Episode 118 - Letter to Herodotus 7 - Images - There's More To Them Than Meets the Eye
Date: 04/21/22
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/2463-episode-one-hundred-eighteen-letter-to-herodotus-07-images-there-s-more-to-them/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Episode 118 tackles what Cassius describes as the most complicated and mysterious topic he has encountered in all of Epicurus — the doctrine of images (idols) from sections 46–52 of the Letter to Herodotus. The panel examines Epicurus’ theory that solid bodies constantly emit thin films of atoms that preserve the shape and qualities of the original object, producing both visible perception through the eyes and direct impressions on the mind, and they contrast this with Plato’s rival “emission theory” — the idea that the eyes themselves emit rays of light like searchlights. The discussion ranges through extended passages from Lucretius Book 4 — including the lines on centaurs, Scyllas, and Cerberus formed by accidental merging of images in the air, a passage on how soldiers dream of battles and lawyers dream of their cases, and the remarkable Book 4 line 877 that idols falling upon the mind are the very mechanism by which thought is first converted into physical action. The episode also draws in Cicero’s correspondence joking about images of Cassius Longinus flying through the air, the Queen Mab speech from Romeo and Juliet with its “team of little atomies,” Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, and a closing discussion of what analogies exist — including feng shui and the influence of surroundings on thought — for Epicurus’ claim that we are surrounded at all times by images passing through the air.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
Welcome to episode 118 of Lucretius Today. This is the 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 ancient Epicurean texts 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. 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. Today we continue our review of Epicurus’ Letter to Herodotus and move further into the topic of images and the implications of those atoms flying through the air. Now let’s join Joshua reading today’s text.
Joshua:
“Moreover, there are images like in shape to the solid bodies, far surpassing perceptible things in their subtlety of texture. For it is not impossible that such emanations should be formed in that which surrounds the object, nor that there should be opportunities for the formation of such hollow and thin frames, nor that there should be effluences which preserve the respective position and order which they had before in the solid bodies. These images we call idols.
“Next, nothing among perceptible things contradicts the belief that the images have unsurpassable fineness of texture, and for this reason they have also unsurpassable speed of motion, since the movement of all their atoms is uniform, and besides, nothing or very few things hinder their emission by collisions, whereas a body composed of many or infinite atoms is at once hindered by collisions. Besides this, nothing contradicts the belief that the creation of the idols takes place as quick as thought, for the flow of atoms from the surface of bodies is continuous, yet it cannot be detected by any lessening in the size of the object because of the constant filling up of what is lost. The flow of images preserves for a long time the position and order of the atoms in the solid body, though it is occasionally confused. Moreover, compound idols are quickly formed in the air around, because it is not necessary for the substance to be filled in deep inside; and besides there are certain other methods in which existences of this sort are produced. But not one of these beliefs is contradicted by our sensations, if one looks to see in what way sensation will bring us the clear visions from external objects, and in what way again the corresponding sequence of qualities and movements.
“Now we must suppose too that it is when something enters us from external objects that we not only see but think of their shapes. For external objects could not make on us an impression of the nature of their own color and shape by means of the air which lies between us and them, nor again by means of the rays or effluences of any sort which pass from us to them, nearly so well as if models similar in color and shape leave the objects and enter, according to their respective size, either into our sight or into our mind, moving along swiftly, and so by this means reproducing the image of a single continuous thing and preserving the corresponding sequence of qualities and movements from the original object as a result of their uniform contact with us, kept up by the vibration of the atoms deep in the interior of the concrete body. And every image which we obtain by an act of apprehension on the part of the mind or of the sense organs, whether of shape or of properties, this image is the shape or the properties of the concrete object, and is produced by the constant repetition of the image or the impression it has left.
“Now falsehood and error always lie in the addition of opinion with regard to what is waiting to be confirmed or not contradicted, and then is not confirmed or is contradicted. For the similarity between the things which exist, which we call real, and the images received as a likeness of things and produced either in sleep or through some other act of apprehension on the part of the mind or the other instruments of judgment, could never exist unless there were some influences of this nature actually brought into contact with our senses; and error would not exist unless another kind of movement too were produced inside ourselves, closely linked to the apprehension of images but differing from it. And it is owing to this, supposing it is not confirmed or is contradicted, that falsehood arises; but if it is confirmed or not contradicted, it is true. Therefore we must do our best to keep this doctrine in mind, in order that on the one hand the standards of judgment dependent on the clear visions may not be undermined, and on the other error may not be as firmly established as truth, and so throw all into confusion.”
Cassius:
Joshua, thank you for reading that for us this morning. As we get started today, I want to go on record as saying that this subject has always been one of the most complicated and mysterious to me of all that I’ve read in Epicurus over the years — even to the point where I’m not comfortable saying whether I think he’s right or wrong, because I don’t know that I understand what he’s even saying about a lot of this. So as we go through today, I want to have that caveat in place. I recognize this is a subject that I am far from mastering or even beginning to master, and I’m hopeful that as we discuss it today we can bring out points that will spur other people to produce better explanations than we currently have. This is a subject that people tend to skip over. I know when I read Lucretius this material is in Book 4, and the whole subject of images ends up being dismissed as laughable perhaps, but I think it deserves better than that.
I would suggest that we focus on how the first part — sections 46 through 48 — sets the stage with the physics of what’s going on, and then 49 through the end (49 to 52) seems to shift emphasis from the physics toward a discussion of how our minds are processing whatever we’ve identified in the first part. Even to the point where I wonder sometimes if the main issue of images is not related to vision but related to how the mind is processing things internally. Sections 50 through 52 especially seemed to revolve around that.
Maybe one of the first things I’d like us to talk about would be going back to section 46. There are pretty clear keys here — maybe even more clear than in Lucretius — to the division between images or idols which are visible versus those which are not visible. Even in the very first line: “there are images like in shape to the solid bodies, far surpassing perceptible things in their subtlety of texture.” I would read that as a key that there are images which are perceptible to us, but he’s also being very clear that he’s about to discuss idols that are not perceptible to the eyes. Joshua and Martin, do you agree that he’s talking about two separate things — visible images versus invisible images that are related but separate?
Martin:
In the way he writes it here, it’s not really separate by production, but separate by perception. The body under observation is generating both at the same time, but our eyes are able to perceive some of what’s generated but not all of it. To me it’s not clear whether we would call them visible images — that is, what we see with our eyes — versus those we perceive with the mind. From the way it’s written here, it looks like it’s the same image; just the way we perceive it is different.
Joshua:
When I look at the Hicks translation, what it says is: “again, there are outlines or films which are of the same shape as solid objects but of a thinness far exceeding that of any object that we see.” So on that point, the distinction he might be drawing is not necessarily between the visible and the invisible, but between the images and the bodies from which they emanate. But I agree — this is very difficult material to get hold of already in the first sentence.
Cassius:
And of course, when you say it the way you just did, at least if this translation is correct, he’s not focusing on whether we can see it but on whether we can perceive it — and “perception” covers more than just the eyes. It presumably covers hearing, smelling, touching, tasting as well.
There’s so much here that maybe we can piece together clues as we go through. The next thing that fascinates me is the way the next couple of assertions are structured: section 46 says “for it is not impossible”; section 47 says “nothing among perceptible things contradicts the belief”; section 48 says “besides this, nothing contradicts the belief that the creation of the idols takes place as quick as thought.” Isn’t it unusual that he seems to be focusing his proof argument on the fact that it’s not impossible and that perceptible things don’t contradict it? Isn’t it normal that we would start with something that gives us positive evidence, before observing that nothing contradicts it?
Martin:
When there is enough light and the object is not too far from us, we perceive it. We can actually see it, and so in that sense we receive actually in some way images. Our eyes perceive an object which is not too far from us if there’s enough light. And so in that sense, perception is something which at that time was considered then real, and based on that we have a base for something. And then of course it becomes speculative, and that’s why he is cautious here.
Joshua:
Right — because what you really need here is a way to explain the phenomenon of vision. You’ve already established atomism to a degree beyond reasonable doubt, and then you’ve got this phenomenon in nature — sight — and how we see objects that are far away from us. With most of the other senses, you have to actually be touching it: you can’t taste unless it’s on your tongue. With smell, you get around that because there are particles that actually travel through the air. With hearing, the same. But vision — of all the five senses, vision is the one we most associate with ourselves. When people identify which part of their body they are, they tend to point somewhere behind the eyes. That’s where the idea of “I” seems to reside — not in the ankle. So how you take this sense, which in most people’s minds is where they center their sense of being, and explain it within the framework of atomism — without calling on anything supernatural — is particularly important.
Cassius:
I agree that the explanation of vision has got to have been extremely important for Epicurus or for anybody else. The whole issue of how you perceive something at a distance from you — whether something is traveling from you to it or from it to you or whether there’s some other explanation involved — has got to be a particularly important topic to think about.
Now, one thing I wanted to get into is something we haven’t talked about — before Epicurus came up with his theory of vision, you had other theories in the ancient world. One of the more interesting is the emission theory, proposed I think first by Plato. The emission theory proposes that visual perception is accomplished by rays of light emitted by the eyes. So you’ve got two almost completely opposite approaches: Epicurus thought that solid objects constantly emit films of atoms from their surfaces that impinge on the eyes and that’s how vision works, while Plato — because of course in his framework you can’t have atomic films emanating from objects — thought that the eyes themselves operate like searchlights, and as you scan around you’re actually sending out a beam of light that illuminates the object you’re looking at. In most things, Epicurus was less wrong about the basic fundamental of how vision works, because what really happens is that a third-party light source illuminates the object, photons of light strike the object, some of the color is absorbed, some reflected, and that film of reflected light that hits the eye is how you see things. So it is a film in a sense that’s coming from an object — but originally it comes from a source of light separate from the object.
Martin:
Yeah — except that it’s not a film, and this is the thing I also don’t understand, because with the way Epicurus explains atomism — how atoms are confined in solids — there’s nothing in one of these films that would keep the fine particles together. They should scatter around. There’s no reason they should not fall apart.
Joshua:
That’s a good point. And there’s another objection: the object would have to be emitting not just one image but multiple overlapping images, because if Cassius was standing five feet over from me and we were both looking at the same tree, there’s going to be some overlap in the part of the tree that we both see. So there have to be an almost infinite number of images being cast off by this tree in order for both of us to see what we see when we look at it.
One of the problems is that the ancients apparently did not know how the eye actually works. If they had really known, they would have invented the lens already. But they didn’t.
Cassius:
I’ve read something recently — I can’t remember who wrote it — but he pulls together a bunch of sources from different authors and makes the argument that maybe the Greeks did come up with some sort of primitive microscope or telescope before the Renaissance that’s totally unknown to history.
Martin:
Actually, I would expect that in ancient times that they had made this discovery already. It just puzzles me that apparently not. But if there are sources which point to it, it would make sense.
Cassius:
Wasn’t there a story about one of those scientists destroying some ships with mirrors? Who am I talking about there?
Martin:
That was Archimedes — but that is a different thing. Those were mirrors, not lenses.
Cassius:
I’ve always kind of presumed that his mirrors might have been convex or concave in order to get the heat high enough. You’d have to focus the light — like a solar oven today, with mirrors unfolded like an umbrella. But as you said, that’s not the same as a lens.
One of the lines that catches my eye in section 48 — based on what you’re talking about — is: “for the flow of atoms from the surface of bodies is continuous, yet it cannot be detected by any lessening in the size of the object because of the constant filling up of what is lost.” So not only is the object giving off atoms to constitute these idols, it’s also receiving deposits from idols that are striking it. I’ve read different people talk about the idea that this is related to how the Epicurean gods supposedly maintain their own flow of atoms, and maybe it even occurs in Lucretius about getting old — that you’re constantly adding atoms to your body when you’re younger, or shedding them faster than you’re gaining them when you get older.
Now, one observation about where DeWitt treats this topic. He covers images in a number of different places, but he doesn’t have a separate section on idols under physics or atomism. He has it under his chapter 11, “Soul, Sensation, and Mind,” and the major discussion of images is under the title “Mind as a Super Sense,” which is on page 214 of his book. That’s telling, I think.
Let me also raise this: section 49 says “now we must suppose too that it is when something enters us from external objects that we not only see but think of their shapes.” There’s a significant implication here that the mind is somehow receiving some form of images directly, not through the eyes. In fact, one of the very interesting passages from Cicero’s correspondence is a reference to him joking with Cassius Longinus about the word “specters” — where Cicero is needling Cassius about the fact that Cicero has been thinking a lot about Cassius recently, and wondering whether he is thinking about him because he is receiving images through the air of Cassius, or whether there is some other reason. That’s a pretty clear reference in classical literature to this doctrine.
While I’m on this, let me refer to Book 4 of Lucretius, line 722. The beginning of Book 4 has talked a lot about the eyes and illusions, but then he comes back at line 722 and says: “Come now, let me tell you what things stir the mind, and learn in a few words whence come the things which come into the understanding.” Then he says: “First of all, I say this, that many idols of things wander about in many ways in all directions on every side — fine idols which easily become linked with one another in the air when they come across one another’s path, like spiders’ webs and gold leaf. For indeed these idols are far finer in their texture than those which fill the eyes and arouse sight, since these pierce through the pores of the body and awake the fine nature of the mind within and arouse its sensation.” That’s line 724 of Book 4, and it seems to me to be a very clear statement that some type of image is flowing into the body or mind and perceived directly, without going through the eyes.
Martin:
You know, actually — in Lucretius it is made out clearly that the particles which transmit the image and actually trigger perception through the eye, and those which trigger the direct perception in the mind, are different particles. Here in the Letter to Herodotus, it is not clear that these are different. I rather get the impression that they’re the same.
Cassius:
You’re absolutely right to make that distinction. And it makes me think of something our friend Don has raised, which is one of the things he’s always found most difficult on this topic: the issue of whether these images can recombine and combine among themselves in the air. And line 732 of Lucretius, right after what I just quoted, explains that aspect: “And so we see centaurs and the limbs of Scyllas and the dogfaces of Cerberus, and the idols of those who have met death and whose bones are held in the embrace of earth — since idols of every kind are born everywhere, some of which are created of their own accord even in the air, some of which depart in each case from diverse things, and those again which are made and put together from the shapes of these. For in truth the image of the centaur comes not from a living thing, since there never was the nature of such a living creature, but when by chance the images of man and horse have met, they cling together readily at once, as we have said before now, because of their subtle nature and fine fabric.” So at least from Epicurus’ point of view, every object is giving off atoms from its surface that keep the shape of the object but are constantly moving through the air in all directions — some of which we’re able to see, some of which apparently the mind is somehow able to perceive. That’s the best I can come up with without being able to say whether I think that’s right or wrong.
There’s also the connection to dreams. Line 757 of Book 4 says: “When sleep has relaxed the limbs, the understanding of the mind is for no other cause awake, but that these same idols stir our minds then as when we are awake.” So that’s the dream connection — and continuing on from that, line 962: “For the most part, to whatever pursuit each man clings and cleaves, or on whatever things we have before spent much time, so that the mind was more strained in the task than is usual — in our sleep we seem mostly to traffic in the same things. Lawyers think that they plead their cases and confront law with law, generals that they fight and engage in battles, sailors that they pass a life of conflict waged with the winds, and we pursue our task and seek for the nature of things forever and set it forth when it is found in writings in our country’s tongue.” And so on — basically saying we dream at night about the things that occupied our minds during the day.
Joshua:
One of the interesting things about Lucretius is that he has a particular affinity for animals. In the opening hymn to Venus, there’s this line that says through Venus all things are made, and rising up look upon the lights of the sun — so the first interesting thing he wants to say about the newborn animal is opening its eyes on this wonderful new world it’s been born into. The invisible images, which are more difficult to get hold of, are nevertheless sufficiently well established, I think, from the textual evidence.
And to your point about the soldier-lawyer passage — there’s something very similar in Shakespeare. This comes from Romeo and Juliet, the Queen Mab speech. Mercutio is trying to convince Romeo to forget about Rosaline and go out and have some fun. He says: “O then I see Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes in shape no bigger than an agate stone on the forefinger of an alderman, drawn with a team of little atomies athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep.” So her tiny wagon drawn by atoms is pulled over people’s faces and goes into their noses and starts to affect their dreams. And then further on: “Sometimes she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck, and then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, of healths five fathom deep; and then anon drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes, and being thus frighted swears a prayer or two and sleeps again.” So that’s exactly the same image as the Lucretius passage.
What’s remarkable is the phrase “a team of little atomies” — one of the only places in Shakespeare where he uses the word atoms. Whether or not Shakespeare had read Lucretius, the parallel is extraordinary.
Cassius:
And isn’t there also something in Julius Caesar — a relatively extended discussion between Cassius and Brutus about seeing Caesar’s ghost, where Cassius explains to Brutus that it’s this very subject we’re talking about?
Joshua:
I believe that comes primarily from Plutarch’s Life of Brutus, though it may be in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar as well. The idea is that what Brutus saw appearing to him was not a supernatural specter but an image in the Epicurean sense. That would make a very interesting article, comparing references in Shakespeare to images and to Lucretius.
On the point of whether Shakespeare could have read Lucretius — Edmund Spenser was writing right about the same time or a little earlier, and the opening sequence of his great book-length poem The Faerie Queene is a direct translation of Lucretius. So maybe there’s more Lucretius in Shakespeare than we’ve been led to believe. David Sedley makes the argument in his book Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom that Lucretius was working through Epicurus’ thirty-seven or thirty-eight books On Nature and going topic by topic in essentially the same order as Epicurus — though in a later revision he may have shuffled things around to suit his didactic epic poem.
Cassius:
Going back to section 49 — “when something enters us from external objects that we not only see but think of their shapes.” And then there’s line 779 of Lucretius: “Next, it is asked why, whatever the whim may come to each of us to think of, straightway his mind thinks of that very thing. Do the idols keep watch on our will and does the image rise up before us as soon as we desire, whether it pleases us to think of sea or land or sky — either gatherings of men and procession, banquets, battles? Does nature create all things at a word and make them ready for us?” I think that paragraph is raising the possibility that your mind is selectively tuning itself to the images that are passing through — and perhaps that your act of thinking about a particular thing tunes your mind to receive that particular type of image.
And I believe I’ve read commentators talk about this: it’s almost as if it is being suggested that the world around us is constantly full of all these images flowing at all times, and the question naturally arises: why is it that only certain images tend to occupy your mind at a particular moment? And maybe that’s all too far off from what we think is the case to even entertain — but whenever they say something, it’s probably a good idea to make an effort to understand what they were even thinking was possible.
There is one more connection I’d like to make. Lucretius Book 4, line 877: “Next, how it comes to pass that we are able to plant our steps forward when we wish, how it has been granted to us to move our limbs in diverse ways… First of all, I say that idols of walking fall upon our mind and strike the mind, as we have seen before. Then comes the will — for indeed no one begins to do anything ere the mind has seen beforehand what it will do, and inasmuch as it sees this beforehand an image of the thing is formed. And so when the mind stirs itself so that it wishes to start and step forward, it straightway strikes the force of the soul which is spread abroad in the whole body through limbs and frame.” So he’s equating the movement of idols within your mind and body as the way in which you turn thought into action. That’s why this is such a deep subject we should not skip over — because if he’s got a theory that every human action is premeditated through images, that has direct implications for determinism and free will.
Joshua:
I think there’s also relevance to the prolepseis here — the anticipations built up from experience. One of the meanings this word seems to have had in antiquity is the idea that as things impinge on your mind in some way, they begin to leave impressions. So if you see a horse for the first time, it may not be obvious where to categorize it in your mind, but as you continue to see horses in different situations, you begin to build up this idea of what horses are — a series of impressions that go deeper and deeper, left by your experience.
Cassius:
That’s right. And looking at all of this from a very high level — as long as we’re talking about the impact of the things you see throughout your life on the things you think and do, I don’t have any problem thinking that’s very interesting, even for somebody committed to a free will analysis. We certainly are affected by the things around us. Maybe this is nothing more than suggesting that if you live in the Louvre and are surrounded by the great works of Western art, your thought processes and even the things you choose to do with your life might be at a higher level than if you spent your time in some modern art museum filled with representational weirdness. Maybe there’s something profitable to think about there.
Before we started the episode today, I was looking to see if I could come up with any analogies at all to other non-supernatural theories out there that imply you may be affected by your surroundings in some way beyond simply looking at them. And the only thing I could come up with — Martin, you probably know this better than I do — is feng shui. Is feng shui in any sense a theory that you are affected by emanations from your surroundings in a non-supernatural way?
Martin:
Definitely — the important thing is where you arrange things in a room, how you orient the rooms in the house. That’s what feng shui talks about. But I don’t know more than that myself.
Joshua:
My understanding of what feng shui involves is that it sort of evolved out of a sense in Chinese culture of geomancy — that the orientation of things on the landscape affects you. What’s being affected by feng shui, or so the claim is made, is the natural flow of Qi, which is a kind of power, indistinct in nature. Things that you do in the house can affect the flow positively or negatively. For example, if you imagine a T-intersection and there’s a house at the top of the T facing the road that runs in, there’s a sense that all the energy from the traffic runs into that house, and you’ll never have your feng shui in order if you buy it. Whether there’s a good connection to Epicurean images, I don’t know — feng shui is so much centered around ideas like luck, and I’m not sure luck has a huge role in Epicurean philosophy. Epicurus seemed to think…
Cassius:
Well, if you decide to put your house at the very end of a T-intersection, you might end up with a lot of vehicles in your front door, whether it’s luck or not.
Joshua:
Maybe. And I’m not sure it’s necessarily the case in some non-Abrahamic traditions that the idea of the difference between the supernatural and the natural is as strong as it is in Abrahamic religions. In something like Confucianism or Taoism, they probably would have thought they were understanding this in terms that made sense just on the basis of nature. But of course many Eastern religions are also animistic — even a rock has a spirit living in it, that kind of thing.
Cassius:
One of the ways I’ve always tended to test what I was reading in Lucretius or Epicurus is that I would never expect Epicurus to come up with something totally fantastic and without evidence. So I would think that if he’s onto something at all, we would find other examples throughout the ages of parallel theories. I’m not able to come up with a good suggestion of parallel viewpoints in other philosophies or sciences — but that’s the approach I would take over time if I had more time to put into studying this: looking for analogous theories of influence on your mind and actions through your surroundings. Whether it’s cosmic rays, cell phone radiation, sunspots, the influence of the moon — or even the example of migratory birds using magnetism to orient their migrations, which may be an example of what you might call action at a distance.
One illustration I always come back to, which is not exactly what you’re asking but is worth mentioning: the issue of Montaigne, the French writer, who was raised by a rather unusual father. His father thought it was very important that he learn to speak Latin, and so Latin was actually Montaigne’s first language — his father only hired servants, staff, and tutors who were fluent in Latin. Montaigne’s annotated copy of Lucretius survives — his name was found in the margin or something like that — and he quoted it many times. So that’s not quite what I was looking for, but it does suggest that the people who were most deeply steeped in the classics were often most deeply affected by Lucretius.
I think that’s going to be the title I assign to this episode: “There’s More To Them Than Meets the Eye” — there’s more to the Epicurean discussion of images than meets the eye. There’s a lot more here that we have not pulled out, that can be pulled out if we have the time and inclination. The Shakespeare material is probably a good clue for one way to interpret all of it. And I’d say this: I’d be interested in basically any commentary on Book 4 of Lucretius that I haven’t already read, because that’s where we’re going to find this developed most specifically. I’m sure there are good academic articles about this aspect of Book 4, but I know we just don’t talk about them very much — and I think there’s a lot that could be gained if we spend more time with it.
Joshua:
One thing I do want to say, and this is just to reinforce something you’ve been saying — I do think you’re absolutely right. We have something like an obligation to at least try to understand this stuff. It’s no good to just glaze over it, and that’s basically why we’re doing this: going through Lucretius and Cicero, and really engaging on more than a superficial level with the substance of the text and what was actually taught and thought in the ancient world. Because that is another way to avoid an error of a different kind — the error of attributing to Epicurus or Lucretius things that they didn’t actually say or believe, which is quite prevalent and very easy to do. Whether or not this is easy to get hold of — and I don’t think it is — it is nevertheless very worthwhile to try. If we’ve left you more confused at the end of the episode than you were at the beginning, the discussion is always ongoing at the EpicureanFriends.com forum, where we have people who seem to have a better grasp of this than perhaps Joshua or Martin or I do — and that conversation is always open to join.
Cassius:
Yes, looking at the clock, trying to begin to decide when we’re going to start to wrap things up for today. Next week we’re going to continue with more discussion of the atoms and how they move — including hearing and tasting and smelling — so we’re going to stay with the issue of how atoms are the building blocks of our understanding of perception and human knowledge. And I know that when I compare where Lucretius goes next, he goes into the issue of sex — part of the connection being that he’s still spending significant time on dreams and what’s entering our minds through images, whether awake or asleep, and somehow he connects dreaming to issues of sex, which is where he closes Book 4. But that’s Lucretius. In the Letter to Herodotus, Epicurus keeps going on basic physics and doesn’t go off on that particular tangent.
So with that, let’s close for the day and we’ll be back in a week. Thank you for your time today.
Joshua:
Yep.
Martin:
Okay, bye.