Episode 050 - Lucretius - Book Four The Opening of Book Four - Images
Date: 12/27/20
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1806-episode-fifty-opening-of-book-four-beginning-the-discussion-of-images/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”(Add summary here)
Transcript (Unedited)
Section titled “Transcript (Unedited)”Welcome to Episode 50 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 anyone who’s not familiar with our podcast, please check back to Episode 1 for a discussion of our goals and our ground rules. If you have any question about that, please be sure to contact us at EpicureanFriends.com for more information. In today’s episode, we begin Book 4 and we carry the discussion up to approximately Latin 109.
Let’s join the discussion with Charles reading today’s text.
Inspired, I wander over the muses’ seats of difficult access and, yes, untrod. I love to approach the purest springs and thence to draw large draughts. I love to crop fresh flowers and make a noble garland for my head from thence, where yet the muses never bound another’s temples with a crown like mine. And first I write of lofty things and strive to free the mind from the severest bonds of what men call religion. Then my verse I frame so clear. Although my theme be dark, seasoning my lines with the poetic sweets of fancy, and reason justifies the method. For as physicians, when they would prevail on children to take down a bitter draught of wormwood, first tinge the edges of the cup with sweet and yellow honey. That so the children’s unsuspecting age, at least their lips may be deceived, and take the bitter juice, thus harmlessly betrayed but not abused. By tasting thus, they rather have their health restored. So I, because of simplicity, system seemed severe and harsh.
Such who have not yet discerned its truth, and the common herd are utterly adverse to this philosophy. I thought it fit to show these rigid principles in verse, smooth and alluring, and hinge them, as it were, with sweet poetic honey, thus to charm your mind with my soft numbers, till you view the nature of all things clearly, and receive the usefulness and order they display. Now since I taught what are the first principles of all things, and how they differ in their figures, and wander of their own accord, urged on by, and how of them all beings are first formed, and I have shown the nature of the mind, of what seeds composed, and how it exerts itself united with the body, and separated from it, how it returns to its first principles again, I shall now begin to explain what is of the nearest concern to these inquiries, and prove that there are what we call the images of things, which, like membranes, or films, flowing from the surface of bodies, fly every way abroad through the air. These, while we may be able to see them, we are awake often rush.
Upon our minds and terrify us and likewise sleeping when we think we see strange phantoms inspectors of the dead which shake us horribly when fast asleep for sure we are not to imagine that the souls are broke loose out of hell or that the ghosts hover and play about the living or that any part of us remains after death since a soul and body once dissolved return severally to their first seeds from once they were produced I say then that images or tenuous figures are always flowing or sent out from the surface of bodies which may be called the membranes of the bark of things and these several images bear the same shape and form as a particular body from once they flow this requires no extraordinary apprehension to conceive for to give a plan instance many things emit bodies from themselves some more rare and diffused as which charges smoke and fire of vapor others more dense and compact as when grasshoppers in summer cast their old coats.
Newborn, drop the pellicules in which they are enclosed, or as the winding snake leaves a skin among the thorns, for the briars we often see adorned with their light spoils. This being so, it follows that a very subtle image may fly off from the utmost surface of bodies, for there can be no reason given why these, and not others more thin than these, may not fall off and be discharged, especially since in every surface there are many minute corpuscles that may be cast off. in the very same order they are arranged in the body, and so preserve their old form and figure, and they are the readier to fly off because they are small, and not so liable to be stopped, and are placed likewise upon the utmost surface. For it is certain that many particles are not sent out and get loose only from the middle and inward parts, as we said before, but color itself is discharged from the surface of bodies, and so curtains, yellow, or a deep red, or blue, as they hang in lofty theaters, waving.
Beams, and flowing on the pillars with the wind, do this, for they stain the stage, and scenes, and audience, senators, matrons, and the images of the gods, and cause them to wave in their own gaudy dye. And the more the walls of the theater are darkened, and the daylight shut out, everything which is spread over and shines out with a brighter luster, since therefore these curtains discharge their colors from the surface, all things, by the same rule, may emit subtle images, for those are thrown off from the surface, and the walls of the theater are cast off, for those are thrown off from the surface, and may emit subtle images, for those are thrown off from the surface, and may emit subtle images, for those are thrown off from the surface, as well as these. There are therefore certain images of things, of a fine and subtle texture, that are always flying about, and are impossible separately to be discovered by the eye. Besides, all smell, smoke, vapor, and other such things fly off from bodies in a diffused and scattered manner, because as they pass to the outside of bodies from within, they are broken and divided by the crooked pores they must make their way through. The road they are to take is full of windings, as they attempt to rise and fall. fly out.
On the contrary, when the membrane of color is thrown off, there is nothing to disorder it, because it lies disentangled upon the very surface. And then, since the forms that appear to us in looking-glass and water and all polished bodies are exactly like the things whose images they are, they must necessarily be composed of the images that flow from the substance of the things themselves, for why those particles should fall away and be discharged from bodies which are discovered by the eye, rather than these that are more thin and solid. No reason can be properly assigned. That was an odd paragraph. I have more trouble with that one than usual. Yes. Okay. Well, thanks for reading that one, Charles. A couple of housekeeping matters as we get started today. First of all, Elaine is not with us. We’re recording this on December the 20th of 2020, and the event that has spurred Elaine to be absent is that she’s one of the first to be taking the COVID-19 vaccinations, and she reported to us this morning. that she’s having some react.
Which hopefully is minor and actually might be a good thing. But at any rate, she’s not with us this morning. So we’re starting off book four here, which is Charles and Martin and I. Well, Elaine will hopefully be back next week. And so today, as we go into what Charles has just read, most of it is something that we’ve covered before. And we probably ought to start book four sort of the same way that Lucretius is doing here by reviewing where we’ve been and why we’re here and using the thing that we’ve been doing as a text here as a jumping off point for that. So to start with this first passage, the one about being inspired and drinking from the fountain of the Pierian muses is something that’s been repeated from, if I don’t have the site in front of me, but I believe it’s somewhere in book one. So the whole issue about the fact that Lucretius is writing a poem to rim the cup with honey and make a philosophy that can be bitter to some more palatable is something we’ve, have discussed before and.
We probably don’t need to go too far into it today but what I would like to make sure we’re together on before we go further Lucretius next turns to his own sort of summary of where we’ve been and I’d like for us to do that too as we’re starting book four we ought to think about what we’ve already covered in books one two and three and we talked a little bit about that before we started by recording today but book one in the second paragraph Lucretius says now since I taught what are the first principles of all things and how they differ in their figures and wander in their own accord urged on by eternal motion and how they’re formed I think that’s basically book one and the nature of the universe that has been discussed there do you guys agree with that book one is generally what he’s described there generally what else would you say Charles stuck out in your mind about book one a bit about what was brought up brought up in the first paragraph to.
A lot of the poetic imagery, especially when he talks about the legacy and just the reputation and reverence he has for Epicurus. Book one had a lot more of that. Yes, I would then agree that the second paragraph here paralleled, well not, I shouldn’t say paralleled, but it’s a nice summary of what book one constitutes. And you know, Charles, what you said, what you just said about the first paragraph, one line of it that is not in my mind just to repeat is, or it is a repeat, but where he says, I write of lofty things and strive to free the mind from the severest bonds of what men call religion. I mean, that certainly is a theme of everything, too, is that one of his purposes is to free people from the bonds of supernatural religion. That’s certainly one of his purposes that we need to keep in mind that he’s writing about all through the poem. And also, that’s also something that’s.
Brought up quite a bit in book one especially with the very famous line about such evil and wicked things or such evil that is driven or done by religion or so much is religion able to persuade men to evil deeds or something like that and so okay if that’s basically what book one started out with what did we accomplish in book two in the first line of the second passage that we’re looking at he goes on from discussing how things are formed and then he starts talking about he’s shown the nature of the mind and what seeds compose it and then he says how it’s united with the body and separated from it so he’s collapsing a lot of things right there so book two isn’t book two a lot about the nature of the mind and also I think you pointed out earlier Charles maybe it’s a lot more detail about how the atoms combine with each other and more detail about how the atoms form everything atoms in void form.
Everything. I think maybe I’ve noticed this before and during the months of this podcast, I’ve since forgotten about it since it’s a pretty small detail or maybe not so, but I noticed earlier when we were thinking about what each book can be summarized as dealing with, I realized that the structure of the book and how Lucretius disseminates a lot of the topics and arguments of the philosophy of also mirror a lot of, well, not only Diogenes Laertius’ order or chronology of introducing Epicurus’ letters, but also how we view, as in us on the forums, the right or first things to teach others about the philosophy, starting off with some fundamentals, but primarily the physics and the atoms, that there is no afterlife, there is no supernatural god, and then Moving on to.
Right. Martin, feel free to jump in at any point. I noticed in looking at some of my notes on book two that he’s definitely continuing the theme there that there’s no supernatural force over nature in book two. In book one, he really introduced atoms and void. And book two, he sort of continued the implications to show how what he taught in book one is going to lead you to the conclusion that there’s no supernatural control. Control over everything, that everything operates naturally without the control of a supernatural God, including the issue of human life or life in general arising from things that are nonliving. If he’s introduced in book one that atoms and void exist and compose everything, one of the points he makes in book two is that these atoms and void are not themselves living things. So that living things, which is what concerns us the most, are composed of nonliving.
Non-supernatural elements, I think, would be another point of book two. And I think, Charles, you made a point earlier as well about how book two begins to contrast Epicurus’ viewpoints against certain other philosophers in more detail maybe than was done in book one as well. The issue of whether living things are made of living particles, the question of whether intelligent things are made of intelligent particles. There were particular philosophers associated with different. Different positions with those things that are pointed out in book two, how Epicurus differed from them. And so then book three, which is probably the easiest to characterize, was focused on how the mind or the spirit or however you want to characterize your conscious self, how that is not supernatural, but is indeed united with the body and that it cannot survive after death. That it is dissolved just like the rest of the body when you die and does not. go to heaven to be.
Rewarded or held to be punished. It just simply ceases to exist at death. So from a very, very broad point of view, everything we’ve discussed up to this point certainly can fit within the purpose that Lucretius is saying, which is to free your mind from religion, because he’s certainly setting up a theory of the universe and everything which is natural and not governed by supernatural forces and in which you’re not divine and continuing on after death or existing before birth. So he’s really setting up a theory which can free the mind from that kind of what he would consider to be superstition. And so to keep pontificating for a few more minutes here, so he, and so now we’re in book four and what we’re introducing today is the subject of images. And that’s something I also would like to talk about before we get too far into the details of it, because he’s set up these things that we’ve discussed already about the nature of life and how things operate and Just my own perspective of.
What he seems to be attacking now is he is going to now approach the issue of knowledge and how we gain information about the rest of the universe, how we gain information about ourselves and how we gain information about other things and how we do that in a way that is natural and not supernatural. And this is where I definitely want to get Martin’s participation and input into this. So we’ve set up a universe which is based on particles in the void. And I think that he’s seeing the need to come up with a procedure or a mechanism by which we interface, come into contact with, gain information about or deal with the rest of the universe that also is not supernatural. In other words, we’re not going to have divine revelation. We don’t gain information about the things around us because God implants it in our head. We have to have some method of observing things. since everything is made of.
Particles and void in the Epicurean universe, then particles or some kind of transmission of matter from that thing to us or from us to that thing is going to have to be involved. And so the term that there’s several different terms that end up being used, but the one we’ll probably use the most in our discussing it is the word images. And so the discussion for a lot of the rest of book four is going to be the nature of how particles move across space from the things we see to us or from us to those things that we see, and then how that knowledge allows us to analyze how the senses work because the senses are dependent upon these particles flying through the air. Then there’s going to be implications of that, that maybe the particles get distorted or get pushed in a way that sometimes we can observe things more clearly than others. And so we have to determine under what conditions we can observe things more clearly.
What kind of distortions could cause misunderstandings or or misobservations of what we see. OK, oh, and with all that, this is where I want to get Martin involved in the from the point of and Charles, of course, you too. But from the point of view of the issue of I confess myself, I don’t fully understand even the current science about light. And even from the framework of when we see something or it’s it’s more clear to me that when we hear something or when we smell something, we are actually receiving particles. Like if you smell something, at least intuitively, I understand that maybe there’s some kind of particle of odor or scent coming out of the flower that travels through the air and comes into our noses. That seems to me pretty, pretty clear and uncontroversial. But I don’t even fully understand myself when we see something. Are there actually particles that are moving from the thing we see into our eye? I presume that since particles are flying in all directions at all times,
There’s actually particles from us that are flying in all directions as well. But in terms of sight, which I think is predominantly what we’re going to be talking about in book four, are there actual particles that fly from the other thing to us or not? Yes, there are the photons. I mean, it may not be obvious like this in every model. I mean, we need to be aware of it’s a model, but by taking this serious, we can really consider this as, and in this case, that are really as, as far as we know, elementary particles. That means they’re not subdivided first. Those are one of the smallest entities Epicurus has been talking about. And an example that I would maybe throw out to use is that, obviously, when we look at the sun or when we’re out in the sun, we feel warmth from the sun. Is that because some particle from the sun has impacted on our body?
Or is it because some particle has actually traveled those many, those many miles away from the sun to us? We absorb these photons. Our skin absorbs them or the deeper tissue because it can penetrate a bit and excites the atoms in their structures to vibrate more. And that means temperature increases. So that’s why we feel the nice warming effect when we’re exposed to direct sunlight. Okay. I know. I’ve just talked an awful lot. Yeah. An awful lot. But to bring it back to this particular text, the first sentence of the second paragraph that we read today says, I say then that images or tenuous figures are always flowing or sent out from the surface of bodies, which may be called the membranes or the bark of things. And these several images bear the same shape and form as the particular body from which they flow. Now, there’s going to be a lot of different things in there that will have to be parsed out because I,
And see that the issue of whether those things travel in the same shape and form as the body from which they flow may not be obvious and may not be correct or will just have to analyze that. But I want to start with just the basic issue of do we even today think that there are particles that flow from the other things outside of us towards us and from us to them actually, of course, as well. But if we were in the same room looking at each other across the table, are there particles? And I’m at a table across from Charles. Are there actual particles flowing from Charles to towards me that are received by my eye? Yes. Yes. I mean, normally we are not hot enough to emit a light by ourselves, or else we don’t have chemical reactions on our surface, which would produce this. So we need a light source which originates those photons. They hit the surface and get scrapped. scattered or reflected.
Or absorbed and then re-emitted and those portions of those which reach our eyes, then they the information of those is then reconstructed by the brain as an image. Okay, and so in the situation like you say where we’re not generating a light source ourselves, it’s basically reflected or bounced off of us, but so the current science is we’re not just it’s not just a matter that the air between us, between me and Charles vibrates with a vibration that has started off with Charles and that there’s nothing transmitted except the vibration or the wave. We actually do think that there are particles of light that move from Charles to my eye. Yeah, it’s a bit more complicated because this wave model actually is complementarily used too. So that means.
The light which gets which travels in from one place to another can also be described depending on the circumstances as an electromagnetic field fluctuation. But even to the extent that electromagnetic field fluctuations do exist, we have not modern science has not eliminated the possibility or said that there are no particles flowing. No, modern science uses both models. Depending on what circumstances we are, what aspect we are particularly looking at, one model makes more sense than the other. Okay. You know, maybe I should go, maybe we should hit the five senses for just a minute. Does everybody agree that when you smell something, there’s some kind of a particle that has come from the flower to your nose? I mean in this case it’s not a particle in a Pecurian sense, it’s a molecule. So the molecule, are coming.
And we have some cells which are response then in a way to different chemicals such that if that matches to what the cell is designed for, then it sends a signal to the nerve, which then goes to the brain to process this as a smell. Dr. But it is still a material transmission from the flower to our nose. Dr. Yes, and in this case, there is no complementary model. It’s really a molecule coming. Dr. Okay, alright, and I guess with touch and with taste, it’s pretty probably easy to conclude that in both cases, your skin or your tongue is coming into contact with another material substance. So I think those are probably uncontroversial. What about hearing? Dr. Yeah, these are mechanical vibrations of the air. Dr. Alright. Dr. So where as a light, we can then look at from the aspect of electromagnetic Uh,
Radiation. So then and for what we hear is as in mechanical vibrations of the air. So all because air is itself is these are then molecules then flying around so then we have density fluctuations of these molecules and these fluctuations and they then excite the receiving part in the ears and induce mechanical vibrations in those which are then sensed by again by cells which converts this into a signal in the nerve. Okay well just so that I’m clear on that let me ask the question a different way. I understand you’re talking about vibrations. When Charles sitting in the room is sitting in the room. I understand you’re talking about vibrations. When Charles sitting in the room. I understand you’re talking about vibrations. When Charles sitting sitting in the room. I understand you’re talking about vibrations. When Charles sitting sitting in the room. I understand you’re talking about vibrations. When Charles sitting sitting in the room. I understand you’re talking about vibrations. When Charles sitting sitting in the room. I understand you’re talking about vibrations. When Charles sitting sitting in the room. I understand you’re talking about vibrations. When Charles sitting sitting in the room. I understand you’re talking about vibrations. When Charles sitting across the table from me sitting in the room. I understand you’re talking about vibrations. When Charles sitting across the table from me sitting in the room. I understand you’re talking about vibrations. When Charles sitting across the table from me speaks to me in the room. I understand you’re talking about vibrations. When Charles sitting across the table from me speaks to me across the table from me speaks to me across the table from me speaks to me are there actually particles are there actually particles are there actually particles or molecules or any other material or molecules or any other material or molecules or any other material substance that that flows from Charles.
To my ear. Yeah, not for the hearing. I mean, of course, a bit will come out, but that will not contribute meaningfully to what you hear. And the molecules which are excited then to vibrate in these density fluctuations, they don’t reach you. It’s just that they push the neighboring molecules, and then they push the next one. And so this goes through like a longitudinal wave and reaches you. So there, it’s just the mechanical excitation which comes over, not the actual particles. So we do see a significant distinction between sound and vision then in terms of whether particles are actually transmitted. Yes. That is interesting in itself to me. Okay. So maybe we’ll see differences in the way that’s analyzed as we go forward, or maybe we won’t. So then, Martin, what do you think about, if I’m still reading that same sentence that says, I say then that images or tenuous figures are always.
Flowing or sent out from the surface of bodies and that these several images bear the same shape and form as the particular body from whence they flow. What do you think about that? It’s just nonsense. Well, let’s, okay, and I should be more clear. Let’s talk about vision. Are the photons bearing in some way the shape of what they came from? How does that work? I mean, for this one, I mean, I would need to do drawings about how objects are imaged by lenses. And that would make it clear. So in some way, this shape is encoded in how the photons flow, but it’s not that the photons fly like a membrane. So that’s not happening. Right. And of course, when you use the word membrane, that’s exactly the example that he’s giving to us here. He’s talking about grasshoppers,
Shedding their coats and maybe calves, newborn calves being contained within the sack that they’re born in or the snake leaving his skin among the thorns. I mean, he is presenting real life examples that we’re familiar with of how a body can give off something that truly is its original shape. But that’s not, we would not say that shape itself is being, you know, preserved by the photons. Yeah, essentially it’s encoded in how the photons fly in what pattern. And then they decode it again on the other side. and, but it’s, it doesn’t go like simply like it’s called here. And if you would think of in this model, when the only given the direction in which it makes sense that this membrane, so to say, would fly, it would be perpendicular to the respective area of the surface. And then, That means for…
Shape like that of an existing body, it would grow, no? So that means this membrane would be diluted, and what reaches the eye would only be a small section. So that means a membrane, figured like a membrane, this would not aid at all in seeing a whole object. It would not be able to explain how we can see the whole object, no? We would not get any meaningful information out of that, with which we could reconstruct the whole object. So… So the action mechanism in which the photons enable us to see things is entirely different from having some sort of like a membrane type of thing fly. Okay. Well, keeping the big picture in context, as I think we always need to do, the bottom line is probably any difference in the modern way of looking at it is not going to have a major significance to the purpose for which we’re discussing it or the understanding that the Epicureans were drawing from their observations. Because I think the basics.
Understanding that they’re drawing is that there’s a natural method by which information is transmitted between the object that we’re looking at and us and that it’s not supernatural. It’s not arbitrary. It’s not, it’s certainly subject to distortion and will be different under different circumstances and contexts. But there’s ultimately a natural means by which this happens and it’s not magical or supernatural or divine. There’s a process involved that can be studied and analyzed and then used to basically improve the use of your senses when you, once you begin to understand under what circumstances distortions can occur, you can then take those circumstances into account and consider them in evaluating the things that you receive. Yeah, if you describe it like this, then it’s okay. But what is still puzzling, I mean, the way I just described how membranes wouldn’t work, So I wonder.
Why Epicurus really thinks through things in very detail that he didn’t notice this by himself, that a membrane type of thing will not enable us to see. Okay, why do you say that? I don’t know that I see that flaw here, because he’s talking about very subtle particles and very diffused, and they have all sorts of caveat words in here about how, and then of course at the end of this passage today he talks about how he considers how things work in a mirror and so forth, and that the polished bodies, the forms that appear to us in polished bodies are exactly like the things whose images they are. Where do you see a break in the chain, Martin? Where do you see a flaw in the comparison between seeing something versus an actual very light and very wispy, but still image actually traveling through the air? Yeah, the thing is because he makes a wrong assumption that the The ars is membrane.
Same shape. This is not happening. And even if at that time, okay, he would have not known what we know. So then he could come up, of course, with this idea of the membranes. But when you think through how this membrane would move, you wouldn’t see the whole body anymore. When that membrane reaches your eye, because that would correspond to only a very small portion of the body. So that means with this description, it cannot. It cannot explain how actual vision of whole objects work. You know, I wonder if there’s any reason to consider how images can be projected using lenses. Of course, I’m thinking about a modern application such as a slide projector or something like that. But even in the ancient world, you can reflect an image using a mirror, right? I don’t know that they had glass lenses, but they might have. Or if they have, or using.
A glass itself, can you hold a glass up to a lighted object and see the image in a, like one of these dark, these old-style cameras that are basically pinhole. That’s a great example right there, a pinhole camera. With simply a pinhole and a closed box, you can see an image form at the other end of the box. I don’t know whether the Greeks had that or not. But what do you think about that, Martin? If the Greeks had access to a pinhole camera or just images reflecting through glasses in any way, would they relate that to what we’re talking about? Or how would that relate to what we’re talking about? Would they look at that and think that that’s an example of an image actually flowing through the air? Probably. I mean, they definitely would support in some way that something is moving there. Something is transported there. So that is agreeable both for modern science and from practical observations at the ancient level. Charles, you haven’t said much lately. What about, You got any commentary on…
The pinhole cameras? No, not really. I know that there was something about how pinhole cameras work with how the light gets obscured in the box and all that. The only thing I can think of besides just what’s being talked about right now is I’m pretty sure Aristotle didn’t experiment on that, but that’s not really related to all this. Yeah, yeah. Well, today I just wanted to sort of introduce the topic and get us started because we’re going to be devoting a lot of time in book four to the… To the way images work and what we can conclude from them. But I guess in thinking through it, I didn’t have that example prepared for discussion today, but in thinking through it, even the ancient Greeks would have probably seen examples of images being projected. I guess the example of a mirror, I wasn’t even really thinking about a mirror, but you can… Or looking at a pool of water and seeing a reflection. Those are clearly examples that they’re talking about. And I guess… If you think about.
What must be happening, it’s probably logical to think that something is flowing through the air. And which is exactly, I guess, that’s what you’re saying, Martin, is that even today we still, to some extent, think in those terms, at least in terms of light. Yes, but we need to be aware that a number of these things probably were not known to the ancient Greeks. The oldest reference I know of that someone systematically analyzed these things and put them in a concise form which is still, very today, that is Ibn al-Haytham from about 1,100 years ago. I mean, in the textbooks, it’s usually credited with later European scientists. But this is because at that time, in Europe, the knowledge about Ibn al-Haytham’s work was lost. But it wasn’t lost everywhere, not completely. So certainly the educated Arab that they knew about it.
And those who came from time to time in contact with Arab knowledge, they would then rediscover this. And, of course, those who deal with the history of science figured this one as well. So, actually, it’s even al-Haytham who would have to be credited to have come up with this. But that was in the medieval age, so the Greeks didn’t have that knowledge. Before that, there was no accurate concept, probably, of how vision actually worked. Oh, one example that I can think of. Isn’t there some story about – it wasn’t Aristotle, it was somebody else. Who was it who came up with the idea of trying to burn attacking ships in the harbor by using big mirrors to focus light on them? You know, you guys know that example. Archimedes. Archimedes. for a practical.
Perspective, they knew how to use mirrors, but I’m not aware if they knew how to use lenses. I mean, they certainly would have a transparent jewelry, so they could play around with refraction. And like the example of that some astrate body looks like having a kink at the surface of water where it’s put into. So they were aware, at least qualitatively, of how refraction works. But they apparently did not make the step from there to how then a vision could work by reflection at the curved surface of a lens. Well, maybe we ought to begin to think about bringing the discussion for today to a conclusion. But one thing I do want to begin to talk about as we conclude is that Epicurus is often slammed for having made statements to the effect that all sensations are true. But I think one of the things that we’re really going to get out of book four here is that.
We’re going to be spending all of book four talking about how sensations can be distorted and how you have to take things into account. And we’ll be talking about all sorts of illusions as we go through book four. And the fact that he’s discussing it shows that he was fully aware that when you see something, you can’t always trust exactly what you see at the first. It’s reported honestly, but it might be reported in a way that is not true to the ultimate facts. And that what book four is doing here is alerting us to that, that there’s a process involved here that we have to understand in order that we can unwind the information we’ve received and produce a intelligent summary of it that is true. So that’s a very broad, high level statement at this point in the discussion. But we probably are getting to the end of a normal episode. So let’s talk about if anybody has any closing thoughts today, and then we’ll,
And in more detail next week when Elaine is back. Yeah, I think we need to resume the last paragraph because I don’t understand the last paragraph. So to figure this one out, we need to go more in detail. So this next time. Okay. All right. Do you see ultimately, do you see immediately a way of framing your, your question about it that we can think about? I just, I, it’s so blurred up by poetry. I just can, I just cannot put it together into something consistent, which is understandable. Okay. It was difficult. Enough reading. And yes, that’s right. Actually, I think what I’m going to suggest next week is that this paragraph is addressing exactly what I just said a moment ago, that Epicurus is observing how the light can play tricks on us. And if under certain conditions and then under other conditions, such as a mirror, things can be reflected in a way that’s very exact. So anyway, we can discuss that next week because I think that’s the critical theme that we’re going to have to follow here is, Epicurus did not teach that.
We should just blindly accept every sensation that comes to us as being true to the ultimate fact. Once we understand the nature of how the senses work, we realize we have to test it with multiple observations and even comparing our observations with those from other people before we can be confident that the conclusions that we draw are going to be worth following and accurate. So Charles has been saying several times that book four is going to be more interesting than some of the others and going to be… And of course, we’re going to cover in book four all the way from images to illusions to basic issues of epistemology all the way to sex and dreams and then sex and love at the end of book four. The images are, I mean, beyond the concept of the Epicurean gods, I’d say images are my weakest point. But this is really, images is really the whole issue. This is epistemology. This is the issue of how we know anything. I think we talk in terms of of images and items.
And all these words that seem mysterious. But I think in the end, ultimately, what we’re talking about is just the issue of how we can be confident about anything based on the information we received through the census. So there’s a lot of really good material in this chapter. I don’t have any closing thoughts. OK, Martin, anything else in closing? I have nothing further. OK, well, again, today is the is December the 20th. And some of us will be getting together later today to discuss the 20th observation. The Epicurus and the ancient Epicureans followed. So hopefully we’ll talk later today, but we’ll come back next week and continue in book four. All right. Thanks a lot. OK, thanks. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye