Episode 069 - The Eventual End of Our World
Date: 05/08/21
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1980-episode-sixty-nine-the-end-of-our-world/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Don reads Book Five lines ~235–323: the four elements (earth, water, air, fire) are composed of mortal seeds, so our world must also be mortal — demonstrated through the water cycle, air’s constant flux, the decay of light rays, and the erosion of stones, towers, and temples. Discussion covers Empedocles’s four-element theory (contrasted with Epicurean atoms), his love-and-strife forces versus Epicurean pleasure and pain, emergent properties (Martin observes that Platonists could claim DNA as the “ideal form” of an orange), and the Earth as both “great parent and common sepulchre of all things.”
The panel also addresses the reflection vs. emission of moonlight, the conclusion that whatever feeds the increase of other bodies must itself be replenished — “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” — and Don recommends David Sedley’s Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, which documents Epicurus’s On Nature as a direct point-by-point response to Plato’s Timaeus. The practical Epicurean takeaway: life has a beginning and end, so seize the day.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
Welcome to Episode 69 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’s poem and discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. 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 is 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 questions about those, please be sure to contact us at EpicureanFriends.com for more information. In this Episode 69 we’ll read approximately Latin lines 235 through 323 from Book Five, and we’ll talk about the upcoming end of the world as we know it. Now let’s join Don reading today’s text.
Don:
And further, since the body of the earth, the water and the light breath of the air and the hot fire of which this universe of things consists had all a beginning and are all formed of mortal seeds, the nature of the world must be the same and must die likewise. For a body whose parts and members we know were born and were produced from mortal principles, that being must be the same in nature with its parts. It must have a beginning and be equally mortal. And therefore, when I observe the four elements, the great limbs of the world, are continually changing, are wasted away and then renewed, I conclude that the whole world, the earth and the heavens, had a time of beginning and will in time fall and be destroyed. But my Memmius, that you may not think I rashly supposed what I should have proved upon this subject — when I said that the earth and the fire were mortal and made no doubt but the air and the water were so too and that they began to be and by degrees increased — you are to observe: first, that some part of the earth is burnt up by the continual strokes of the sun, and much of it, being worn by the continual treading of the feet, rises into flying clouds of dust, which the fierce winds scatter through all the air; and part of the earth by soaking showers is turned into water, and the encroaching rivers eat away their banks. Besides, whatever increases another body with any of its parts must lose so much from itself; and since the earth is certainly the great parent and common sepulchre of all things, it must sometimes be diminished, and then increase and be renewed again.
And then the sea, the rivers, the fountains abound always with sweet water and flow with everlasting streams. There’s no need of many words. The prodigious currents that flow every way to the sea prove this effectually. Lest the mass of water should overflow too great, some of it is continually licked up and wastes away. The strong winds brushing over its surface take off part of its flood; and apart the sun exhales and draws up into the air; and some is divided through the subterranean passages of the earth. From there the saline particles are strained off, and then the waters flow back and start up in fountains and form themselves into rivers, which glide sweetly with their collected strength over the earth through those channels where the streams first made their liquid way.
And now to speak of the air, which has changed with its whole body every moment in various manners not to be numbered. For whatever is continually flowing off from bodies is carried into the vast ocean of the air. Unless the air therefore restores again those particles to the bodies from whence they came and renewed them as they wasted away, all things have long since been changed into air and wholly dissolved. The air therefore is continually produced from bodies and continually returns into them again. For things never remain the same, but are in a perpetual fluctuation.
The sun likewise, that large fountain of liquid light, constantly bedews the heavens with a new brightness and instantly supplies one ray by the succession of another. Its first beams of light, as soon as they have shone out, die away. This you may collect from hence: that as soon as a cloud interposes between the sun’s orb and us, and as it were breaks through the rays of light, the lower part of the beams immediately perishes, and the earth, as the clouds pass over it, is made dark. This proves that things require a constant stream of new rays, and that every first emission of light dies. Nor could things otherwise be seen in the light unless the sun, the fountain of brightness, continually sent out fresh supplies. After the same manner, our nightly lights that we use here below — hanging lustres, our lamps shining with a bright flame, fat with oily smoke — are continually sending out new streams of light by the help of fire. They press on and discharge their trembling rays without intermission. They never cease, nor is the light ever interrupted or leaves the place dark for a moment; so swiftly is the destruction of the first rays repaired from the constant fire of the lamps, the fountain of light, and a new beam instantly flies off as the old expires. We conclude therefore that the sun, the moon, and the stars are continually throwing off new supplies of light, and that the first rays they emit perish and die away. Lest you should believe these beams remained perfect and undissolved and were eternally the same.
Besides, don’t we observe how stones are worn away by time? That lofty towers fall to ruin and rocks moulder to dust? That the temples and images of the gods are tired of withstanding, and are forced to give way, nor can the gods themselves extend the bounds of fate or strive against the laws of nature? Don’t you see the monuments of men burst asunder at last, to grow old and suddenly break in pieces? Rocks are torn and tumble from the high mountains, and are unable to bear or resist the mighty force even of a finite time. For they would never have fallen with a sudden ruin had they from all eternity endured the strokes of time secure and unshaken. And then look up to those surrounding heavens that above and below embrace this body of the earth — those heavens which some say produce all things out of themselves, into which all things are at last resolved. They surely had a beginning, are formed of mortal seeds, and must have an end. For whatever seeds and contributes to the increase of other bodies must lose some of its parts and must again be repaired by those bodies when they are dissolved.
Cassius:
Okay, thank you for reading that, Don. A little bit longer section today about the destruction of the world as we know it. I guess one thing that’s kind of a global point to make is that when he talks about “the world” he’s not talking about the universe as a whole — he’s not just talking about the earth — he seems to have carved out sort of a locality and not the full universe itself. Any general thoughts before we go into the particular sections?
Don:
No, he seems to lay out a pretty good case.
Cassius:
Martin, any initial thoughts from you? This is kind of more your department.
Martin:
Okay, so what I wanted to mention or point out here is that in other Greek philosophy the four elements are regarded as something like fundamental — like what we in Epicurean philosophy would consider a property of the elementary particles. Now in Epicurean philosophy these four elements are composed entities, and as composed entities they of course have a time when they are formed and they have a time when they fall apart again. And then he applies the logic that everything which will be just composed of those compositions also will have its time when it’s fallen apart. This is quite an interesting conclusion — even though from modern science that conclusion is actually somewhat wrong — but in the end for a different reason he is again right, because there will be an end to the earth as we know it now, billions of years from now, for a multitude of reasons.
Cassius:
I was going to say — with the whole idea of the four elements, I think that Martin’s absolutely right that Lucretius sees those as composed of seeds, whereas — I believe the footnotes say it was Empedocles who was the one who came up with them — Empedocles would see water and fire as the elements themselves. Lucretius is seeing those as composed of other elements, and so they are mortal as well. That’s certainly an angle that I was not thinking about when we first started reading this: if you come from the perspective that earth, air, wind, and fire are themselves the primary constituents of everything, then he’s really directing his point more to that attitude.
Don:
Yes. I looked up Empedocles, and he was the one who came up with Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, but also the one who talked about love and strife being the two forces of the universe that will compose things and then drive them apart. And I thought it was interesting that Lucretius also praises Empedocles way back in Book One, around lines 714 to 741 — he talks about how Empedocles is worthy of praise and that sort of thing. So I think it’s interesting the way he brings back in the Empedoclean idea of the four elements and how they’re part of the story but not the entire story.
Cassius:
Is Empedocles the one he referred to as the “great man greatly fallen,” or is that Democritus?
Don:
I believe it was Empedocles — I went back and looked at that, yeah.
Cassius:
Yeah. He obviously had a lot of respect for him even though he had major differences in certain things.
Don:
One of the other footnotes that I saw was that Hermarchus wrote a twenty-two book treatise against Empedocles. But now we have Lucretius using Empedoclean ideas to sort of reinforce the idea of the mortality of the universe. So there’s a give-and-take there in Epicurean circles.
Cassius:
You’ve read further and more recently than I have. Is the primary argument against Empedocles that he did not go all the way down to the atoms and that he stopped at the four elements, or were there other big-picture distinctions between Epicurus and Empedocles?
Don:
No, I see — that’s the impression I get, that he didn’t go far enough. He was on the right track but not quite there. He’s talking at least about four elements that make up everything, and the Epicureans just said, well, there’s more than four, and there are different kinds of atoms, and you were almost there but you didn’t go quite far enough. Which is why I can understand why Hermarchus probably wrote twenty-two books about it. Don, you’re into the timelines more than I am — did Empedocles precede Democritus or vice versa?
Cassius:
I believe Empedocles — they’re both pre-Socratic so I’m not quite sure of the exact timeline, but I think Empedocles came before. I would not want to say that without double-checking. Yeah, I’m thinking the same but it could be either way. I still find it interesting that Empedocles used love and strife as the — or at least what’s translated as love and strife — which could easily be looked at as pleasure and pain.
Don:
No doubt part of those twenty-two books would be describing… I mean, I don’t know whether Empedocles considered them to be some kind of forces of their own that exist as gods, and of course I’m not even completely sure how you would describe the Epicurean view of pleasure and pain. Obviously they’re not gods. I get the impression that Empedocles thought of love and strife as forces in the universe. I mean, back then everything was personified as a god, so it could very well be that they’re the gods — but you also look at love and strife as Aphrodite and Ares, or Mars and Venus, that’s the same basic idea personified: one of them brings things together and creates things, and the other destroys things. But they’re both necessary in Empedocles’s view, because if you just keep creating things you’re going to eventually run out of enough earth, air, fire, and water to create things. Whereas if you create through love and destroy through strife then that’s a continuous creation-destruction cycle.
Cassius:
It’d probably be a major rabbit hole to go down, but probably worth at least mentioning: the distinction we’re talking about here would be that Empedocles or these other guys would see these outside forces — truly as gods or truly as independent self-existing forces. And when you come to Epicurean philosophy and talk about pleasure and pain, certainly I would think one aspect of it is that when they talk about Mars and Venus it’s much more clearly allegorical. It’s not intended to mean literally that Venus is the goddess of pleasure and bestowed pleasure on the universe — although that is the Hymn to Venus opening of Book One — but most people interpret that as being very allegorical. So the foundation presumably is that pain and pleasure, although they are central to ethics, do not in the Epicurean worldview constitute forces outside ourselves that we are bestowed with at birth by some god or any kind of force of nature. Somebody listening to the podcast might ask: if they’re not bestowed on us by the gods, where does pain and pleasure come from in the Epicurean scheme? Nature and evolution would be the most obvious answer that comes to mind.
Don:
I concur completely with what you said too. I think that was very well put. And I don’t know that we have the ability to answer the question — and that’s why I made the reference to the rabbit hole — but it’s certainly something that comes to my mind regularly in talking about these things, and I think it would come to the mind of anybody who’s studying Epicurean philosophy at some point. The question of where pain and pleasure came from: if they were not bestowed on living animals by some outside force, do Epicureans consider them to be something that has simply occurred through combinations of matter and void, just like the formation of the body itself? So therefore is there no pleasure particle? Pleasure seems to be just a function. And I don’t think we’ve used the term since you’ve been on the podcast, but there’s this term “emergent property” that people talk about sometimes — the emergent being the issue that you mix things together in a particular way and qualities emerge that are not a component of any of the original elemental particles.
Cassius:
Exactly. I’ve heard the term applied to consciousness and all that sort of thing too. Yeah. I mean, clearly going back into the early Lucretius parts, there’s the distinction between the elemental particles which have properties, and then when you combine the elemental particles into bodies, these bodies have — I think the word is “qualities” — and now you also get into the debate about what they use the word “accidents” for, which I find to be a very poor choice of words. I like to use the word “event” more than “accident.” But at any rate, you’re still discussing the fact that there are qualities that are not part — you can’t dig into the object and find this quality anywhere. It’s something that arises from the final combination and actions of the particles themselves.
Don:
Exactly.
Martin:
So pleasure and pain are very high-level emergent properties.
Cassius:
Okay. Can you get any better way to put a handle on what an emergent property is or how to describe what you mean when you say it?
Martin:
I think you described it already correctly. I mean, if you just take the elementary particles which compose then something, then you don’t see in these elementary particles this emergent property. Only after they have come together does the emergent property arise.
Don:
Probably enough — I’ve heard from a Buddhist perspective too they talk a lot about this sort of thing. One of the analogies I’ve heard — I’m not sure if it was through that context or another — is: take the example of a table. You have a table sitting there and you can use it to sit at, you can put food on it, you can write on it. But if you have the parts separately — if you have a leg somewhere, that’s not a table; if you have one piece of wood, that’s not a table — but you put all the parts together and suddenly the idea of the table actually comes together and you can use it for its function.
Cassius:
Yeah, I think that’s a good analogy. And I think another classic example that’s used, maybe within the Epicurean context, would be color. For example something that’s orange — you can’t dig into an orange the fruit and find an orange particle. And if you’re trying to contrast Epicurus to Aristotle or Plato, I think the issue would be that Aristotle or those who talk about essences would say that there’s some kind of orange essence within the orange fruit, which we would say does not exist. And Plato might say that there’s an orange that exists in his world of perfect forms, and that the orange in our hand is sort of a reflection of the ideal orange. And of course Epicurus would deny that as well. So Epicurus would consider the orangeness we’re talking about to be an emergent quality of the fruit in front of you that you’re observing at a particular moment.
Don:
Correct. Yeah, I think that’s the way that shakes out.
Martin:
The Platonists can use modern science to uphold their stand, because they may claim the DNA inside the orange is, so to say, the ideal orange.
Cassius:
Oh, well done, Martin. I hadn’t thought of that before. So there’s the essence of the orange — the perfect form of the orange is contained in its DNA.
Martin:
Exactly — so that’s the essence of the orange. I don’t know whether that would be the Platonists as much as it might be the Aristotelians, because I think if you’re talking essences I do think you’re talking about a trademark Aristotelian term more so than Plato. Because I think Plato might say: well, if you’ve got the ability to touch it or see it — even with an electron microscope — then you must not be talking about the realm of ideal forms. He would take the position that if your senses are able to identify it then that eliminates it from consideration as being an ideal form.
Cassius:
Good point. Good point. Yeah. I wanted to make this point as an example to show that when someone is a scientist or a mathematician, it does not predetermine what philosophy they should adhere to. So a scientist or mathematician can be a Platonist, an Epicurean, or other, and they can set up an interpretation of the philosophy that works in conjunction with their science or mathematics.
Cassius:
Don, comment on that?
Don:
No, I think he’s absolutely right. I think it’s the same way you look at the head of the genome project — he’s a very committed Christian, and he can reconcile his Christianity with his science. So I mean, you can set up a rationalization for anything you want to do. I think Martin’s absolutely right — you could be any one of those philosophies and still uphold the basic science you’re studying.
Cassius:
Well, now that’s a good example of rationalization when you talk about a creationist or a religionist saying that God’s working through these physical manifestations. I’m not going to disagree, but I’m not sure whether — if we had a professional philosophy person with us — they would agree on the Plato side. I have this idea in my mind that Plato was so anti-sensation that he might take the position that by the very fact of a scientist being able to identify something through his instruments, that might as a logical deduction rule it out as a Platonic form. I don’t know whether that’s the case or not. I would just throw that out there as the possibility. It just occurs to me to point out about Plato that there might have been such a devotion to abstract reasoning — to the exclusion of the scientific ability to observe something — that he might take something like a Heisenberg position: that by the very act of observing it you’ve kind of eliminated it as being what you’re really looking for. But I’d have to have an expert on Plato to answer that.
Martin:
I guess most mathematicians and theoretical physicists would identify as Platonists, because the analogy is there between Plato’s ideal forms and these very abstract theories.
Cassius:
Now there I’m much more closely in agreement to exactly the way you said it, because that’s my understanding about mathematics — you’re just immediately starting with “let’s presume” and you’re not talking about something in the real world. I don’t know that Aristotle fits into that same paradigm or not, because are Aristotle’s essences something that he thinks you could ultimately find if you drill down deeply enough into your orange? Or would he say that no matter how far you drill down you’re never going to find that essence? My impression is that Aristotle thought his essences had a real existence to them in this world as opposed to Plato thinking that his ideal forms don’t exist in this world. Do y’all know whether that’s the case?
Don:
And that’s certainly the stereotype — even from Raphael’s “The School of Athens,” Plato is pointing up to the ethereal forms and Aristotle is pointing down to the ground. So I think the question I’d want to figure out is whether Aristotle thought his essences really exist in this world. I kind of think the answer is yes, but I don’t know for sure at all.
Cassius:
Okay, we’re still on the first paragraph — let’s go on then. Moving to the Memmius section. I was recognizing as I was reading — it’s one thing to assert that the earth and maybe even the sea can go away at some point, because you can certainly see mountains and maybe even water moving around. But it does become a little bit more difficult to think about the air being subject to destruction and what kind of analogy you’re going to point to to show how air itself can be destroyed.
Don:
That may be several paragraphs down. We’re still talking about the seas and the fountains first. One thing I did want to point out that I really like is lines 258 to 259 where he talks about the earth giving all of creation and providing so much, but it’s also “the common sepulchre, the common graveyard.” So the thing about Mother Nature that you usually talk about is you know, Mother Nature provides for us and all that kind of stuff. But Lucretius says, well, yeah, she may provide for us and the earth may provide for us, but it’s also the common graveyard of everybody. So it’s a give-and-take sort of thing.
Cassius:
Yeah, that’s a great point. I’m looking at the phrase where it says “the earth is certainly the great parent and the common sepulchre of all things” — so it’s both the parent and the undertaker, I guess.
Don:
Yeah, exactly. Stallings had a good translation of that line — she says “the earth, as all men know, is not just the all-mother but the common graveyard too.” I tried to find how one would translate “sepulchre” in German — it uses the same word, which I don’t know in German — but Martin, you translated that as “graveyard”?
Martin:
I wasn’t looking for a distinction — I just tried to understand the word.
Cassius:
I think the reason that some translators like to use “sepulchre” is because it’s so close to the Latin word itself — the actual Latin word is sepulchrum in the text — but I think it would be much better to use “burial place” or “tomb” to get the point across to modern English readers. More tomb than graveyard — when I think of graveyard I think of a cemetery, which is a plot of ground. I’m thinking “sepulchre” implies a structure or building.
Don:
But I thought that was a great line — I really like it. I have a star next to that one in my Stallings translation.
Cassius:
Yeah, that is a memorable juxtaposition of two opposites. Okay, then the next paragraph is devoted to the waters moving around, and I don’t see anything controversial there, because I mean he describes pretty well the whole water cycle, I think. “The strong winds brushing over its surface take off part of its flood” — I guess that’s evaporation. And “apart the sun exhales and draws up into the air” — surely that’s the evaporation.
Don:
Yeah, exactly, because they could see that — if you have a dish of water sitting out somewhere it will eventually evaporate. You can see that whether you were in ancient Greece or any time.
Cassius:
Right. I think previously earlier in the book he used the example of a shirt or some piece of clothing that got wet — you put it aside and you can almost watch the water evaporating off of it. Okay, and so then the next paragraph is about the air. I can’t really figure out what he’s talking about with the air coming off of beings. “For whatever is continually flowing off from bodies is carried into the vast ocean of the air” — almost like he’s talking about images there, but I don’t think he really is. He’s talking almost more like odors or something.
Martin:
The odor shows that it’s coming from somewhere, so the odor becomes some part of the air. It has properties like air. And those things we see coming and disappearing — so the odor part of the air changes — and that one can then be used as an analogy from what we can see to what we cannot see. The same thing applies also to the air. And in some sense there’s an analogy toward the oxygen/carbon dioxide cycle: we absorb oxygen and burn our energy supply and give off carbon dioxide, so plants absorb the carbon dioxide and eventually release oxygen again.
Cassius:
Yeah, I could see him talking about even the idea of breathing — that all animals breathe, and you take in air, and then you exhale air, but maybe it’s not the same air that you took in, and so your body is creating particles that it gives off.
Martin:
Yes, he uses “bodies” in a wide, abstract sense as well. And of course he didn’t know about nitrogen at that time. Nitrogen is about eighty percent, and that is the part which normally doesn’t get changed — I mean there are exceptions, but by and large if you look at the big picture of the oxygen cycle, the nitrogen does not change.
Cassius:
Okay, I bet you guys are going to have some comments on the next section, which is the sun and the light. I think that’s fairly well described here.
Don:
Yeah, I keep coming back to the idea of Lucretius and his acute observations of nature — the fact that the cloud goes over and the ground gets dark, and those sorts of normal everyday occurrences — but pulling them out and actually using them as an argument for things like this, I think, is really interesting — observing and making conclusions.
Cassius:
Exactly. Yeah. I guess with light it’s easier to observe the ray aspect of it. You don’t necessarily think of odors or things going on in the air, or even sound, necessarily, as a ray. But with light you can stick your hand in and block it and observe that there’s a shadow behind it — which is something you can’t really do with sound as easily. So I suppose they had the ability to play with it in a much more direct way and realize that something is moving from point A to point B.
Don:
Yeah, you can deduce that from odors but I’m not sure you would necessarily deduce it from what you hear. It’s almost like you can hear what’s going on, but certainly with light it’s easy to play with it through shadows.
Cassius:
Right. “So therefore we conclude the sun, the moon, and the stars are continually throwing off new supplies of light, and the first rays they emit perish and die away. And lest you should believe the beams remain perfect and undissolved and were eternally the same.” I guess that’s one of the reasons he brings this up — that even though light is a really mysterious and strange and important thing, it dies away when you block it. Yeah — it’s not something that’s always there, remaining eternally the same, perfect and undissolved. I’ll admit I even got a kick out of the fact that he talks about different kinds of lamps — the oily smoke of the oil lamps and other sorts of lamps that they use — and I just found that somewhat endearing. And the fact that he can extrapolate from an oil lamp to the sun is somewhat impressive too.
Don:
If the terminology is correct, it is again — as you’re saying — emphasizing the observation. He’s observing these certain things and then he says “we conclude therefore that the sun, the moon, and the stars are continually throwing off new supplies of light.” So it’s another example of the pattern of observation that leads to a conclusion, as opposed to just stopping at your observation and saying “if you observe this, you’ll see this.” He goes further and says we conclude from this that these light sources are throwing off new supplies of light and that the first rays they emit perish and die away. And his basic observation seems to be that light is light no matter the source — a ray that eventually dies and that you can block. So if we do this with an oil lamp we can see the same phenomenon going on with the sun.
Cassius:
But he didn’t get it entirely right because he was apparently not clear that the moon is only reflecting the sun’s light — it’s not emitting its own light.
Martin:
By observation by careful observation he could have been aware of the reflection of the moon — made by eclipses. Also the moon cycle goes between full moon and new moon and half moon, so that cycle also proves that the moon is just reflecting light and not emitting new light.
Cassius:
Okay. What about the next passage — where we move over and start talking about stones and towers falling to ruin? And we certainly don’t fail to mention that the temples and the images of the gods themselves give way to ruin. In other sections, did he talk about lightning bolts hitting temples? Do I remember that?
Don:
Yeah, I’m thinking about that somewhere too, Cassius, but I can’t cite where the text would be. Whether it’s because he’s going to be talking about lightning later on — because he specifically talks about lightning somewhere, and I’m not sure we’ve already done it — I think we had lightning before, but I don’t remember what he said about it. I think he has a good observation on things wearing away, and I’m sure again that if you were in ancient Greece and there was a temple that had been there for a hundred years or more, you’d see the steps wearing away and things falling off the mountain sides and all that sort of thing. So the fact that he can do those kinds of observations and then extrapolate from them is interesting. “For they would never have fallen with this sudden ruin had they from all eternity endured the strokes of time secure and unshaken” — so you can deduce from the worn steps of your temple that these things have not been here forever and won’t stay here forever.
Cassius:
And from all of these observations that we make from seeing things around us, we then apply that observation to everything we see in the sky even though we’re not able to see it up close or firsthand. “We look up to the surrounding heavens, and these heavens which some say produce all things out of themselves — they surely had a beginning and are formed of mortal seeds and must have an end.” And here’s what I was talking about in some of those earlier podcasts — here’s the conclusion: “for whatever seeds and contributes to the increase of other bodies must lose some of its parts and must again be repaired by those bodies when they are dissolved.” Well, I’m not sure that’s exactly the same as what I was looking for earlier, but this last passage comes close to saying that everything that comes together eventually falls apart. How would you describe what that last passage is saying?
Don:
I think he’s basically just saying that things which are composed of mortal seeds are going to eventually give up those seeds, and those seeds are going to go and be able to create something else.
Cassius:
This looks almost like the Christians stole this in their “ashes to ashes” passage.
Don:
That’s a good point. Yeah, yeah. Dust to dust.
Cassius:
That’s a good point. Now I took a moment to look to see whether we were artificially breaking the thought by drawing a dividing line at this passage. But from this point, what we’ll discuss next week — he goes on to discuss sort of the age of the universe and why, if in fact the earth were eternal, we don’t have any records going back any further than the Trojan War and things like that. So this is the end of this particular line of thought and he sort of switches. And maybe he’s really recognizing — and again, this is Lucretius, so he’s not going to necessarily talk about the Stoic view — or those who just believe that the universe itself is the source of all things and that everything is resolved back into the universe. Because that first sentence there kind of evokes in my mind the idea that the universe is God and that everything comes from and then goes back — he doesn’t say “divine fire” but in my mind he might be talking about that kind of a perspective. So I guess what he’s saying is that even if you think that everything came from the earth and goes back to the earth, the earth itself still had a beginning and will eventually cease to exist. For whatever — I keep coming back to that last passage — “for whatever seeds and contributes to the increase of other bodies must lose some of its parts.” That very last sentence is troubling me a little bit. I wonder what the other translations say about that.
Don:
I see Munro says “for whatever gives increase in food out of itself to other things must be lessened and must be replenished when it takes things back.” And Bailey says “for whatever increases and nourishes other things out of itself must needs be lessened and replenished when it receives things back” — which is the same point. But those make it a little bit clearer to me that what he’s saying is that if you’re giving something of yourself to something else, then as a result of that you are lessened, and so that lessening must be replenished.
Cassius:
Which makes sense going back to all the talk he’s doing about the cycles of water and air and those sorts of things — he’s basically saying throughout the section that particles are given off by the water, and worn off by the air, and worn away by your feet on the stones. And so those particles go off and then eventually become part of something else.
Don:
Yeah. With the ultimate payoff presumably being that everything has a cycle of birth and death to it. And that includes the earth, and it certainly includes us as humans. But for those people who are into the religion of thinking that the earth or the sun or the world is a god, even those things — he’s saying — are subject to the same cycle, and are not of themselves gods deserving to be worshipped or feared or thought to control our lives.
Cassius:
Exactly. And I think this might be a good spot for me to mention — I’ve been taking a look at David Sedley’s book Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom, which for anybody who’s interested in Lucretius’s poem is an excellent source to really dig deep into some of this stuff. I find it interesting where you mentioned that the universe isn’t divine. Sedley talks in one section about how Epicurus’s On Nature was a direct response to Plato’s Timaeus — basically the intelligent design bible of the ancient Greeks — and that he goes point by point in his books of On Nature, and then Lucretius used those as sources for his poem. So I think looking at some of the parts of the Timaeus where he talks about, like we discussed last week, where the creator of the universe used a model for the creation of the universe — this is a direct response to that treatise right there.
Cassius:
Yeah, well that’s a theme we’ll be continually running into throughout the remainder of the book and everything we’ve already done. So I need to go back and review that book, and plan to do that soon.
Okay, well we’re almost at the end of our normal episode length for today, so let’s think about any closing thoughts we have on this passage or just generally where we are in the book. Let’s start with Martin.
Martin:
Yeah, I have nothing to add — I said everything already — so I’m fine.
Cassius:
Okay, very good. Don, any new thoughts we haven’t added already today?
Don:
No, I think we’ve covered it pretty well. And like I said, I’m just surprised at the accuracy of some of the things that he talks about — with the water cycle and all that sort of stuff, it was a really interesting section.
Cassius:
Right. And sort of again, the big picture always being that we’re not talking about all these things just so that we can impress ourselves with our knowledge of science. We’re talking about these things for the practical benefit that we get from realizing that everything has a beginning and an end — including us. Our lives are going to have an end, our lives are short, and so one of the conclusions is that it makes sense to make hay while the sun shines. Or “carpe diem” might be a more apt cliché from the Epicurean perspective — your life’s short, so make use of it while you can.
Okay, well that would be my closing comment. So unless anybody has anything else we’ll close for the day and come back in about a week. So until then, thanks for being with us today.
Don:
Thanks. Have a good day.
Martin:
Alright, bye.