forget: even though there are all these explanations about natural phenomena, it’s still all within the mind and goal that pleasure is the end. And that ties in very heavily to not doing science for the sake of science — it’s an explanation and justification for pleasure.
Cassius: That’s right, that’s right. Because if there is a supernatural god, if we can dig deep enough into an atom and find an ideal form, then we need to listen to those things and follow them. But as we drill down and observe and investigate as best we possibly can, we just don’t find the evidence of that. And so what we do find is that nature gave us certain faculties to live by, and among those are pleasure and pain, and those are the ultimate indicia of choice — not a divine command, and not an ideal form.
Martin: Even if you find an ideal form, there is no reason to worship it. So it will not change things dramatically. Because some people take this reductionism and consequently point out that because the universe can be modeled mathematically, mathematics is essentially something like the ideal form — of everything.
Cassius: Yes, that’s an example. It is awesome how formulas and mathematics and geometry can be used to explain things. It can become very enticing to look at the complexity of something that we can erect and say that we’ve therefore explained it and found the ultimate thing that we should worship. But that’s not the case — ultimately, there is no reason to worship that. And ultimately that gets back to the question of: what is the reason that we do anything? What is the reason that we exert our effort in any direction other than for the reward of feeling? Other than feeling itself — if we don’t have feeling, we don’t exist as living beings. As Epicurus noted, existence without sensation is nothing to us.
Cassius: Okay. As we close today’s Book Two, I want to thank you guys for all of your reliability and the effort that you’ve put into going through the two books so far. I know Elaine could not be with us today, but she’s been an incredibly valuable part of this as well, and she’ll be back next week as I understand it. So with that we’ll close for today and be talking with you again soon. Thanks very much, guys.
Martin: Thanks, everybody.
Charles: Bye.