Episode 051 - More On The Working of "Images"
Date: 01/03/21
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1811-episode-fifty-one-the-workings-of-images/
Summary
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Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Welcome to Episode 51 of Lucretius Today,
Today Martin is reading today’s text - 110-229 of book 4 .
There are therefore tenuous and fine shapes of the same figure with the things themselves, which, though they cannot singly be distinguished by the sight, yet being reflected and swiftly and constantly repelled from the smooth plane of the glass, become visible, nor can any other reason be so properly offered while forms so like the things are returned to us. And now conceive, if you can, of what a tenuous and subtle nature an image consists, and for this reason in the first place because the seeds of things are so much beyond the reach and discovery of the thing. And are infinitely less than those bodies that escape the observation of the most curious eye. As a proof how subtle the first principle of things are, attend to these short observations. First they are animals, so exceeding small, that one third part of them cannot possibly by any means be discovered. What are you to conceive of the bowels of these creatures, of their little hearts and eyes? What of their members? What are you to think of their limbs? How small are they? What besides of the seeds which compose the soul?
And mind, don’t you imagine how subtle and minute they are? Besides, herbs that exhale a sharp smell from their bodies, such as all-heal, bitter-warm wood, strong thousand-wood, and four-century, if you shake any of these ever so lightly, you may be sure many particles fly off and scatter everywhere, but without force, and too weak to affect the scent. Yet how small and subtle are the images that are formed from these? No one can conceive or express, but lest you should think that the images that fly off the surface of bodies are the only things that wander abroad. There are other shapes that are fashioned of their own accord, and are produced in the lower region we call the air. These are framed in various manners, are carried upward, and being very subtle and less compact in their contexture, are ever-changing their figure, and assume all variety of forms. Thus we see the clouds sometimes thicken in the sky, darkening the serene face of the heavens, and wounding the air by violence of their motion. Now the shape of giants seem to fly abroad.
The shadows all round, and then huge hills and rocks torn from the mountaintop, are born before the sun, and hide his lies. Others again advance and represent the shape of monsters wandering through the sky. Now learn in how easy and swift a manner these images are produced, how they continually fly and fall off from the surface of bodies, for there is always a store of forms upon the outside of things ready to be thrown off. These, when they light upon some things, pass through them, as a garment, for instance, but when they strike upon sharp rocks or upon wood, they are immediately broken and divided, so that no image can be reflected. But when they are opposed by dense and polished bodies, such as looking glass, then nothing of this happens, for they can neither pass through this as through a garment, nor are they divided before the glass preserves their figure perfect and entire. Hence it is that these forms are presented to our sight, and play the thing ever so suddenly, and in a moment of time before the glass, and the image instantly appear, so that you you find.
Textures of things and subtle images continue flowing from the surface of bodies. And therefore many of these forms are produced in a short space of time and may be justly said to receive their being from a very swift motion. And as the sun is obliged to emit many of its rays in an instant that the whole air might be full of light, so many images of things must needs be carried off in the smallest point of time and scattered every way abroad. Place your glass in what manner you please. The things appear in the same color and figure they really are. So often when the face of the sky is most serene and bright it becomes on all sides black and horrid of the sun that you would think the whole body of darkness had left the regions below and filled the wide arc of heaven. So dreadful does the night appear from driving clouds and scatters gloomy terror from above. But how small in comparison of these clouds are the images of things no one can conceive or express. And now, with how swift courage these images are carried on, how suddenly they make their passage through the Yeah.
As the swan’s short song is more melodious than the harsh noise of trains scattered by winds through all the air, then we observe that light things that are formed of small particles are very swift in their motion. Of this sort are the rays and heat of the sun, because they are composed of very minute seeds which are easily thrust forward, as it were, through the interjacent air, the following urging on the path that went before. For one beam of light is instantly supplied by another, and every ray is pressed on by another behind. By the same rule, the images may pass through an unaccountable space in a moment of time, first because there is always a force behind to drive and urge them forward, and then their texture as they fly off is so thin and supple that they can pierce through any bodies and, as it were, flow through the air that lies between them. Besides, if these corpuscles that lie in the inward parts of bodies are discharged from above, down, upon the earth, on the earth and on the sky, then the same beam of light is constantly bringing them to the earth. That is, the image which is always in the back of the light, and then the energy which earth, such as the light.
And heat of the sun, if these we observe descend in the point of time, and spread themselves through all the expansion of the air, and fly over the sea, the earth, and the upper region of the heavens, if these are diffused with such wonderful celerity, what shall we say? Those particles that are always ready upon the utmost surface of things, when they are thrown off, and have nothing to obstruct their motions, don’t you see how those may fly swifter, and go further, and pass through a much greater space at the same time, than the beams of the sun take up to the make their way through? Another notable instance which fully proves with how swift a motion the images are carried on is this. As soon as a bowl of clear water is placed in the open air in starlight night, the shining stars are seen twinkling in the still water. Don’t you see, therefore, in what point of time the images descend upon the earth from the upper regions of the air? Again then, and again, you must allow that particles are perpetually flowing from the surface of bodies, which present themselves to our eyes, and strike our sight. from somebody’s trade.
Of smells are always flying off. So cold is emitted from the rivers, heat from the sun, a salt vapor from the water of the sea that eats through the walls along the shore. And sounds are always flying through the air. Lastly, as we walk upon the strand, salt tastes offends our mouths, and when we see a bunch of wormwood bruised, the bitterness strikes upon the palate. So plain it is that something is continually flying off from all bodies and is scattered all about. There is no intermission. The seeds never cease to flow. For we still continue to feel, to see, to smell and hear. Okay, thank you, Martin, for reading that. There’s a lot of detail in this week, and thankfully we have Elaine back this week to discuss some of those details. Before we get into the details of what Martin has read today, at the end of the podcast last week, Martin was calling to our attention that the last paragraph we read from last week was particularly difficult to understand, and maybe if we spend a few minutes on that, we’ll be able to… But today’s in better.
With Elaine not being here last week, we started book four, and after the opening session talking about Epicurus and drinking at the fountains of the muses, he started talking about images. And we talked about that Epicurus was saying that images come off the surface of everything. And basically, the point being that he was beginning a rational explanation of how we can make observations of things through vision and hearing and the five senses, basically. Using a particle theory or a material theory to explain how the senses work, as opposed to perhaps divine inspiration or some other mystical operation. He’s coming up with a scientific theory of observation, basically. And so, to go back to what Martin was asking about, there was a paragraph at the end that maybe I should quickly read through so that we know what we’re talking about. I’ll read it as quick as I can here. For it is certain that many particles are not sent out and get loose. only from the middle and inward perspective,
As we said before, but color itself is discharged from the surface of bodies. And so curtains, yellow or deep red or blue, as they hang in lofty theaters, waving expanded on the beams and flowing on the pillars in 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 their own gaudy die. And the more the walls of the theater are darkened and the daylight shut out, everything is spread over and sheds, it’s 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 as well as these. There are therefore certain images of things of fine and subtle and texture that are always flying about and are impossible severally 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’re 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 fly out. But 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 since the forms that appear to us in the looking glass and water and all polished bodies are exactly like the things whose images they were, they must necessarily be composed of the images that flow from the substance of things themselves. For why those particles should fall away and be discharged from bodies which are discovered by the eye, rather than those that are thin and subtle, no reason can properly be assigned. And so we’ve started today with just a bunch of text about images flying back and forth. But at least in my perspective, I think, again, what he’s trying to do is he is frequently accused of being said that all sensations are true, that basically, any image should be trusted.
If you listen to those characterizations of his point of view. But that’s not his position. He’s explaining that images that you observe will often be distorted in all sorts of different ways so that you have to process them before you come up with your opinion about the way things really are. That’s my interpretation of that last paragraph. Somebody else tell us what you think about just generally where we’re going. There’s a lot of weeds here that if we get into details too far, we’ll just produce something. It’s very little use to most people. We need to probably focus in general about what he’s talking about and why he’s talking about it. So Elaine or Charles? I wanted to hear what Martin was. Yes, Martin. What was the part that you feel like needs more distinction? Yeah, I think now it’s more clear. It seems that last week I just couldn’t put it together quickly enough. Now after reading what comes after that in that context and now reading it again, then it becomes. It came out clearly.
It’s no more that unclear. I mean, even though from today’s physics, I do not agree with everything. But it’s essentially, again, a bunch of very detailed observations which are fairly accurate. And also the interpretation within a particle model is quite okay. And you also interestingly observe that things like smell and vapor, yeah, that is. It’s more diffused. I mean, that is accurate. But just the reason he gives for it is not really accurate. Right. I mean, I think this is another example, you know, not to belabor it, but just quickly mention that using analogy rather than actual data, actual observations is, you know, it’s likely to lead to errors. And it did. But it is still really interesting, the level of,
Kind of, observation that he made of what he could see. And, of course, again, I mean, we mentioned it last week, that the membrane of color is also a rather inaccurate model. Yeah, right. I mean, that’s because he was looking at other types of things that are cast off. You know, he gave examples, forms that are cast off of other objects that you can see. And so, you know, why not, you know, invisible particles and the fact that it’s interesting. But again, you know, that’s, that’s the kind of, you know, kind of, you know, that I can see. Again, this is what happens if you use reason and analogy to get your idea instead of, you can use that to get a model, but you’ve got to test it. And, you know, rather than just accepting it because it makes sense to you. So, future scientists, be careful. I mean, that he gets the eye of a membrane. I mean, that is still based in the observations because what you see has the shape.
Of what the object has, so then he sees there is an integrity there and then he considers it as a membrane. But now we know that this works in a different way. So, there is no real membrane or something, structure, which we could properly call a membrane. So, it’s, it’s much more, how to say this, it’s not just like this. So, it’s more like that because there are enough particles coming off under normal light conditions. So that, under the imaging conditions, things then get, by the laws of optics, then projected as they came out. And under different conditions, we can also construct optical paths where this is not preserved. Right. And a lot of people don’t realize that what we, what we think of as seeing, a lot of that is actually being neurologically constructed from patterns. prediction, memory,
So when we look, like I’m looking out across my living room, I’m actually, it feels like I’m seeing, like maybe the light is reflecting off of all these objects at once, and my brain is perceiving exactly what’s hitting my retina, but that’s not actually what’s happening. A lot of what I’m looking at, my brain is remembering from I haven’t looked at it before, or predicting it, and kind of filling in stuff in the periphery, and there would be no way that we could be consciously aware of all that stuff going on. But, you know, they’re all sort of examples of optical illusions and to show you what’s really going on, but it’s so fast that we can’t really be consciously aware of it. Yeah, and there can be interesting differences in how the brain does it. For example, my brother, he sees red, blue, green 3D images. He sees them in color. I don’t see them in color. To me, they just appear in a more or less yellowish a great.
I don’t see color when I do this 3D looking. And theoretically, there shouldn’t be colors. But it seems my brother’s brain works differently and actually sees colors, realistic colors in those 3D images. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s not really in here. But, you know, he didn’t know about that. It’s much more complicated than it seemed even at the time. Elaine mentioned illusions. And we haven’t gotten to it yet. But a couple of sections down, we’ll get to a long discussion of several types of optical illusions. And we’ll deal with those at that point. Charles, anything so far? No. No, I’ve just been listening to the discussion. There’s also some housework going on right now. So you might hear, if I’m not muted, you’ll might hear some hammers banging in the background. Well, what about, should we go then just through the passages from this week? Yes. The first one’s talking about the living thing. that are so little that you can hardly imagine.
How small their bowels must be. Well, he says, first, they’re animals so exceedingly small that one third part of them cannot possibly by any means be discovered, which is not true. So he didn’t have the tools available at the time, but he imagined we could never do it. But, Lucretius, we did it. My stalling’s translation used the word animalcule, which I thought was interesting that this one had omitted that, especially considering this translation was in the 1700s. Because that was later. That was… I don’t quite know. Luwenwok, I don’t know how to say. Yeah, Luwenhok. So that was bacteria and protozoans and so on, the things that he saw in rainwater. Yeah, I don’t know when that date came into fruition, but I remember seeing it in… All the readers… reading of Lometri that I’ve done, which would.
Be 1740s. Well, it was invented by Lou Henhoek, so that word, he’s the one who made it up. So it wouldn’t have been around for Lucretius. I thought he was 16. No, no, no, definitely not Lucretius. I’m just talking about the translation. Yeah, okay. The next passage talks about, I guess, the faces of giants that seem to fly along and so forth would be clouds. Let me, I want to go back just a little bit about these microscopic organisms. So this is another example of difficulties with analogies because he’s assuming that they have bowels and hearts and eyes and limbs, but when you get to the smallest organisms, that they are not analogous to visible animals. They don’t have blood vessels and all that kind of stuff, you know, when you get to bacteria. So they have different ways of organizing their being. Just something to make note of. Yeah, it’s kind of like Martin’s talking.
About last week with, there’s a lot of poetry that this stuff gets wrapped into and probably there’s also a lot of, not exactly like he’s talking to a child or whatever, but to some extent, I guess the scientific knowledge that people had back then maybe would almost seem to us a childlike state of lack of detail. So he’s talking to people that just haven’t advanced enough to know how the limits of the analogies that he’s making, like you’re saying. Well, but he doesn’t propose that they don’t have these parts, you know. I don’t know that he thought of that. You know, he’s saying you know, maybe they’re different than what you think but to not even have that part of their anatomy is not something, it’s at least if he did imagine it, he’s not telling us here. Well, anything else in that first paragraph? I don’t think so. Okay, well in the second paragraph that we have, we’re working from in the Epicureanfriends.com forum version, there’s.
Back to discussing at the end of it mirrors again. Mirrors seem to have been of great interest in some of this discussion because we’re going to continually come back, it seems like, to the function of how mirrors are working. But before he gets into the mirrors, he talks about basically how images can be, I would say, distorted maybe. So he says there are some images that fly off the surfaces of body. There are other shapes fashioned of their own accord. Now, fashioned of their own accord sounds like where he’s talking about, I think centaurs or something. There’s another part of the book where he says you might see an image of something that might never have existed. Oh, I thought he was talking about clouds. Well, you can see the shapes, you know, clouds looking like hills and rocks and looking like giants. Yeah, and at the beginning he talks about rising mist. So it’s really like a description of mist rising from the ground. Yeah, I think he’s talking about I think it’s pretty, it seems pretty.
Clear to me that the second paragraph here, he’s talking about clouds, but it’s interesting that he said, he contrasts that. So he says, images that fly off the surfaces of body, you don’t want to think that’s the only thing that wander abroad. There are other shapes fashioned of their own accord. Actually, it almost sounds like he’s imagining the images of clouds as images without, that aren’t flying off the surfaces of bodies because he’s contrasting them. That is real interesting. He doesn’t really call them images. He sees, I think he correctly considers those as something material, what is there, what comes in a shape, and what it has in common with the images, that it’s emitted from some surface. No, but why, so he’s saying it’s not. He’s saying, lest you think that images that fly off the surfaces of body are the only thing. Yeah, so there’s more, not just images. Right, there are other shapes, so he’s, so I’m I think I’m conscious.
Images that fly off the surfaces of bodies versus images that are fashioned of their own accords. I think that’s the contrast that he’s making. I don’t see it like this. He doesn’t call them images here. That would be what the grammar the way the grammatical construction let’s look at the other All right, so let’s see. Monroe says less happily you suppose that only those idols of things which go off from things and no others wonder about there are likewise those which are spontaneously begot and are formed by themselves in this lower heaven which is called air. That translation goes exactly with how I am hearing it. And let’s see Bailey but let that you may not by chance think that after all only those idols of things wonder about which come off from things there are those too which are begotten of their own accords. So he’s saying that some images are out there that didn’t come off from things but that.
Just came about by themselves. That is real fascinating. And I believe I have seen this passage argued to be relevant to the issue that people think they might see gods or people think they might see somebody who’s dead. Whenever there’s something that people think that they see something that really cannot be true, this might be relevant to that. Well, he’s not saying they’re not. He’s not saying these are imaginary. He’s describing them as if they actually happen. They’re almost like there’s not really a cloud but there’s not an object a cloud that’s making the image but the cloud is like some sort of a pure self-arising image. The Bayley translation would suggest that as well. The last ones. Therefore, many idols are begotten in a short moment so that rightly is the creation of these things said to be swift. Charles, what do you think? We seem to have a different perspective. Are you, what.
Kind of images is he talking about there, do you think? This is well outside my zone here. I can’t see. I mean, we’re relying on the translators doing this accurately, but it seems to me like all the translations we have here are talking about some kind of image that doesn’t come off of a body, but just is an image. The spontaneous degenerate. Yeah, yeah, which there’s I’m not aware of there being any such thing, but that’s so interesting that he thought that. It’s weird because he usually talks about how this or that thing wouldn’t happen because of regularity, you know, like there’s this predictability, but if he thinks that images can just happen, then why are they not happening everywhere? So I wonder if he, you know, like all sort of wild things that we don’t see. This is almost, yeah, I wonder what he thinks.
Of these images are that just happen all of on their own. And I mean, like, how is this go along with something doesn’t come from nothing? It’ll come back. Maybe that’s exactly what he’s saying is that I know that DeWitt in one of his sections where he talks about some of this, DeWitt makes the point that he thought that Epicurus was really concerned with being able to deal with hallucinations or deal with the idea that you may actually see something that’s not there. And that maybe I think I’m connecting that with this and thinking that this would be one way of explaining that you might actually I’m not saying it actually, but I agree that it actually happens, but that if images are, these particles are flying through the air all the time like Epicurus is saying, then as they become entangled with each other, they may at random times appear to take the shape of something else that they were never generated from. Like the cloud looking like a giant. the giant never produced.
That cloud. But he’s not saying that he hasn’t at least said that these are like threads of other images that came off of things. He’s saying they’re spontaneously begotten. Formed by themselves. Well, just in entangling with each other as they fly through the air, they take on a different shape. But he didn’t say that. He’s not saying that they initially came from objects. And then reformed. He’s saying they’re spontaneously begotten and formed by themselves. So maybe what we’re talking about here is these images being, we talked about this a little bit last week, that these images are really particles themselves. In fact, we were talking about that a little bit last week, Elaine, that maybe we should go back to. The issue of, I think we tend to think, and probably correctly, that vision comes through the movement of photons bouncing off of things. Epicurus is evidently evidently not…
Not just photons bouncing off of things. He’s talking about particles from the surface or even from below the surface, actually, I think he’s saying at times, that are just emanated out into the air. So I guess… I have no good coherent explanation of this, but I guess for somebody trying to make sense out of it, they have to consider both. Again, Martin, you were talking about this last week, about whether the air, whether there’s particles actually moving from the thing that we see to our eyes or not. And we haven’t talked about that today, Elaine, and maybe we need to go back to that point with you. What do you think of a theory that says that when you see something, there’s a particle that moves from that thing that you see to your eyes? Do you agree with that or disagree with that? How do photons fit into that picture? Oh, yeah, well, I mean, photons hit receptors in your retinas, so that’s not… But they… So they’re more kind of reflected off rather than… And I think, I don’t think we.
Should, you know, distort his model by saying, oh, it could have meant that. That’s not what he was saying. You know, he’s saying it was coming actually from… Yes, he is. So just because this sounds similar, I don’t think we should superimpose it on what he said, because that’s not what he meant. It’s somewhat implied because he clearly states somewhere that if there’s no light coming from the sun, we don’t see these images. So he’s aware that these particles need to be provided from an external source, even though they… He hasn’t said that, though, Martin. He might have had all that information available, but actually what he has said in here about the curtains in the last section was, you know, you remove most of this external light and he felt like you could see those colors, you know, like how you’ll have a red curtain and it’ll look like there’s a red cast to everything,
See them more intensely in dimmer light, which kind of implies that if you really turned everything off, they would be there, but we just couldn’t see them. So I think he was envisioning this model. It was really very different from the way that we’re seeing it now. And I also wouldn’t… Unless he’s real clear about that this self-generated images are actually formed from particles of other images, then I wouldn’t put those words in his mouth. I think he’s been pretty plain here. I don’t think this is metaphorical. We would have to revisit the letter to Pythocles because that talks about clouds quite a bit. Okay, yeah. Yeah, there’s… We got a little bit of a difference in memory, and we’re not going to have the ability during the podcast to trace back and see whether there’s a particular passage that he says that or not. I’m remembering it more like Martin, that I remember there being something in there about the dark and the light and not seeing anything.
In the dark and so forth. But on the other hand, clearly there’s no direct pre-saging of modern optics, I would say here. There’s pieces of it, but it’s going to be limited and I’ll take all sorts of diving into it to try to figure something out. One of the things that Martin mentioned last week that I think is in this week’s that Martin may have read today is we were talking about whether when you hear something, or I’m sorry, still talking about vision, he’s talking about that you tell the distance something’s away from you by how much air is pushed through your eye, which of course is pretty bizarre. But it does kind of indicate that even he in this session is talking about not only some particle coming from the surface of the object, but he’s also talking about that particle apparently pushing air at the same time. So there’s lots of different levels.
And being pushed, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So the attempt to get too much science out of here is going to be clearly kind of more of a fun exercise and it is going to be very helpful. But it is very interesting to see what he thought was significant and the things they picked out as important. Now there could have been a deviation between Epicurus and Lucretius here, but I pulled this up from the letter to Pythocles. Clouds may be, produced and formed both by the condensation of the atmosphere owing to compression by winds and by the interlacing of atoms clinging to one another and suitable for producing this result. And again, by the gathering of streams from earth and the waters. And there are several other ways in which such things may not impossibly be brought about. So, but he’s clearly contrasted the images of clouds with images coming off surfaces.
I wonder if he’ll get into that more because he’s not saying that we’re seeing these shapes because of the shapes of the water vapor really because that would be, there would be no contrast in that case with the cloud images versus other images. Yeah, Charles, I don’t remember that he’s talking about images in that context in Pythocles, but I can’t remember if he talks about images in the letter to Herodotus or not. There may be a section in Herodotus about images, not nearly as long as this, but I don’t have that in front of me and I don’t remember. That would be something to compare. Ah, yes, there is. Do you see something immediately that we should read? Yeah, let me just read through this. The movement of elementary material through space leads to images, which when received by our senses are our means of knowledge. Moreover, there are images like in shapes to the solid bodies, far surpassing perceptible things in their subtlety of texture. Before you go even further, that’s the point.
I would get from the whole section here is that first thing you said, which is that these images or particles moving through the air are the basis of our knowledge about things. I think that’s really where the ultimate point that has to be defended because there’s no divine inspiration of knowledge or something like that. There’s got to be a material, physical basis for the way our senses operate. But go ahead. For it is not impossible that such emanations should be formed in what which surrounds the objects, nor that there should be opportunities for the formation of such hollow and thin frames, nor that there should be effluences which preserve the respective position and order which they had before in the solid bodies. These images we call idols. Now, it’s interesting because this is the Bailey translation, obviously. In the Bailey translation of Lucretius, he also uses the word idols. Idols, yeah. Yeah, that’s commonly, I think, used. And specters, I think sometimes people will use as well. In this one, this is a few sentences. sentences down.
I wonder where he thought the material for these images came from that’s a very interesting question how it could have been just continually renewed like that because yeah just the regularity and also the concept of isonomia of equal distribution there shouldn’t be these you know the images that are perceived in the clouds these shapes and idols shouldn’t be infinitely generating spontaneously yeah I mean he deviates from his rigorousness I guess I would say in the first book it’s getting kind of loose and sloppy here to me it really is the implication.
Substance in things that you can have this film of these incredibly small particles just constantly streaming off of it’s not that doesn’t that doesn’t square with anything that he’s said before it doesn’t it’s kind of nonsensical well unless there’s just an awful lot of particles there no but come on it wouldn’t it doesn’t it doesn’t even make rational sense and it doesn’t go with any observations that we’ve made by analogy it’s just he’s flying off in a in a wild direction that is that is super interesting I mean I mean elsewhere stated that the particles get replenished so I mean I think that one I think we should not see a contradiction here there’s certainly implicitly it’s also acknowledged that this will still happen so that means they’re not constantly produced from nothing that they are there in a few.
Numbers because they get replenished. Why does he say that? At least that is somewhere in Epicurus. It’s at least somewhere in Epicurus. It’s just what I remember. I couldn’t call the quote now. There’s a similar thing in Valerius about the gods and how… That’s the god situation, right? That they were able to maintain particles in heaven. Which was likened to these clouds earlier. Martin, correct me if I’m wrong. I mean, it’s not explicitly stated here. But from the context of what’s said elsewhere, it would just make sense that what is there so plentiful needs to be replenished because it gets emitted. Right here. Now learning how easy and swift a manner these images are produced, how they continually fly and fall off from the surface of the bodies. For there’s always a store of forms upon the outside of things ready to be thrown off. Right. So that sounds like.
There are a store of forms, not like it’s being re… I don’t know. Listen, listen. Let me ask this. Is it clear to us that particles or the images are the same as the elemental particles we always talked about? Or are the images just the elemental particles on the surface? Or are they something different? They’re different because they can, like you write here, swift and fast. Whereas those which make up the bodies themselves cannot move that quickly. So they are of different shape. Less smooth. And he doesn’t make it clear whether image particles are a type of elementary particles or if the image particles are themselves made of elementary particles. That’s what I’m asking. That’s what I’m asking. I don’t think he says here. Yeah, Gardner, you just…
Are you reading that he says one way or the other? How are you reading that this whole section’s about images? Would you equate an image to a type of elemental particle or is it just the elemental particles on the surface of any object that are just peeling off over time or are they something unique among themselves? Because I’m beginning to wonder if you could… We were talking last week about waves versus particles. I’m beginning to wonder whether you could analogize something about waves out of this because the images appear to be moving, he’s saying, in a coordinated way. This membrane kind of thing that he’s saying. Which is not at all like the way that we’re describing waves. It would be nothing like these membranes. So that wouldn’t be an analogy that we’d hold up today. I mean, not completely. I mean, with some stretch we could… Yeah, a lot of stretch at the heart. So we could consider wave fronts… to have some sort of.
Of an analogy with the membrane. Right. And I don’t know what point to make this portion of text. I don’t know what paragraph it’s in exactly, but how he compares the images being carried by the rays of the sun so swiftly, but then later he talks about how a bowl of water at night will show a reflection of the stars. And that means it happens so fast. It’s funny that made me laugh, right, because what we are seeing is so old. It happened so long ago because light’s fast, but it’s not instantaneous from space to our eyes or to the bowl of water. That light happened a long time ago, but he didn’t know that. A little irony there. It’s also funny, it’s like because he didn’t have the idea of the photons, it’s almost like that image wasn’t being projected there somehow.
Until you put the bowl of water and then suddenly it’s, I don’t know. The thing that I think makes this image, this membrane idea completely different from waves is that he talks, I mean, if you look at the first part of Bailey, come now and learn of how thin in nature this image is formed. When he’s talking about a membrane, it would only be like, I guess, whatever was at the very front of a wave. I mean, it wouldn’t be the whole, wave extending from the object forward. He’s talking about a really thin thing that doesn’t have anything but air pushing it or something pushing it out from the object. So that, and he’s differentiating that membrane from whatever’s pushing it. So it doesn’t really go to me with anything that we would talk about today with a wave. I think just for these sections, we’ll have to revisit the letters and diogenes, Pythocles and Herodotus. Yeah.
It says, for external objects could not make on us an impression of the nature of their own color and shape by means of the air which lies between us and them, nor again by means of the rays or effluences of any sort which pass from us to them. Nearly so well as if models similar in color and shape leave the objects and enter according to their respective size, either into our sight or into our mind, moving along swiftly. And so by this means. By this means, reproducing the image of a single continuous thing and preserving the corresponding sequence of qualities and movements from the original object, as well as the result of their uniform contact with us, kept up by the vibration of atoms deep in the interior of the concrete body. I’m not picking on Epicurus here for just to say I was wrong. You didn’t get that right. It’s just that I think if we stretch.
Saying into our current understanding, it will lead to confusion about his other conclusions that he’s. So I think it’s it’s really important to have a grasp on what he meant, what he thought was going on, even if it was wrong. So we don’t come to wrong conclusions about other things that he has based on this. And I’ve looked before in Epicurean, the one from Atlas. There’s no like. And quotes. Or anything about the image that can be easily accessed only from Herodotus and Lucretius. But we do know that Curious wrote a book about the images, but it hasn’t survived. Yeah, I don’t quite know where to go from here. The divine and images are the my least published bits of understanding in the philosophy. And when we’re talking about modern scientific concepts, I’m not nearly knowledgeable as either of you. so I’ve been pretty quiet.
I don’t want to overstep and talk about something at length of something I don’t know too much about. I feel like this is laying the groundwork for, I wouldn’t want to draw any conclusions from this before we get to them. And it doesn’t seem super vague to me. I mean, I feel like I can imagine what he’s talking about with these membranes coming off of things. It just requires, in order to imagine his idea of how it was going, it requires us to kind of let go of what we know now. And I don’t mind doing that for the sake of understanding where he’s going to go from here. I think that’s something that has to be revisited next week if the text just continues to build off of itself. Right, right. But by the third paragraph, we can probably still see that this looks like a reflection, how the reflection in a mirror happened. So that one, even though it’s not described accurately, it’s at least similar enough to how we, describe, reflect.
Well, so where he’s talking about light from the sun, he is not ever anywhere, Martin, saying that light is the same thing as color. I wouldn’t make that kind of a connection unless he says it specifically. And I think he’s talking about a different thing. But he’s using that as an analogy with color and shape, but not as being the same thing. I definitely see the likeness to… So I guess my concern would be is if we start saying that, even though that’s really not what he’s saying, will that lead to confusion when we get to later sections? We’ll have to see. We’ll have to keep in mind that we’ve talked about this so that we can see if it would lead to something different than what he’s saying. I wonder if it would help then to reread the bits of Cicero about the nature of the guy. about the.
The gods and the images and the constant flow of atoms well that and that one he says from us right that’s the which paragraph is that i don’t have it in front of me but what you what you’ve put here oh cassius the mountains have killed the signal i wondered about that i don’t know i guess my main take home from this would be that this is a different model from what we have now and my intuition is that it’s important to keep in mind the differences rather than try to gloss them over because it might be important but i don’t know yet it’s been 30 plus years since i’ve read this it’s like it’s new what do you think martin yeah basically i agree so that we we should we need to be cautious on this one that we don’t over interpret it in in that way because uh then uh there there may be then a difficulty in coming to the same conclusion.
Especially if we do overestimate or, I guess, go beyond the scope of how we interpret this, how that will affect continuing on with next week’s text. Right. Because after the images, Lucretius will talk about the senses. And if it’s been stated before in the letter to Herodotus and here, for that, the images are just like a final touch on Epictetus. And epistemology, like why the senses function the way they do with material objects. Having the wrong idea with all that in mind, when we do read it, we’ll probably just end up in the same discussion as we are right now. It is something we do have to be cautious with, though. Yeah. Well, I don’t really have anything else to say about this section. Yeah. Actually, the time is over already. So we’re pretty much making it. So I think we’re good to go now. All right. Well, then. I will look forward to talking.
To y’all next week. Yeah, me too. Thank you very much. Alright, bye-bye.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.