Episode 107 - The Epicurean Emphasis on Natural Science
Date: 02/03/22
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/2365-episode-one-hundred-seven-the-epicurean-emphasis-on-natural-science/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Continuing from Episode 106, the panel returns to section 63 of Torquatus in Cicero’s On Ends and focuses on the declaration that Epicurus “laid the greatest stress on natural science.” The discussion examines what natural science meant for Epicurus — concluding it encompasses the study of all nature, not a narrow modern discipline — and why the Epicureans grouped epistemology (the canon) with physics, as noted by Diogenes Laertius. The panelists debate how much direct scientific study modern Epicureans need, settling on the view that the real benefit is learning how to think naturally: developing the habit of proposing natural explanations rather than supernatural ones. The episode closes with Lucretius’s warning that religion’s eloquence can persuade to evil deeds, and his promise to pour out proofs “until slow old age creeps in” — illustrating why the canon of truth, which “almost fell from heaven into human kind,” will be the focus of the following episode.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
Welcome to episode 107 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote On the Nature of Things, the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. I’m your host Cassius, and together with our panelists from the EpicureanFriends.com forum, we’ll walk you through the six books of Lucretius’s poem and we’ll 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. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where you’ll find a discussion thread for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics.
At this point in our podcast we’ve completed our first line-by-line review of Lucretius’s poem and we have turned to the presentation of Epicurean ethics found in Cicero’s On Ends. Last week we started section 63 of book one but only got through the first two sentences. Today we return to section 63 and we discuss the Epicurean emphasis on natural science. Now let’s join Martin reading today’s text.
Martin:
He laid the greatest stress on natural science. That branch of knowledge enables us to realize clearly the force of words and the natural conditions of speech and the theory of consistent and contradictory expressions. And when we have learned the constitution of the universe, we are relieved of superstition, are emancipated from the dread of death, are not agitated through ignorance of phenomena, from which ignorance, more than anything else, terrible panics often arise. Finally, our characters will also be improved when we have learned what it is that nature craves.
Then again, if we grasp a firm knowledge of phenomena and uphold that canon, which almost fell from heaven into human kind, that test to which we are to bring all our judgments concerning things, we shall never succumb to any man’s eloquence and abandon our opinions. Moreover, unless the constitution of the world is thoroughly understood, we shall by no means be able to justify the verdicts of our senses.
Further, our mental perceptions all arise from our sensations. And if these are all to be true, as the system of Epicurus proves to us, then only will cognition and perception become possible. Now those who invalidate sensations and say that perception is altogether impossible cannot even clear the way for this very argument of theirs when they have thrust the senses aside. Moreover, when cognition and knowledge have been invalidated, every principle concerning the conduct of life and the performance of its business becomes invalidated.
So from natural science we borrow courage to withstand the fear of death, and firmness to face superstitious dread, and tranquility of mind through the removal of ignorance concerning the mysteries of the world, and self-control arising from the elucidation of the nature of the passions and their different classes. And as I showed just now, our leader again has established the canon and criterion of knowledge and thus has imparted to us a method for marking off falsehood from truth.
Cassius:
Okay, Martin, thank you for reading that for us today. We’re going at a very deliberate speed through sections 63 and 64 of the Torquatus section of On Ends. And as a sort of prelude for what we’re going to discuss today, maybe I should repeat the first and very short sentence that you read: “He laid the greatest stress on natural science.” And what we’ll do today is to discuss how he explains that and the benefits of that.
One thing perhaps I’d like to add to that before we even read it, is that if you recall from the letter to Herodotus, Epicurus says that he himself had gotten some of the greatest benefits from studying natural philosophy or studying nature. The quote in the letter to Herodotus, as Bailey translates it, is that “Wherefore, since the method I’ve described is valuable to all those who are accustomed to the investigation of nature, I urge upon others the constant occupation in the investigation of nature and find my own peace chiefly in a life so occupied.” And I’ve composed for you another epitome on these lines, summing up the first principles of the whole doctrine.
And of course, that is an introduction of a sort to the letter to Herodotus, which is also a description of what he’s talking about in terms of natural science, I think. But maybe I shouldn’t presume that we all have the same interpretation of what he says when he says natural science there. What do you guys think? What would we describe that today as being? Is it physics? Is it some kind of environmental nature? What do you guys think?
Martin:
I think just natural science is meant in the same way as you mean it today — just that today we have accumulated a lot more knowledge. But essentially it’s the same thing. At that time, the disciplines were not as carved out as they are now. And that’s why I think calling it natural science is the most appropriate. So what he was mostly concerned with is what we call physics, but he even goes into psychology — things which are just borderline on natural science.
Cassius:
Joshua, what do you think about that?
Joshua:
I was thinking last week about how to approach this issue and how we could bring Lucretius into it, because natural science, however defined, turned out to be sort of the whole subject of his poem. And when I was thinking about it, I began to think of a book sitting in my house called De Aquis. It was written by Frontinus, who was a military general and an engineer, and he was commissioned to write a book which we would translate in English as On the Aqueducts of Rome. It’s an interesting book — it has nothing to do with Epicurean philosophy, but it gave me great pleasure to read it. It was a kind of handbook on the aqueducts of Rome. And he also wrote a handbook on land surveying. And there were handbooks written on agriculture — Cato the Elder wrote one called De Agricultura. There were handbooks on how to raise a legion and how to drill in military matters. So a lot of these books that we have surviving from Rome were handbooks on different disciplines that you could devote yourself to.
And Lucretius, in spite of being a poem, turns out to be precisely this kind of handbook. So in that respect, I think the title is rather interesting. Because just like you have De Agricultura, which means “on agriculture,” in Lucretius you have De Rerum Natura, which is “on the nature of things.” So really, when we talk about natural sciences, I think that’s what we’re talking about — the nature of all things, not the nature of any particular discipline of the human mind, but the nature of everything there is. So natural science, in my view, is more or less the study of physical nature, to include the nature of the human, because we are physical and animal in a sense.
Cassius:
Well, most of the detail it looks like we’re going to read today is sort of an elaboration of the benefits and aspects of it. And from that, we’ll be able to tell to some extent what he’s talking about. But I probably should remind us that the part that Martin read today comes immediately after the middle of a paragraph, and it comes immediately after where he has just said: “He judged the logic of your school possesses no efficacy either for the amelioration of life or for the facilitation of debate.” So to some extent, he is probably contrasting this topic with the topic that he has just indicated was less important. So I wonder if, from that perspective, what is he contrasting against each other? Does the fact that he has just been talking about a particular form of logic as having some issues with it, and then he says this, does that give us any further definition of what he’s talking about? Is there a division between logic versus nature?
Martin:
Well, I don’t know if I would use that as the starting point necessarily. Although at the beginning of that paragraph he does start by talking about fortune, which we talked about last week, but it’s actually the first sentence in the next paragraph to me where he says, “Moreover, unless the constitution of the world is thoroughly understood, we shall by no means be able to justify the verdicts of our senses.” So really to me, that’s the key part there — the constitution of the world needs to be thoroughly understood. And that’s the core undertaking of the natural sciences.
Cassius:
Yeah, I completely agree with that. Okay. Well, why don’t we dig into the first of the examples? When he talks about natural science, he says that that branch of knowledge enables us to realize clearly the force of words and the natural conditions of speech and the theory of consistent and contradictory expressions. So before we turn to the benefits of it, which is going to be in the next clause thereafter, after the semicolon — what do you make of the issue of realizing the force of words and the natural conditions of speech and then consistent and contradictory expressions? How does that relate to the study of insects and the sun and the moon and the stars and water and everything else that goes along with nature?
Martin:
Yeah, this one talks about how to speak properly about this. And it seems it also, the way it’s formulated here — and this is surprising — it’s the beginning of what he characterizes as being under it. This is more something what we would not normally assign to rhetoric.
Cassius:
“Rhetoric” is a word that I throw around a lot and I’ve never understood all the subtle definitions of it. But it was apparently a big division among the classical writers. They would talk about rhetoric. Joshua, what do you think rhetoric is? Because rhetoric is a negative word in modern American English. If you just say “that’s rhetoric,” you’re dismissing it as something superficial and manipulative, probably. But that’s apparently not what they meant.
Joshua:
Right. And of course, we’re reading Torquatus here, but we’re reading it through the medium of Cicero, who was considered to be the greatest rhetor of all time. And his occupation, before he went into politics, was law — specifically trying to convince people of his clients’ innocence. So that kind of thing goes into it. I think it’s the art of persuasion.
Cassius:
And potentially part of that at least is the art of clear thinking. Although among lawyers, it’s the art of muddying the water at times when that is your goal, which frequently some lawyers seem to have as their goal.
Joshua:
I’ll take your word for it.
Cassius:
Well, I’ve been there and seen that, but I guess clear speaking and communication is to some extent what we’re talking about.
Joshua:
You had mentioned in your introduction to this the opening of the letter to Herodotus. And you quoted the first passage, where he said, “Wherefore, since the method I have described is valuable to all those who are accustomed to the investigation of nature, I, who urge upon others the constant occupation in the investigation of nature and find my own peace chiefly in a life so occupied, have composed for you another epitome on these lines, summing up the first principles of the whole doctrine.”
His peace does not chiefly derive from rhetoric, I don’t think. I think it derives from an understanding of the natural world. And he says, “First of all, Herodotus, we must grasp the ideas attached to words” — so before Epicurus in his letter to Herodotus sort of launches into his description of the natural world, he seems to think it’s very important to get this down first. He says, “First of all, we must grasp the ideas attached to words in order that we may be able to refer to them, and so to judge the inferences of opinions or problems of investigation or reflection, so that we may not either leave everything uncertain” — which is the first thing he wants to avoid — “and go on explaining to infinity, or use words devoid of meaning” — which is his second concern, and I think probably even the more important of the two.
I confess, I found this sentence to be rather difficult in the Torquatus, where he says “that branch of knowledge enables us to realize clearly the force of words and the natural conditions of speech and the theory of consistent and contradictory expressions.” I didn’t really know how to get a handle on that, and I’m not sure I still do. Certainly, if you were to read Lucretius, you would find a theory or hypothesis about the origin of human speech, but how does that get us to realize clearly the force of words? That was my question.
Cassius:
See, now the direct answer to that, I think, is the issue of epistemology — that you can’t be confident of anything unless you have a theory of how sound and hearing and eyes and light and things like that work. If you think it’s all supernatural and that there’s no rhyme or reason to it, then I think that would be the issue: you can’t have confidence in anything if you don’t understand that the way you interact with the world has a natural physical basis to it that’s predictable and understandable and that you can have confidence in. I think that’s the relation to that.
But Joshua, what I was going to say — and this is maybe the same topic — is, again, going back to Diogenes Laertius, the way these things interact. Diogenes Laertius specifically comments on this. When he lists the three parts of the canon, he says “The physics contains all the investigation into nature and is contained in the 37 books on nature and in an abridged form in the letters. The ethics deals with choice and avoidance and is contained in the books on lives and the book on the end.” But then this is the key part: “The Epicureans usually group the canonical, or the epistemology, with the physics, and state that it deals with the criterion of truth and the fundamental principles and contains the elements of the system.”
I guess what I’m seeing there is that the reason they lumped the physics and the epistemology together is exactly the question I think you asked, which is: why would you consider the study of insects to go along with language? But I think that’s the point — if you don’t have the ability to tie your ideas and your words to something specific in nature, then you’re really just floundering around without any anchors whatsoever. And it really is almost a physics problem to discuss whether your perceptions through your senses are accurate and have any connection with nature. Has that been clear as mud? Or do you agree with or disagree with some of that?
Martin:
No, I think you’re on the right track, and I don’t want to jump ahead, but when we get to the last sentence in this paragraph, I think the answer kind of presents itself there.
Cassius:
Right. You know, before we go too much further, I realized there’s a practical question that we get asked sometimes, and that people will tend to just answer for themselves in a way that I think is a bad answer. Back on the question of just what is natural science — what are we, as fans of Epicurus, suggesting? Is Epicurus suggesting, and are we suggesting now today, that every student of Epicurus needs to go out and buy a microscope and a telescope and start studying the stars directly through a telescope and studying insects and bugs through microscopes and reading books on physics? Is that what we’re saying? Because that’s kind of what some people think, and they’ll just decide that Lucretius is of no relevance to them whatsoever. They’ll say, “We understand nature better than he did. I’m not going to read any Lucretius. I’m not even going to bother to be interested in natural science or physics or anything else like that. I’m going straight to the ethics.” What is the practical side of what Epicurus is suggesting?
Martin:
Well, I think you presented that in a very good way, because there’s no doubt that they were wrong about some of what they believed about natural science and how it operated. And so you can see someone concluding, “Rather than reading Lucretius, whose entire book basically is about natural science, I should go read Carl Sagan, for example, or someone else — someone whose knowledge of these things is more up to date.” But the problem is that what Epicurus wants to make sure happens is that we build up a system of philosophy systematically off of a groundwork of natural science. And so the key thing really is to make sure that you get things put in the right order.
Cassius:
Right. And he kind of goes into it a little bit here when he says, when we have learned the constitution of the universe, we are relieved of superstition. So that’s the key thing to take away first of all from the study of nature — not to go running off with a microscope necessarily, but to learn how to think about natural science. And that is to think about things that we don’t understand and for which we don’t have an explanation. The Lucretian thing to do, in a sense, is that even though you don’t have the answer necessarily, you can always propose two or three answers, all of which are plausible. And then by doing that, you’ve now sort of subverted the need for a supernatural explanation, because you have a couple of natural explanations that do just as well as the supernatural explanation but don’t require that additional assumption.
Joshua:
Yeah, and actually they do better.
Cassius:
Yes, exactly. That’s Occam’s razor — William of Occam’s razor is that the best explanation is the one that explains the most or assumes the least. And so if you have a given phenomenon which you have not thoroughly grasped, but you can propose a plausible natural explanation and a supernatural explanation, and you’re trying to decide which of these is better — well, which one explains the most? Well, they explain the same amount in terms of the precise phenomenon you’re trying to describe. But which one assumes the least? The natural explanation always assumes the least, because the supernatural explanation always has the additional assumption that there is a God that could have done this, whereas the natural explanation just assumes laws of nature, which we already know to exist.
Martin, the way that Joshua concluded his statement on Occam’s razor right there, I certainly have no quibble with that. I’ve always been a little concerned myself, however, that Occam’s razor as a lot of people understand it — or as I understand it from my limited point of view — is more of a logical rule of saying that you should always just go with the explanation that assumes the least number of variables or something like that. But I’ve always seen a tension between Occam’s razor being a logical rule versus simply natural science and following the scientific observation wherever it leads, no matter how many variables you might have to account for. Do you have a view on that? Is Occam’s razor primarily logical, or — the way Joshua described it — is the point that the natural explanation is going to assume the fewest things and therefore be the best?
Martin:
No.
Cassius:
Okay. Well, we don’t want to go off on a long tangent on Occam’s razor. But Martin, of the three of us, you’re the most engaged in the hard sciences on a day-to-day basis. Most people aren’t engaged in the type of work that you do on a day-to-day basis. If you’re talking to somebody who’s a younger person who’s about to go off to college or whatever, and they don’t have an understanding yet of how to choose between natural sciences versus something else — is there a way that you would explain to somebody that they need to understand how nature works before they go off and focus on, say, 13th century French literature?
Martin:
Oh, I’ve never done that. When I talk with young people, it was more like the recommendation that they should do what they really like, so that they should not just ask which subject now has the best job prospects in five years — no one can tell that. So that’s why they should really study what they like and do the best in it. And no matter what it is, if it’s something where they cannot directly work in, they can still get a job where the skills they acquired are useful — not so much the knowledge particularly on that subject, but at least the skills.
And for the people I encountered, getting rid of superstition or something — this was not really an issue. And even if someone has supernatural beliefs, if he’s still reasonable in his choices, it doesn’t matter. There are still, maybe a minority, but still physicists and other scientists who believe in religions. And in that way, that doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive. So we do not need to talk people out of supernatural beliefs when they choose their study. It’s really a choice of what they would just like to do and what they can perform well.
Cassius:
Okay. I’m not giving up on that question. I’m going to cite Torquatus’s later statement about the fact that these things that we’re discussing, we should be ashamed that we did not learn as children. And I’m going to change the question by lowering it from college age — suppose your ten-year-old son comes to you and says, “I hate studying biology. I hate studying physics. I hate studying astronomy in school. I’m ten years old. I want to spend all of my time reading literature, reading Shakespeare.” But he’s ten years old, and so you’re his parent. Why do you tell him that he should spend at least some time studying natural science, Martin?
Martin:
The thing is, I will explain to him that if he wants to go to university and make a literature profession, he needs to get his high school degree first. And if he doesn’t put some effort in other subjects, it won’t happen. So that means he needs that. And it’s also useful for the common understanding.
I might say I actually faced this problem with my own son — at a very young age, he was quite interested in science. He even at some point stated he wanted to become a physicist like me. He did some genuinely good experiments. But then when studying at school, he eventually discovered it was too difficult for him. So he went away from science. It was a bit of a pity, but we accepted this and he went into a completely different field, and that was okay. He did get reasonable scores, so he picked up some of the school knowledge in science. So that was okay. His mother did that already more than was necessary. So it was good for me.
Cassius:
Okay, Joshua, I don’t want to leave it quite yet. A child comes to you and says they don’t like to study science. Martin has already hit the practical benefit — that you’re not going to be able to graduate, you’re not going to get a job, you’re not going to be able to buy boats and live the life of luxury that you would like to live unless you studied these things. But what other benefits might come from the study of natural science for somebody who’s not necessarily inclined in that direction?
Joshua:
Well, I think Martin has done an excellent job with the extrinsic value of studying science. But there’s also an intrinsic value, which I think is what you were getting at. The intrinsic value of the study of nature or the study of the sciences is learning how to think about certain things, and not just merely what to think. And I kind of went into that a little bit ago. But as I say, the important thing is to learn how to think. And when you’ve done that, I think you’ll have done the important thing, which is you’ll remove the need for any recourse to the supernatural in your explanations.
Cassius:
Yeah, you’re on the track that I’m expecting you to be. So why don’t we go ahead — we’ve mentioned the issues of natural conditions of speech, although we might want to go back to that — but let’s just talk about the benefits for just a minute. What about how does the study of natural science emancipate you from the dread of death?
Martin:
The dread of death is mostly grounded in fear of going to hell or something similar. And so by grounding things in science… but this is already then pulling people away from religion. So this is something I would not necessarily do. But if somebody really has this dread of death because they’re fearing they might go to hell, this is something we might consider. But I never ran into that situation. So it’s rather theoretical for me.
Cassius:
That’s another example of how we benefit from Martin having been raised in a different cultural environment than probably many of the people who will be listening to the podcast. But myself, and probably Joshua and some others who are listening, were probably raised in an environment in which there are, in fact, many fears and dreads that come from religion — that we’re taught at an early age that if we don’t obey our parents or do X, Y, or Z, we’re going to spend eternity burning in hell.
Joshua:
Right. Now, I do have to say that the Catholic Church of my generation is not the Catholic Church of my grandparents’ generation. But in, for example, a Southern Baptist culture, yeah, I think there is a lot of stress laid on that eventuality — the idea that when you die, if you haven’t embraced Jesus Christ and his resurrection first, then you will certainly suffer an eternity of torment in hell. And this is drilled into children at a very young age, isn’t it?
Cassius:
Right. And I think thinking back to Lucretius — a lot of this can be linked to what’s discussed in Lucretius. A lot of it, I think in Book Two probably more so than Book One, is devoted to discussing how whatever you want to call the soul or the spirit or the intelligence — whatever it is — is something that just naturally cannot be tied for an eternity in with matter. That matter and spirit or consciousness are things that don’t have the ability, just because of their natural constituencies, to remain eternal or remain connected together forever.
So I think that would be an example of how what he would say is that once you learn that the nature of atoms and void is that they’re constantly in motion and they’re never at rest, and that everything that comes together eventually dissipates and separates out — once you get familiar with that very basic level of atomic motion and the way the universe is constituted, then you don’t even really take seriously the possibility that your consciousness could live outside the body or could live in hell, for example. So I think that would be probably an example of that part of it.
Now, of course, we’re having this conversation in a social environment in which people who cleave to the idea of the supernatural or of the afterlife will say, “Oh, you say that it’s your study of nature that has led you to not believing in God. But in fact” — they’ll give reasons X, Y, and Z which have to do with things like moral failure or selfishness, or “you don’t want to be held accountable for your actions,” that kind of thing.
Joshua:
Right. And that’s the issue of: does anybody know anything? Can you really have confidence in any conclusions at all? Or is everything that everybody says just an assertion that has no foundation for it, no ability to prove it, no ability to be confident in it?
Some people go over the same issues over and over and over in their minds, and they seem to never get tired of debating even within themselves the same thing over and over. And unless you have some evidentiary rule where you’re going to say, “Once I have reached this level of proof, I’m going to stop and consider it to be concluded” — then you never are able to extricate yourself from that cycle, which would be a fate worse than death to have to deal with an eternity of doubt and self-questioning and worry that you’re about to be thrown into the furnace.
And I think that’s what he’s saying: unless you have a theory of what it means to be confident of something, you can never escape all of that. The theory of consistent and contradictory expressions — does it even make sense to say that you should be consistent versus allowing contradictions? We’re talking some very basic stuff it seems like. So the important thing to get to here eventually is the canon. And how quickly do you want to do that? Are you talking about section 64 or are you talking about the rest of what’s in section 63 here?
Cassius:
Well, the final sentence of section 63, but before we get there, there’s this long list. We talked about a few of them — of what that branch of knowledge, meaning natural science, enables us. And not only is it that we are allowed to understand things like the force of words and the natural conditions of speech and the theory of consistent and contradictory expressions and are relieved of superstition, but eventually are emancipated from the dread of death, not agitated through ignorance of phenomena — from which ignorance more than anything else terrible panics often arise. And our characters will also be improved when we have learned what it is that nature craves. That’s an interesting sentence. What do you make of that?
Martin:
It sure is. And I think that’s basically the issue of identifying pleasure as the ultimate good when it says that’s what nature craves — pleasure and the avoidance of pain, the double side of all that.
Cassius:
I have to go look up the Principal Doctrine about that. But what I was going to say is I think you’re right to say that what he’s saying — “finally, our characters will also be improved when we have learned what it is that nature craves” — I think you’re right to indicate pleasure as the principal thing that nature craves. But it’s not just pleasure. It’s everything to do with his view of pleasure. The view that, for example, friendship is chief among the pleasures — the willingness even to go so far as dying for a friend. That’s part of it.
Now, as I said before, we are talking in an environment in which people will think that the pursuit of pleasure is not an improvement of character, but a vast reduction of character.
Joshua:
Yes. And that would have been the case in Cicero’s time as well. I think people would not have viewed that as being an improvement to character. It’s a reminder of how dramatically different Epicurus’s perspective is from just about every other perspective. In fact, it’s kind of hard for me to think right this second of another perspective to compare it to — which other religion, tradition, or philosophy in the world of 2022 postulates that the pursuit of pleasure is the highest good and makes you a better person? I can’t think of many. Can you think of any?
Martin:
Not really. No, although I don’t know if I’m going to go there, but certainly in Buddhism, for example, the idea that pain is evil and something to be avoided — but they never make the corollary claim that pleasure is something good to be pursued.
Cassius:
Right. And going back to what I was thinking a minute ago, I was referring to Principal Doctrine 22, which says “We must consider both the real purpose and all the evidence of direct perception to which we always refer the conclusions of opinion; otherwise, all will be doubt and confusion.” That’s one of several probably that talk about looking at what is the ultimate purpose of life and keeping that in focus so as to avoid doubt and confusion.
So, yes, I think that’s one of the key issues of Epicurean philosophy — suggesting that we do need to be consistent, we need to have a foundation, and we need to always keep in mind what is the ultimate goal of what we’re doing. And that improves our character and in fact makes us gods among men. If we go back to the letter to Menoeceus — both the letter to Menoeceus and the letter to Herodotus end with a statement that we should be regularly thinking and studying these particular issues. The letter to Menoeceus says, “Meditate therefore on these things and things akin to them night and day, and by yourself and with a companion like yourself, and never shall you be disturbed waking or asleep, but you shall live like a god among men.”
What I was really thinking about though was the closing of the letter to Herodotus. He says: “Here, Herodotus, is my treatise on the chief points concerning the nature of the general principles abridged, so that my account would be easy to grasp with accuracy. I think that even if one were unable to proceed to all of the detail particulars of the system, he would from this obtain an unrivaled strength compared with other men. For indeed he’ll clear up for himself many of the detail points by reference to the general system, and these very principles if he stores them in his mind will constantly aid him. For such is their character that even those who are at present engaged in working out the details to a considerable degree or even completely will be able to carry out the greater part of their investigations into the nature of the whole by conducting their analysis in reference to a survey such as this. And for all those who are not fully among those on the way to being perfected, some of them can from this summary obtain a hasty view of the most important matters without oral instruction so as to secure peace of mind.”
I think what I was really looking at was the issue about unrivaled strength and character. And I think we would have to bring in that most famous quote from Lucretius — how does the Latin go? Tantum… oh yes, I can’t remember the exact phrase. But to fall down the other path ultimately is a path that leads to the most heinous of crimes, of which you have as example the murder of Iphigenia by her father Agamemnon, the attempted murder of Isaac by his father Abraham — that kind of thing.
Joshua, that’s one of the most famous lines in all of Epicurean literature — how do you translate that in your mind? What’s the best succinct way of saying that?
Joshua:
The translation that sticks in my mind is “So potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds.”
Cassius:
Yes, yes — and of course that’s the concluding line of the issue of Iphigenia being sacrificed. Now, I did say a little while ago that the definition of rhetoric was the art of persuasion, and here it shows up again — persuading to evil deeds, by religion in this case. To tie it all together, this is what he has to say at the very end of paragraph 63: “Then again, if we grasp a firm knowledge of phenomena and uphold that canon, which almost fell from heaven into human kind, that test to which we are to bring all our judgments concerning things, we shall never succumb to any man’s eloquence and abandon our opinions.”
So that sentence, which might have been difficult to understand on its own terms, sort of resolves itself when we consider what kind of eloquence we’re dealing with — and it’s the kind of eloquence that Lucretius specifically mentions when he says the eloquence of religion that persuades people to evil deeds. Right after the Iphigenia story, where he says that if you don’t pay attention to what I’m saying, the threats of religion will persuade you to fall away from us.
Oh, that’s another good one. Yeah, I can find that in Bailey fairly quickly here. It’s apparently line 102 — “that you yourself sometime, vanquished by the fearsome threats of the seers’ sayings, will seek to desert from us. Nay, indeed, how many a dream may they even now conjure up before you which might avail to overthrow your schemes of life and confound all your fortunes in fear. And justly so, for if men could see that there is a fixed limit to their sorrows, then with some reason they might have the strength to stand against the scruples of religion and the threats of the seers. But as it is, there’s no means and no power to withstand, since everlasting is the punishment they must fear in death, because they don’t know what is the nature of the soul, whether it’s born or else finds its way into them at their birth or is again torn apart by death and perishes with us.” And then he goes on and on. But that’s really the point we’re talking about today — the reason we’re studying nature is to be able to withstand these threats from religion of burning you in hell.
Joshua:
And the answer to that problem, Cassius, is also from Lucretius. I’m using a translation from the Perseus website — I think it’s the Munro-Leonard. This is one of my favorite quotes from Lucretius. He says:
“But if thou, Memmius, loiter or veer however little from the point, this I can promise, Memmius, for a fact: such copious drafts my singing tongue shall pour from the large wellsprings of my replenished breast, that much I dread slow age will steal and coil along our members and unloose the gates of life within us, ere for thee my verse hath put within thine ears the stores of proofs at hand for one so — every question broached.”
In other words, I will not give up trying to explain natural phenomena to you until we both die. I’m going to keep explaining this to you until you get it right.
Cassius:
The Humphrey’s translation puts that rather well, but I don’t have it to hand.
Joshua:
It does, yes. You’re right. I’m remembering that one too because it’s almost funny the way it comes across. It’s Book One — line 410 should get you close.
Cassius:
It says “my honeyed tongue from my warm heart will pour forth such inexhaustible potions from its sources that slow old age I fear will creep in before I have finished.” Exactly. You found it! And you’re reading it. Read it over again — I’m sorry I interrupted you.
Joshua:
Well, you found it actually. But it was very good memory. I found the text here. It says: “I could mention many things, pile up a heap of argument building proof — but why? You have some sense, and those hints ought to suffice. You can find out for yourself, as a mountain-ranging hound smells out a lair and an animal’s covert hidden under brush once they are certain of its track; so you, all by yourself in matters such as these, can see one thing after another, find your way to the dark dens, and bring truth to light. Here’s the part: but if you lag or shrink even a little, Memmius, this I promise you for sure — my honeyed tongue from my rich heart will pour such inexhaustible potions from its sources that slow old age I fear will penetrate our limbs, loosen our life bonds — and the deluge of my argument in verse still flood your ears over one item only.”
And I think that’s the item he’s talking about — you’ve got to study nature in order to understand all this.
Cassius:
Your “honeyed tongue” part was a direct quote from the Humphrey’s version, yes. And as I said, that is one of my favorite quotes from Lucretius. And you know, I’m looking at the clock. Let’s not go on to section 64 today. Let’s close on this topic about how important it is to emphasize the study of nature and the practical benefits of it, because I tell you, over the years that I’ve been reading Epicurus and talking about it with other people on the internet, this is really one of the major divides and divergent paths that people can take. Because there are some people who just really want to read the ethics only — they really just want to talk about pleasure and pain and they don’t want to spend any time on the study of natural science. And they certainly don’t even want to talk about epistemology or logic or anything that is involved in that.
But that’s not what Epicurus stressed. He stressed natural science and the study of that. He’s thought of as being an atomist, and you go all the way back to the original story of Epicurus as a child — his first interest in philosophy was that he did not accept the theory of chaos as the origin of the universe and he wanted to get behind it. And presumably that led him off into the study of Democritus and so forth and the atoms.
But this issue of “do I need to spend any time on thinking about nature or epistemology?” is something that a lot of people struggle with. But they won’t struggle anymore because Joshua’s going to hammer home the point as we begin to close for the day. Right, Joshua?
Joshua:
Sure. We’ve been doing it all day long, but go ahead. Well, I think you’re absolutely right, and of course you have a lot more experience than I do of people who come to this forum or other Epicurean websites and what they’re looking for. Really, they want the Epicurean version of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. They want a guide who’s just going to tell them what to do when you wake up in the morning — how do you conduct yourself as respects relationships with your family or with your friends, or how should you approach different problems that life brings up. And there is not such a book necessarily in Epicurean philosophy, because the ethics is so thoroughly grounded on the physics. It’s critical to understand the one in order to get hold of the other.
And that really is the main takeaway — physics and then the canon, which is used to understand the physics, and that’s how you get to the ethics. It doesn’t just come out of the air. It’s something that has to be built up systematically out of an understanding of nature. And when you’ve laid hold of an understanding of nature, so many of the problems that led you to the study of philosophy in the first place will sort of fall by the wayside. “We are relieved of superstition, emancipated from the dread of death, we are not agitated through ignorance of phenomena, from which ignorance more than anything else terrible panics often arise.” So the understanding of nature and the study of nature is the most critical thing — you’ve got to build the philosophy up from that foundation. Because if someone just were to tell you what the ethics is, you won’t fully grasp how he came to identify pleasure as the good. You won’t be able to work with the material at all until you’ve got a foundation in place. You won’t have the confidence to stay with it.
And that’s the side of it that they combine by studying both physics and epistemology at the same time. And I sense that even today — as we go through, we’re sliding the epistemology a little bit, and one reason we’re sliding it a little bit today is that we can go back into it in section 64.
What I’m seeing is that it’s interesting always to talk to Martin about these things, because I have this impression that Martin’s background and his current environment put him in positions where he’s just not constantly threatened by the irrationalities and the groundless allegations of supernatural religion. And the position that I imagine when I hear Martin talking is kind of like what I think the goal of the Epicurean study of nature should be — it should be second nature or first nature to you to look for natural explanations and not think that there’s a supernatural reason possibly out there. And just to be absolutely comfortable and confident in dealing with the unknown — that even though you may not understand something, it’s going to eventually be found to have a natural explanation.
We’ve talked regularly about Alexander the Oracle Monger, and there’s that phrase where Lucian says something to the effect that the Epicurean was absolutely confident that even if he did not understand the precise method of the imposition that Alexander was doing, there would be found ultimately a natural explanation for it. And that level of confidence is something that I think infects your attitude and infects just the way you approach everything in life.
Martin, I’m talking about you, and I hope I haven’t gone too far in saying any of that. But as we begin to close today — how else would you close on this topic?
Martin:
Nothing to add.
Cassius:
Well, we’ve been concluding I guess for a while now, but Joshua — I bet we have a little bit more to say. The way this section closes today, this part about the canon of truth, the epistemology — it’s really important not to slide it, because he’s characterizing it as something that “almost fell from heaven into human kind,” and it’s “the test to which we bring all our judgments concerning things, so that we will never succumb to any man’s eloquence and abandon our opinions.” It’s hard to get more fundamental and more important than that.
I mentioned Marcus Aurelius a little bit ago, and in the book he wrote while he was campaigning in Germany, it’s interesting to note that we have a second and very fascinating source for this, because Lucian in his Alexander the Oracle Monger gives us an oracle that was given by Alexander and sent to Marcus Aurelius on the eve of battle in about 168 AD. And if I can remember the details of this correctly, Alexander predicted a great victory, and then Marcus Aurelius sent his troops into battle and they were decisively defeated — at which point the oracle said, “We predicted a great victory, but we did not predict for which side.” So Marcus Aurelius, if he had founded his philosophy on a thorough understanding of nature and had therefore ruled out oracles as a viable means of learning new information, would have avoided at least one trap in his life.
It becomes rather difficult to know where to tie this up because really the key to all of it is the canon, which we’re hoping to get to next week. So Joshua, do you have anything else for today?
Joshua:
Oh, not immediately — nothing much I can think of really. If you want a good understanding of imperial Roman bureaucracy, then I would certainly encourage you to read Frontinus On the Aqueducts of Rome, though.
Cassius:
Okay. And you know, one thing that you’re always good at helping to remind us of, Joshua, at the end, is that we do want to invite anybody who’s listening to drop by the forum, and we’ll have a thread on this episode and anything else they’d like to discuss about Epicurus. We welcome that as well. And hopefully show notes this week — which I think was it Marco? — gave us a citation for one of the things we were talking about.
JOSHUA:
Yes, thank you for that. Yes. We’ve gotten significantly more commentary on some of the threads lately on the episodes, and we really appreciate that. It’s really good to have feedback and expand the detail of what we’re talking about.
Cassius:
So maybe for today then, in closing, and just to hammer home the importance of the canon and the study of nature that we’re talking about, I’ll go back to what I was talking about a minute ago — Lucian’s Alexander the Oracle Monger — and read the exact words that Lucian used. Of course the context being that this Epicurean was confronting Alexander using a fake snake as a god, and Lucian says this, and this is where we’ll close for the day:
“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 escaped him the whole thing was a lie and an impossibility.”
And that’s the end of the quote — but that’s, as Joshua might say, the beginning of where we need to be. Because it’s the study of nature, the study of epistemology, that gives us the ability to have confidence in anything that we think and anything that we do. Without those, we just are basically drifting in the wind, and we’ll go further into that and get additional detail on it next week as we turn to section 64. So with that we’ll end for the day. Thanks, guys, for your help, and we’ll be back next week. Thanks a lot. Okay, bye.