Episode 090 - Special Guest Panelist - Preparation for Discussion of Magnetism

Date: 09/27/21
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/2209-episode-ninety-recap-of-atomism-in-preparation-for-details-of-magnetism/

Summary

The episode covers Book 6, lines 906–998: Lucretius’s extended introduction to the magnetism discussion. Guest panelist Joshua stands in for Don and also performs a dramatic reading of the day’s text at the episode’s close. Lucretius revisits foundational atomic principles — particles constantly flowing from all bodies, the axiom that “there is nothing in nature but body mixed with void,” and the variety of pore sizes that allows different particles to pass through different materials — all groundwork for the magnetism treatment to follow.

Notable discussion: Joshua observes that this passage contains the last mention of “pleasure” in the entire poem, and that it refers to a pig rolling in mud (iucunda). The panel connects this to the pig as an Epicurean symbol — Horace’s “hog out of Epicurus’s herd,” the Boscoreale Cup showing Epicurus with a pig at his feet, and the famous leaping piglet bronze from the Villa of the Papyri. Also discussed: Santayana’s claim that the atomic theory is humanity’s greatest idea; Hitchens on learning not what the early Greek materialists thought but how they thought; and the question of whether Cicero read the De Rerum Natura, with Joshua noting that the word “amended” in connection with Cicero comes from St. Jerome, not from any classical source.

Transcript

Cassius:

Welcome to Episode 90 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. 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 visit EpicureanFriends.com where you’ll find our goals and our ground rules. If you have any questions about those, please be sure to contact us at the Forum for more information.

In this episode 90, we’ll read approximately Latin lines 906 through 998 and we’ll begin our discussion of magnetism. This week we have a special treat in that we have a guest panelist, Joshua, who’s a regular member of our EpicureanFriends.com forum and will be standing in today for Don. And if you’ll listen to the full podcast, at the very end we have a special dramatic reading of today’s text, also by Joshua. So now let’s join the discussion with Joshua reading today’s text.

Joshua:

And now I shall begin to show by what power of nature it is that the stone which the Greeks call a magnet — from the country that produces it, for it is found in the region of the Magnetes — has the virtue to attract iron. Men are amazed at the qualities of this stone, for it will make a chain of several little rings of iron without a link between to hang together entirely from itself. You may sometimes see five or more hanging straight down and play in the gentle air as they stick close and depend at the bottom one upon another. The ring that follows feels the attraction and power of the stone from that above it. So strongly is the virtue of the magnet communicated to the several rings it acts with so great a force. In inquiries of this nature, many things are to be first proved before we can fix upon the true cause. We must trace the subject through many long and intricate difficulties. And therefore, I beg you will hear me with a willing mind and with the closest attention.

And first, certain seeds must necessarily flow, be sent out, and continually dispersed abroad from all things, whatever we see, which must strike upon the eye and affect the sight. From some bodies, a train 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 walls along the shore, and various sounds are always flying through the air. And as we walk upon the strand, a briny taste frequently offends our mouth, and when we see a bunch of wormwood bruised, the bitterness strikes upon the palate. So plain it is that something is continually flowing off from all bodies and is scattered about. There is no intermission. The seeds never cease to flow, because the sense is continually affected. We still continue to feel, to see, to smell, and hear.

Now I shall repeat what I have proved at large in the first book of this poem, that no bodies are perfectly solid, for though it is proper to know this upon many accounts, yet it is of principal use in the subject I now offer to explain. In this place it is necessary to establish this truth, that there is nothing in nature but body mixed with void. And first, in the deep caverns of the earth, the rocks above will sweat with moisture and weep with flowing drops, and sweat will flow from all our bodies and through every pore. The beard will grow and hairs spread over our members and our limbs. Water divides our food through all the veins. It feeds and nourishes the extreme parts, our very nails. We find that cold and heat will pass through brass, will make their way through gold and silver. We know, by feeling the outside of a cup, whether the juice within be hot or cold. And lastly, sounds will pierce stone walls of houses, and so will smells and cold and heat. A force of fire, thrown from without, will pass through iron and scorch the soldiers’ limbs, though armed about with coats of mail. And tempests, rising from the earth or skies, and sent from thence, will strike through everything before them, for nothing in nature is without some void.

Besides, all seeds that are thrown off from bodies are not the same in quality and shape, nor do therefore they equally agree to things they strike or act upon. For first the sun burns up and dries the earth, but thaws and melts the snows so deep upon the mountaintops, and wax will drop when placed before the fire, and brass will run and gold dissolved by heat. But skin and flesh it shrinks and shrivels up. Fire will harden steel made weak by fire, but soften skin and flesh made hard by heat. Leaves of wild olive please the bearded goats as if they flowed with juice of nectar or ambrosia, when nothing is more bitter than that leaf to us. The swine fly every strong perfume and fear the smell of every ointment. ‘Tis the sharpest poison to the bristly race, but cheers our spirits with a sweet delight. And then to roll in the mud is the most odious filthiness to us — to them, a cleanly pleasure; they are never tired of wallowing in the mire.

But before I enter fully upon the subject before us, it is proper first to premise that, since there are many pores of little spaces in all compound bodies, it is necessary that these passages should be of different natures, and should vary severally in their size and figure, for all creatures are formed with different organs, every one of which has an object proper and peculiar to itself. Sounds we perceive make their passage one way, and taste another, and smell another, according to the different nature and texture of the things that strike the sense. One thing we find will make its way through stones, another through wood, another will pierce through gold, another through silver, and another will fly through glass. This the images flow through. Through these the heat, and some seeds will sooner pierce through the same pores than others. This is owing to the different figures of these passages, which vary wonderfully in shape, as we said before. These things therefore being fully proved and laid down, and everything made ready and easy for the grand inquiry, we shall easily discover the reason and open every cause that moves and invites the iron to the stone.

Cassius:

Thank you, Joshua. For those of our regular listeners, you don’t need to adjust your speaker — you have heard a new voice. One of our regular participants at the EpicureanFriends.com forum has joined us today. That’s Joshua, who we welcome to the podcast. Good morning.

Joshua:

Yeah, I’m glad to be here.

Cassius:

Very good, Joshua. Before we get started, maybe we should take just a second to introduce you to the listeners. Can you tell us how long you’ve been interested in Epicurean philosophy, and can you tell us briefly about your background in Epicurus?

Joshua:

Yeah, I’m certainly not a professional philosopher by any stretch of the imagination. I first became interested in Epicurean philosophy probably about four or five years ago, around the time that I first read The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt. I had known about Epicurean philosophy because I had been reading the Stoics, for example. I had early on more or less discarded Epicurean philosophy as an interest because the authors I was reading — particularly in college and in the time after college — the idea that pleasure could be the proper end of life did not sit very well with the opinion I had at the time formed by that reading. I’m happy to have come full circle on that and changed my mind a little bit. So yeah, it’s been about four years, and I joined the forum probably three and a half years ago.

Cassius:

And Joshua has been a very valued member since that time, with lots of artistic talent and an excellent on-air reading voice as well. Hopefully we’ll be able to prevail on him to participate more in the future and do some additional recording of some of the Epicurean material. I should also add that we’re not losing Don — he’s just unavailable this week, and we’ll be back next week. And Joshua, you’ll be welcome back anytime you’d like.

Joshua:

Sure. Yeah, very good.

Cassius:

Hopefully you won’t find today’s experience too painful, and you’ll in fact get considerable pleasure from it. It can be very enjoyable to talk to people in a context like this in which we’re all basically on the same page, because it’s very difficult to find people who are even close to the same page out there in the real world, and this is hopefully the beginning of more relationships like that. And we do have Martin with us today too — Martin’s got a different time zone than we do, but he’s with us as well.

So maybe with that as background, we can jump into a normal discussion of this particular text. I’m thinking that this was a good one to have on a day when we had a guest panelist because even though Lucretius is talking about beginning the discussion of magnetism, he’s actually laying a prelude to that discussion and going back to some very basic fundamental aspects of atomism — and it will be good to get Joshua’s thoughts on some aspects of that as we go forward.

In general, what we’re talking about today seems to be Lucretius going back and explaining how there are particles flying through the air all the time, and he’s going to use that as the basis for explaining magnetism when he gets into the direct discussion of it. We’re at approximately line 906 in the text — the introduction, which we touched on briefly last week — but we’ll cover the whole introduction to magnetism today.

I remember Don talking about how interesting and humanizing it is to see someone 2,000 years ago expressing the same kind of amazement or fascination with a natural phenomenon such as magnets, just like a child or even an adult like me would today, seeing five or more rings hanging in the air sticking together. Martin, you’re with us today — any general comment before we get started?

Martin:

No, no, no.

Cassius:

Okay, very good. And of course the main point at line 917 — before we go too much further — is that Lucretius is talking about how this is a type of inquiry where, before we can fix upon the true cause, we must trace the subject through many long and intricate difficulties. So we have to pay the closest attention to the details before we come up with a rational understanding of what’s going on with magnets.

We briefly discussed this on the forum — this passage mirrors a passage in Book Four, and it references the groundwork laid out in Book One. So he’s hitting these themes in Book One, in Book Four, in Book Six — the beginning, middle, and end of the poem. These are Lucretius’s greatest hits right here.

Joshua:

Yeah, and that takes me to the extremely high-level comment that somebody who’s not interested in consistency is going to have a real problem with Epicurean philosophy. So many people come into Epicurean philosophy because of their interest in pleasure and happiness, but it is, in my opinion, an extremely consistent structure from foundation up to the highest levels. And Lucretius is constantly referring back to the foundational issues.

I think Epicurus and the Epicureans would have insisted — and would insist if they were here — that their positions on pleasure and happiness are obviously where the rubber hits the road of how to live your life. But they tightly linked their view of nature to their conclusions about ethics. Lots of people in this world are interested in being happy. But the Epicurean way of happiness as explained by Epicurus was not just based on some kind of desire to be happy and a “whatever works” position. He had a very specific view of the nature of the universe — including life after death and the existence of supernatural gods — that is built from the ground up on observations about how nature is based on atomism and not on supernatural events and beings. So what we’re talking about today is a reflection of items that have been hit over and over again from the beginning of the poem.

Cassius:

It is, and you mentioned consistency. There’s this idea in academic circles that either the poem is unfinished in some way, or perhaps finished but unrevised, or that there’s a missing seventh book on the nature of the gods. We’re almost at the end of the poem here — not too far from the account of the plague in Athens that Lucretius samples from Thucydides, which is the capstone of Book Six and the very end of all six books. So before we get to that, he wants to hit the important things one more time. If this passage had pressed a little harder on “nothing from nothing” and hit a little more on pleasure, this would almost be a perfect recap of what’s most important in the poem. To me this is perhaps an argument that maybe he was planning on winding this down in Book Six — put this in here at almost the very end to hit the important things just one more time — and then you get the plague in Athens to see how well you’ve really got it.

Joshua:

Yeah, I agree, Cassius. And you and Martin mentioned last week the issue of action at a distance. To me it would be appropriate for Lucretius to save magnetism for one of the last subjects he discusses, because — I think this was Martin’s observation — action at a distance through magnets, which can seemingly influence each other without touching and in a way that almost seems magical, is one of the more difficult and fascinating issues to explain. So it would make sense that this would be near the end of the book.

Cassius:

So if we turn to 921 — “first, certain seeds must necessarily flow, and be sent out, and continually dispersed abroad from all things whatever we see” — this paragraph looks like a listing of things like odors, heat, and cold that emit from different objects and are always flying through the air. What strikes me about that is: that’s the basic mechanism by which everything happens. Particles in motion create everything that’s in the world.

Joshua:

Yeah, and when it comes to the way vision works — what we now know, we have the theory of light, and it’s very close to what it actually is. Instead of being an emission from the body itself — a stream of atoms flowing off — it’s a reflection of light, which is more or less the same principle.

I do want to read something quickly, and I mentioned this on the forum. There is a difficulty in the Latin text here — and a lot of this is copied from Book Four — and I found this when I was reading the Rolfe Humphries translation. He says — and I’m glad Rolfe Humphries carried this forward from Book Four, because there are missing sections in both passages in Books Four and Six — he says: “In the first place, from everything we see there is bound to be an everlasting flow. Ah, look about you, watch a glimmering pool in the first shine of starlight, see the stars respond that very instant, radiant in water’s universe — does this not prove how marvelous the swift descent from heaven?” Our other senses know of emanations and fragrance, and then he goes on to talk about smells and sounds and all the rest.

I really like that image — starlight reflecting in water and how swiftly it comes down. We actually know, of course, it takes quite a long time for starlight to get here because of the vast distances involved. But for an image of films flying off constantly, flying off the object, reflecting off another object, and then hitting the eyes — I think that’s a great example, and I’m glad Rolfe Humphries carried it forward.

Cassius:

Yeah, I guess it is in Book Four where there’s the long discussion of what is translated as “images” — and there’s a word, I think “specters,” that appears in a passage of Cicero where he’s kind of joking about the whole concept. But this issue is not just about the visual images we see; it’s apparently an essential part of the philosophy. Of course we can analogize it to infrared or other things we don’t see, but regardless of whether we see it, hear it, smell it, or taste it, there are particles moving through space just constantly flowing in all directions.

Maybe another analogy I think about sometimes is the idea that there are radio waves or television waves flowing through my brain all the time from all directions — or at least there used to be. We don’t have as much broadcast television today as we used to. But the idea that radio waves containing all this information from all sorts of different sources are just constantly present in every location at every moment — it’s a fascinating thing to think about. But that’s apparently how things work.

Martin:

Yeah, if you come to my neck of the woods you won’t find many signal waves either — it depends on where you go.

Cassius:

Right. And of course we won’t go off on that tangent, but that apparently is one of the methods by which the Epicureans talk about the issue of knowing things about the gods — that whole question of whether there are images that stream to or from the gods. Unless you have some kind of supernatural theory of what’s going on when you hear or see things at a distance, you’ve got to have some method of scientifically explaining it, and the issue of particles moving through space is apparently the Epicurean answer.

Joshua:

Yeah, which in the case of the sense of smell is totally accurate — it’s aerosolized molecules floating through the air. It’s a little different with sound and sight as I mentioned, but for a person just trying to figure things out 2,000 years ago, not a bad attempt at explaining the phenomenon.

Cassius:

Now I’m going to make sure that I drag Martin into this discussion in just a minute, but first I’d like to move to 936, because this paragraph has a line in it that I think has just tremendous implications. The sentence at 936 I want to make sure we talk about is: “In this place it is necessary to establish this truth, that there is nothing in nature but body mixed with void.” The reason I think that’s so important — when you talk about “body” you’ll have to dig into whether he’s talking about particles (and today we might talk about waves, or about something that has the ability to be tested or validated) — but this issue that there is nothing in nature but body mixed with void has always stuck with me from the DeWitt book as an implicit refutation of the whole realm of supernatural affairs, and also a refutation of the Platonic idea that there is a dimension of forms out there that the things we see are just reflections of.

Martin, the issue in your mind might be what “body” means in modern terms, but this whole issue of materialism — what formulation do you think makes the most sense today? What would the Epicureans be alleging, and what do you think remains the right way to express the idea?

Martin:

So it’s not perfectly accurate if you look at different things, but it’s close — and especially it provides this consistent modeling. Not every detail may be correct, but it goes in the right direction. Before this we had all kinds of superstition, and this is now something fairly analogous to what modern science has found out.

But just to move back to 921 — there is one exception. This phrase, “cold is emitted from the rivers” — that is the only one that is outright wrong. Everything else we can see a direct analogy to in what we’ve actually found out. But there is no such thing as a “cold particle.” It’s rather the other way around: the air near rivers loses its heat into the water of the river, and then we feel the coldness in that environment. If we move away from the cold water, we don’t feel it. So it’s easy to imagine in a materialist framework that there is some sort of particle of cold coming — but that is not the case. It’s actually the reverse.

Cassius:

Right — what you’re saying is that the heat energy is actually being moved away from you in the direction of the river.

Martin:

Yeah, exactly.

Cassius:

Well, let’s relate that aspect to what we were just talking about. How would you update that line — “there is nothing in nature but body mixed with void”? In modern scientific terms, with atomism, body and void, matter and elemental particles and space — what do you think is the scientific way of stating the position that there is ultimately a material nature to everything?

Martin:

That one is correct — I mean, this is a basic assumption of human science altogether, that we can establish for everything what is real and what is relevant to us, and that we can establish a completely materialistic view of the world. Now we can in principle entirely model this.

Where it becomes difficult — and I think this is also not yet fully settled — is about the nature of the void or vacuum. What we know now is that we have this concept of fields, which in some way we can also describe with exchange particles. But it would mean ignoring the complementarity of these different models if you just stressed one. Depending on what aspect we look at, the particle model is not adequate, and we really then look at something like a wave propagating through. So we have fields — space is filled with a field of gravity, an electric field, possibly a magnetic field — and if we get closer to the nucleus of atoms, we can see that inside there are other forces which are probably best described at that short distance in terms of a field, a long-distance interaction.

The other thing we know is that by experiments and by modeling these experiments properly, we see that the vacuum is full of virtual particles. They can get materialized, typically through the course of interactions — so it’s not just that they pop up suddenly out of nothing, but they usually materialize when something material interacts with something else, and then a virtual particle materializes itself as well.

Joshua:

Martin, I just read an article this morning written by a man who was formerly an atheist and is now a Christian. He says it takes more faith to be non-religious, and he cites specifically two things: dark matter, and what you just mentioned, the virtual particle. I thought that was interesting — I just wanted to flag it.

But Cassius, you mentioned that line — “there is nothing in nature but body mixed with void.” We’ve talked a little before about this essay on Lucretius by George Santayana, who was a Spanish-born American scholar, philosopher, and poet at Harvard University. He wrote an essay on Lucretius — Santayana by the way was a materialist but not an Epicurean; he had a lot of problems with Epicurean philosophy — but he did say that the atomic theory, the idea that all matter is made of tiny indestructible particles, is the greatest idea that mankind has ever hit upon.

And presumably that’s why it connects with what that Christian was saying — that it would take more faith to believe there is no God than there is a God. This issue of what you’re comfortable believing, and how to get a grasp of the big picture — I think that’s what Epicurus was going with in his whole philosophy. A lot of people today who’ve moved away from religion in their backgrounds aren’t as concerned anymore about some aspects of it and don’t even like to spend time talking about it. But what you’re putting your finger on is that in many people at least there is this ultimate level of cognitive dissonance. You’ve got to have some kind of framework in which you can get comfortable with analyzing everything in general. And if you can’t get comfortable with the idea that things can work in a natural way without being guided by some wizard of Oz behind the curtain who’s pulling the strings, then you just never really get over that fear and doubt.

And I think that’s what Epicurus thought — that it wasn’t sufficient just to say “be happy,” to say “focus on pleasure and minimize pain.” Unless you have a position about the nature of the universe, whether there is a god manipulating things, whether there is fate or some degree of agency, whether there’s life after death — those issues, in the minds of at least many people, have to be addressed. If you don’t address them and come to a conclusion you’re confident in, then you’re never going to move past them. “Confident” is probably the right word — you have to have confidence in your general worldview.

Cassius:

And in fact there’s some discussion in Epicurus about the best life being something like being surrounded by pleasures without pain and confident that the state will continue — so the issue of confidence is right there in the texts. But I think you’ve raised an excellent point. Santayana’s observation that it’s brilliant is one thing, but it’s necessary to have a position. If you can’t accept a naturalist, materialist point of view, then you’re going to end up in total arbitrariness, lost at sea.

Joshua:

Cassius, you just pulled another quotation out of my brain. This comes from Christopher Hitchens — he’s describing early materialist philosophy in Greece, that Ionian period: Democritus, Leucippus, Epicurus, Lucretius, and some of the others like Anaxagoras who first believed the sun was not a god but a ball of fire. Hitchens said: “We have little to learn about what they thought, but we have a great deal to learn about how they thought.” So even if some of these theories don’t stand up over time, the important thing is the attempt — this first primordial human attempt to take something unintelligible and make it intelligible, something inscrutable and make it scrutable. It’s better to do what they were doing rather than what the religious people are doing. “Fabling of the ineffable” would be another formulation. I think you’re absolutely right — whether in all the particular details it stands up over the millennia in the face of scientific inquiry, that’s not really the point. The point is that you have to have a foundation to work from, and having that foundation you can move forward and probe these issues with a modern understanding of science.

I think if you’re going to traffic under the name of Epicurus or Lucretius, it’s important that you get them right — but you don’t have to necessarily accept everything they said. If there’s a better explanation for magnetism, you’re going to take the better explanation for magnetism. You need to understand the Lucretian explanation, but you have to start somewhere, and starting with a materialist understanding of the universe is a really great foundation.

Cassius:

I would relate that to what I hear from Martin when we discuss the details of these scientific issues. What I hear in Martin’s voice frequently is that there are possibilities and issues and conflicts even today among certain scientists on certain points, but I don’t ever detect in Martin’s voice any doubt that in the end there will be some natural explanation for the phenomenon. Maybe we haven’t found it yet, but it will be found. Martin, how would you describe your confidence in that kind of result?

Martin:

Exactly — you explained my position better than I could have done it myself, so it was accurate how you explained it.

Cassius:

Okay, well then I’m going to reach for a quotation on this particular point that always comes to my mind. It’s from Lucian’s Alexander the Oracle-Monger. Lucian writes to his friend Celsus: “At this point, my dear Celsus, we may, if we be candid, make some allowance for these Paphlagonians and Pontics, these poor uneducated fat-heads. They might well be taken in when they handle the serpent — a privilege conceded to all those who chose — and saw in that dim light its head with the mouth that opened and shut. It was an occasion for a Democritus — nay, for an Epicurus or a Metrodorus — perhaps a man whose intelligence was steeled against such assaults by skepticism and insight; one who, if he could not detect the precise imposture, would at any rate have been perfectly certain that, though this particular trick escaped him, the whole thing was a lie and an impossibility.”

And that’s the attitude you bring when you confront something unknown or particularly difficult. When you don’t have enough evidence, you’re going to act based on your attitude, and your general attitude needs to be extremely skeptical about any claims of supernatural affairs. There’s ultimately no reason to go in that direction, and so even when you’re uncertain you have to be confident that there’s no need to go there.

That’s quite a tangent for today. Does anybody have anything further on 936?

Joshua:

No.

Martin:

No.

Cassius:

Okay. Because all of the rest of it is basically more examples of particles moving through not only the air but also through buildings and cups and houses and walls and all sorts of things. Then 959 is a reminder that all particles are not the same in quality and shape, and they don’t equally agree with the things that they strike or act upon — so sometimes the particles when they strike are beneficial to what they act upon and sometimes they are detrimental. And there’s the very elegant example of the pigs who don’t like perfumes but love to roll in the mud.

Joshua:

I’m glad you pointed that one out. So here’s something interesting — and this might be an original observation on my part. I looked through the whole rest of the Latin text of the poem, and this is the last passage in the entire poem in which the word “pleasure” is used.

Cassius:

Wow.

Joshua:

My immediate next thought was: I can just imagine Cicero — hearty, high-minded Cicero — reading through 7,000 lines of dense poetry explaining physics and philosophy and pleasure as the goal and the nature of the universe. And then he gets to the final mention of pleasure in the poem. And what is it? It’s a pig rolling around in the mud.

Cassius:

Joshua, that I think is an extremely good observation. That can hardly be coincidence.

Joshua:

Yeah, no, I was totally fascinated by it when I found it. I was also interested — I did a search in the Perseus database. I searched for the word voluptas, which is the word for pleasure he uses in the very first line of the poem, because the word he uses here is different. The word he uses for the pig’s pleasure I believe is iucunda, which I think is the root of “jocund” in English. And the word he uses for what humans get from perfume — refreshment or renewal — is recreare, which is of course the root of “recreation.” But iucunda — that is the last reference to pleasure in the entire poem.

Cassius:

Interesting, very interesting. Okay — one more thing about the pig. Have you ever heard the expression “as surely as a pig likes marjoram”?

Joshua:

Distant recesses of my mind remind me of “marjoram,” but I can’t place any detail.

Cassius:

Martin, you ever heard anything like that?

Martin:

About pigs liking mushrooms?

Cassius:

No, it’s a different word — marjoram. M-A-R-J-O-R-A-M.

Joshua:

So let me read the text here. Lucretius says: “The swine fly every strong perfume and fear the smell of every ointment. ‘Tis the sharpest poison to the bristly race.” And the word Lucretius uses in Latin is something like amaracinum, which is essentially marjoram. So this line of the poem became adapted in English as a proverb: “as sure as a pig likes marjoram.” And it actually means the opposite — an example I saw online was “If you don’t start turning in your homework, you’re going to get an A in this class as sure as a pig likes marjoram,” meaning you’re definitely not going to get an A. The idiom is at FreeDictionary.com under “as a pig loves marjoram” — it defines it as meaning that whatever it is is very unlikely to happen, improbable. The phrase is usually attributed to the Roman poet Lucretius, who wrote that swine shun marjoram, which in the Brown translation I guess is rendered as “ointment.”

Cassius:

Interesting. I certainly had never heard that — never heard the idiom or knew that it was attributed to Lucretius. It must not have come over to the German, Martin.

Martin:

I’m not aware of this one at all.

Joshua:

It sounded to me like something you might know, Cassius, because it has the sound of an older English expression.

Cassius:

Yes, it does have an older scent to it. And I see that WebMD has an entry on marjoram — it says it’s a herb, many people make medicine from the flowers, leaves, and oil, commonly used for runny nose, coughing, common colds. And don’t confuse marjoram with oregano, it says, which is referred to as winter marjoram or wild marjoram. That word just is not familiar to me at all. I’m sure I’ve seen it in a spice cabinet somewhere.

Martin, you did mention you misheard “marjoram” as “mushroom” — you mentioned pigs liking mushrooms. Do you want to talk about that?

Martin:

The thing is, I couldn’t understand the word clearly, and somehow I heard “mushroom” out of “marjoram,” because for pigs the association with mushrooms is very close — they have it as a preferred food. Pigs are actually used to find truffles, which are a kind of mushroom. So that is why I readily associate pigs with mushrooms, and when someone says a word similar to a word I don’t know, that’s how I came to think of mushroom.

Cassius:

Yeah, well, I specifically wanted to talk about pigs and mushrooms and truffles. Pigs are used, as Martin has just said, to sniff around in the forest, and if they start rooting in the ground you can dig and pull up a truffle. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten truffles — they have a very high market price. The reason pigs are good at finding them is because they have very good noses. So the idea that they’re shunning perfume isn’t necessarily because it smells bad — it’s because it smells strong. Humans have very poor senses of smell compared to pigs and dogs. It’s not “let me go back to my mud hole, this is terrible” — it’s more that the smell is so strong it’s off-putting.

And I would tie that in with the way certain religions over time have viewed the pig as a filthy, unclean creature. Of course, Epicureanism throughout its history has faced people antagonistic to the philosophy accusing Epicureans of living “a life fit for a pig.” But pigs are not naturally terribly filthy. My family actually raised hogs for a long time. They’re not always terribly clean, but they don’t love filth for its own sake. They would prefer tidy living over wallowing in mud, which is actually very good for their skin. So it’s not a preference for filth by any means — it’s a preference for natural instinct and pleasure.

Joshua, before we leave this, help me get these citations correct. We sometimes get questions about why pigs are associated with Epicurus, and I don’t want to leave this without referencing that line from Horace — the one about finding him fat and sleek and in good keeping, being a hog out of Epicurus’s herd.

Joshua:

Yes — so it was clearly an analogy the Epicureans themselves were using as late as Horace. And we also know that on the Boscoreale Cup found from the Herculaneum area, there’s a picture of Epicurus standing and pointing at one of the Stoic philosophers, and Epicurus has a pig at his feet. So there’s a very strong association between pigs and Epicurean philosophy.

Cassius:

And actually you’ve missed my favorite example.

Joshua:

Which is the leaping piglet statue! Of course!

Cassius:

That they found in the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum — this bronze statue of a rather adorable-looking pig, frolicking.

Joshua:

Yeah. You have the Horace quote almost exactly correct. My understanding is that it comes from a letter he wrote to someone. He said: “And as for me, if you want to laugh, you can come and see me fat and sleek and in good keeping — a hog out of Epicurus’s herd.”

Horace is an interesting character. He was noted for his Epicureanism in the days of the Republic. And then of course, when the civil war went the wrong way from his point of view, his writings started to reject Epicurean philosophy and he took on the Roman state religion as his theme, rather unfortunately. Yeah, that period after Cassius and Brutus were defeated at Philippi, and what happened with Augustus — I think there’s discussion about whether that was when they closed down some of the schools of philosophy in Rome. We’ll have to examine that at some other time. Virgil and so forth in that period — all those poets seeming to be influenced by Epicureanism but not quite completely purely Epicurean. They were kind of losing that influence somehow.

Cassius:

We’re about to run long for today. Let’s go to 979 and 998 to finish up. I’m not sure that 979 has much in it that we need to comment on other than another discussion of how particles are different and therefore when they come together they interact in different ways.

Joshua:

Yeah, he does mention here that it’s not just that particles are different — but when particles mass around each other they form little spaces of void, and because the particles vary in size and figure, those little tunnels of void that go through seemingly solid matter also vary in size and figure. That goes on to be really important for his argument as it relates to magnetism.

Cassius:

Right, which we’ll have to defer the details of till next week. But as Martin was discussing earlier, I think what we’re going to find is that these flows of particles he’ll discuss next week compare pretty interestingly to the concept of a magnetic field. I don’t know that I can predict what Martin’s reaction to Lucretius’s discussion of magnetism is going to be, but it seems to me it’s pretty perceptive and reasonable. We can talk next week about how it differs from what our current theories might be.

And then 998 says: “These things therefore being fully proved and laid down, and everything made ready and easy for the grand inquiry, we shall easily discover the reason and open every cause that moves and invites the iron to the stone.” That’s an echo of some earlier passages too — about how once we’ve laid down the principles we’re ready, and will in fact find it relatively easy to follow and understand things that at first appear very difficult.

Joshua:

I think that’s a great ending to this passage. And we mentioned that this passage is sort of the last recap of the poem — you get the last mention of the word “pleasure,” you hit atoms and void one more time. This line here, if you cut it off after the word “inquiry” — that’s a great ending to the entire poem. You’re ready to go practice Epicurean philosophy. You’ve graduated.

Cassius:

Okay. Well, we have a practice established through long usage here on the podcast of having closing thoughts before we close for the day, and one of the essential parts of that practice is to first go to Martin for his thoughts.

Martin:

Yeah, so I don’t have a real closing statement. I would come back on two details. First, I looked up what marjoram is, and I saw — oh, it’s one of the kitchen herbs which I myself have used a lot in the past, in dried form. In dried form the smell is very weak — it gives a nice taste to some food, so that’s why it was for some time one of my favorite herbs. But it doesn’t really smell strongly. That doesn’t mean fresh marjoram may not have a strong smell, which might then be offensive to the noses of animals with a very good sense of smell.

And I think I remember seeing the word “tincture” — or the original word for tincture — in the poem. It seems to me they’re taking fresh marjoram, steeping it in some liquid, and then they’ve got this really strong infused condensed perfume that they’re making out of it.

Cassius:

Martin, did you say you had two comments? What was the other one?

Martin:

The other one is about Cicero. I know there’s a passage in which Cicero wrote a letter in which he refers to the poems of Lucretius — plural. So that means Cicero at least knew of more than one, or possibly this long poem was at that time split up into multiple volumes. But do we know whether he actually read the De Rerum Natura?

Cassius:

Okay, that’s a complicated subject. Joshua, you tackle it first. But did I hear you say, Martin, that you thought there was a reference in Cicero to there being two poems?

Martin:

No — more than one. He was writing about the “poems” of Lucretius. It could be that this long poem was at that time split up into multiple volumes, or that Lucretius actually wrote multiple things.

Cassius:

Martin has said an awful lot there. Joshua, you tackle that first.

Joshua:

Well, I’d have to see the Latin. In a previous episode — I think maybe two or three episodes ago — Cassius, I think you mentioned this quote by Ovid: “the verses of the sublime Lucretius will perish only when a day shall consign the world to destruction.” So I’ve actually had this inscribed on the flyleaf of my Loeb edition for a long time — I have the Latin and the English. And the Latin is something like carmina sublimis tunc sunt peritura Lucreti. So that word carmina I believe is plural, and that’s where we get “verses” — plural. So if this is the word Cicero is using, it’s possible that it’s been translated as “poems” plural but may more accurately mean “verses” plural. I don’t know the answer exactly, but I think Martin does bring up a good point. This is a poem of extraordinary brilliance, finish, and quality, and it would be very unusual — not unique in the history of poetry, but unusual — to jump straight into a work of this magnitude.

Cassius:

My understanding of the main thrust of what you’re talking about, Martin, is that there’s a correspondence between Cicero and his brother in which there’s a reference to Cicero somehow being involved in the poem — commentators love to focus on a word about “emending” or amending it. Apparently Cicero and Atticus had something of a publishing arrangement, and there’s a reference suggesting that Cicero’s people, or Cicero himself, was somehow involved in the final publication of the poem. That’s the place where Cicero makes a comment about its quality having some brilliance to it. But the one particular reference that people debate endlessly — no one really seems to know for sure what it actually means — other than that Cicero apparently would have read at least some of it.

Joshua:

Well, actually the word “amended” is added by St. Jerome — I don’t think it comes from Cicero. St. Jerome is the one who claimed that Lucretius had committed suicide in the throes of madness after drinking a love potion, and he said that Lucretius wrote some books which were “amended by Cicero.” So I think that passage in St. Jerome is the only place where we get the idea that it was amended by Cicero.

Martin:

I have to apologize — I somehow mixed up the years or thought wrongly. Lucretius died before Cicero, so that means it’s much more possible and likely that Cicero actually read the De Rerum Natura.

Cassius:

Yeah, there’s so much interesting speculation involved in these issues. Atticus — who was Cicero’s closest friend — was clearly a strong Epicurean, while Cicero at the end of his life was rejecting Epicurus even more strongly than he had before. And yet there were other Romans around Cicero who were strongly Epicurean, including Cassius Longinus, who Cicero was intimately involved with toward the end of the republic. So it’s really a fruitful field of speculation.

That’s why I think Cicero has to be viewed as clearly an opponent of Epicurus but one who was surrounded by close friends who were Epicurean, and to me that had to have served as a limiting factor in how badly Cicero would misrepresent Epicureanism. There are issues about how seriously we should take the extended Torquatus section as a good representation of Epicurus — obviously Cicero is going to put things in a way that makes Epicureanism look bad — but I think there had to be some limit to that, because if he just grossly distorted the key facts, he would not have wanted to do that among people who would clearly know he was wrong.

So anyway, we could go on and on about that for hours. Joshua, how have you survived your first podcast, and do you have any closing thoughts on this or any other aspect?

Joshua:

Oh yeah, no, I’ve really enjoyed it and I appreciate the opportunity to come on and do it. I can’t think of any particular closing thoughts, but it’s been really fun.

Cassius:

Well, my closing thought is that the reason I do what I do — and I think most of us are involved in this for the same reason — is that we get enjoyment not only from the intellectual study of the subject but from the friendship and the ability to interact with people who see the subject in at least generally the same way that we do. The purpose of getting involved in all this in the beginning for me was to come into closer contact with more and more people with whom you could have that collegiality and friendship as you study the same subject together. Certainly adding Joshua to that list has been a great achievement of the last several years. I’m sure our podcast listeners have not heard the last from Joshua.

Joshua:

Well, I hope to participate again.

Cassius:

Okay, great. Well with that we will close for the day. And I’m thinking that we may give our listeners an extra benefit — even though Joshua has already read the material in the podcast today, we have a recording of him doing a dramatic reading of it that I might affix to the end of the podcast. So even though we’re about to say goodbye, don’t turn off the podcast immediately until you hear whether there’s an epilogue: Joshua’s dramatic reading.

Any last thoughts?

Martin:

No.

Joshua:

I don’t think so.

Cassius:

Okay, well we’ll close from here and we’ll be back next week. Thank you all for participating, and to the listeners, thanks for listening. Bye.

Joshua:

Thank you. Bye.

Martin:

Bye.

[Dramatic reading by Joshua:]

Joshua:

And now I shall begin to show by what power of nature it is that the stone which the Greeks call a magnet — from the country that produces it, for it is found in the region of the Magnetes — has the virtue to attract iron. Men are amazed at the qualities of this stone, for it will make a chain of several little rings of iron without a link between to hang together entirely from itself. You may sometimes see five or more hanging straight down and play in the gentle air as they stick close and depend at the bottom one upon another. The ring that follows feels the attraction and power of the stone from that above it, so strongly is the virtue of the magnet communicated to the several rings. It acts with so great a force.

In inquiries of this nature, many things are to be first proved before we can fix upon the true cause. We must trace the subject through many long and intricate difficulties, and therefore I beg you will hear me with a willing mind and with the closest attention.

Now I shall repeat what I have proved at large in the first book of this poem, that no bodies are perfectly solid, for though it is proper to know this upon many accounts, yet it is of principal use in the subject I now offer to explain. In this place it is necessary to establish this truth, that there is nothing in nature but body mixed with void. And first, in the deep caverns of the earth, the rocks above will sweat with moisture and weep with flowing drops, and sweat will flow from all our bodies and through every pore. The beard will grow and hairs spread over our members and our limbs. Nature divides our food through all our veins. It feeds and nourishes the extreme parts, our very nails. We find that cold and heat will pass through brass, will make their way through gold and silver. We know, by feeling the outside of a cup, whether the juice within be hot or cold. And lastly, sounds will pierce through stone walls of houses, and so will smells and cold and heat. The force of fire, thrown from without, will pass through iron and scorch the soldiers’ limbs, though armed about with coats of mail, and tempests rising from the earth or skies, and sent from thence will strike through everything before them, for nothing in nature is without some void.

But before I enter fully upon the subject before us, it is proper first to premise that, since there are many pores of little spaces in all compound bodies, it is necessary that these passages should be of different natures, and should vary severally in their size and figure, for all creatures are formed with different organs, every one of which has an object proper and peculiar to itself. Sounds, we perceive, make their passage one way, and taste another, and smell another, according to the different nature and texture of the things that strike the sense. One thing we find will make its way through stones, another through wood, another will pierce through gold, another through silver, and another will fly through glass. This the images flow through. Through these the heat, and some seeds will sooner pierce through the same pores than others. This is owing to the different figures of these passages, which vary wonderfully in shape, as we said before. These things therefore being fully proved and laid down, and everything made ready and easy for the grand inquiry, we shall easily discover the reason, and open every cause that moves and invites the iron to the stone.

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Episode 089 - Unusual Geological Phenomena - Springs That Change From Hot to Cold And Back Again