Episode 121 - Letter to Herodotus 10 - Atoms and The Soul
Date: 05/14/22
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/2507-episode-one-hundred-twenty-one-letter-to-herodotus-11-atoms-the-soul-and-those-w/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Martin reads sections 60-66 of the Letter to Herodotus, covering atomic motion and Epicurus’s physical account of the soul. The group examines Epicurus’s claim that in an infinite universe there is no absolute “up” or “down,” comparing his position to Aristotle’s geocentric model and quoting Lucretius Book 1 (lines 1058-1067) on the absurdity of thinking everything presses toward a single center — while noting that without a modern theory of gravity as an attractive force, Epicurus’s position is understandable though partially incorrect. Sections 61-62 address the equal speed of atoms in void and the mechanics of atomic collision, with Cassius connecting the constant jostling of atoms within apparently solid bodies to Lucretius’s description of dust motes visible in sunbeams — an early observation related to what would later be called Brownian motion. Sections 63-66 present the soul as a body of fine particles distributed throughout the body, resembling wind with an admixture of heat; the group discusses Marcus Aurelius (Meditations 2.2) on the soul as air “gulped in and vomited out” and contrasts this Stoic contempt for the flesh with Epicurus’s positive account of sensation and pleasure. Cassius references a scholarly essay by Erland MacGillivray of the University of Aberdeen, “Epicurean Mission and Membership,” which argues the Epicureans were an outward-reaching movement using epitomies like the Letter to Herodotus for memorization and popular outreach — all culminating in the practical payoff of Principal Doctrine 2: death is nothing to us.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 121 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 my 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 at EpicureanFriends.com. Today we continue our review of Epicurus’s Letter to Herodotus, moving further into fundamental physics and discussing issues relating to the atoms and the soul. Now let’s join Martin reading today’s text.
Martin: Furthermore, in the infinite we must not speak of up or down as though with reference to an absolute highest or lowest. And indeed you must say that, though it is possible to proceed to infinity in the direction above our heads from wherever we take our stand, the absolute highest point will never appear to us — nor yet can that which passes beneath the point sort of to infinity be at the same time both up and down in reference to the same thing, for it is impossible to think this. That it is possible to consider as one single motion that which is thought of as the upward motion to infinity and as another the downward motion, even though that which passes from us into the regions above our heads arrives countless times at the feet of beings above and that which passes downwards from us at the head of beings below — for nonetheless the whole motions are thought of as opposed, the one to the other, to infinity. Moreover, the atoms must move with equal speed when they are borne onwards through the void, nothing colliding with them. For neither will the heavy move more quickly than the small and light, when nothing meets them; nor again the small more quickly than the great, having their whole course uniform, when nothing collides with them either. Nor is the motion upwards or sideways owing to blows quicker, nor again downwards owing to their own weight. For as long as either of the two motions prevails, so long will it have as quick a course as thought, until something checks it either from outside or from its own weight counteracting the force of the blow. Moreover, their passage through the void, when it takes place without meeting any bodies which might collide, accomplishes every comprehensible distance in inconceivably short time. For it is collision and its absence which take the outward appearance of slowness and quickness. Moreover, we must consider that in the least period of continuous time the atoms in aggregate bodies move towards one place, even though in moments of time perceptible only by thought they do not move towards one place but are constantly jostling one against another, until the continuity of their movement comes under the ken of sensation. For the addition of opinion with regard to the unseen that the moments perceptible only by thought will also contain continuity of motion is not true in such cases. Next, referring always to the sensations and the feelings, you must consider that the soul is a body of fine particles distributed throughout the whole structure, most resembling wind with a certain admixture of heat, and in some respects like to one of these and in some to the other. There is also the part which is many degrees more advanced even than these in fineness of composition, and for this reason is more capable of feeling in harmony with the rest of the structure as well. Now all this is made manifest by the activities of the soul and the feelings and the readiness of its movements and its processes of thought and by what we lose at the moment of death. Further you must grasp that the soul possesses the chief cause of sensation, yet it could not have acquired sensation unless it were in some way enclosed by the rest of the structure. And this in its turn, having afforded the soul this cause of sensation, shares itself in this contingent capacity from the soul. So long as the soul remains in the body, even though some other part of the body be lost, it will never lose sensation. On the other hand, the rest of the structure, though it continues to exist either as a whole or in part, does not retain sensation if it has once lost that sum of atoms, however small, which together goes to produce the nature of the soul. Moreover, if the whole structure is dissolved, the soul is dispersed and no longer has the same powers nor performs its movements, so that it does not possess sensation either. For it is impossible to imagine it with sensation if it is not in this organism and cannot affect these movements when what encloses and surrounds it is no longer the same as the surroundings in which it now exists and performs these movements.
Cassius: Thank you, Martin. We have read a little longer than usual today. The material divides clearly into two sections: from lines 60 through the end of 62 we’re talking about atomic motion and its implications, and then from 63 to 66 we move over to the discussion of the soul and how the atoms of the soul cannot continue to function to produce sensation when no longer restrained within the body.
Starting in section 60, the primary point is that in an infinite universe you can proceed indefinitely in any direction without ever coming to an end. He says that you can arrive countless times at the feet of beings above and at the head of beings below — consistent with the idea of an infinity of direction. What do you make of this?
Martin: This is a consequence of the infinity of the universe. Instead of saying there is no direction of up and down, he refers to there being no absolute highest point. It is not conceivable for him that this direction should be different for anyone else — because of the lack of proper understanding of the physics of gravity. So this portion, even though consistent with Epicurean physics in its main point, is in that one respect incorrect.
Cassius: But is he not raising a distinction between our senses and our existence versus a question of absolutes? There is to us an up and a down — he seems not to deny that. What he denies is an absolute up and down for all beings everywhere. And Joshua, you’ve been looking for something in Lucretius?
Joshua: Yes — it’s Lucretius Book 1, lines roughly 1058 through 1067. He says: “In these problems shrink, my Memmius, far from yielding faith to that notorious talk that all things inward to the center press, so that the nature of the world stands firm without all blows from outward nor can be nowhere disparted — since all height and depth have always inward to the center pressed. If thou art ready to believe that aught itself can rest upon itself, or that ponderous bodies which be under earth do all press upwards and do come to rest upon the earth in some way upside down…” And then he goes on to call these views “vain error” that has given such dreams to fools. A reasonable person today should believe that gravity pulls toward the center of a particular planet, but there is no reason to think our planet is the center of the universe.
Cassius: Right — and this is also why it is a problem for Christianity if intelligent life is found on other worlds. There is only one Son of God, and no record of him having gone to other worlds. These are the kinds of implications that people were struggling toward with less information than they would have liked. Now let’s go to section 61 and the speed of the atoms.
Joshua: What I seem to be reading in 61 is a very early formulation of the law of inertia — that things keep moving at the same speed in the same direction until acted upon by an outside force, and that the weight of the thing itself is not enough to alter its speed.
Cassius: And Martin, there is this phrase “until something checks it either from outside or from its own weight counteracting the force.” Is he trying to eliminate the possibility that some atoms have been chosen by God to move faster — like chosen people, chosen atoms?
Martin: Yes, by saying they are all moving with equal speed, you make the observation that there is no force or outside factor that causes one atom to move faster than another on its own.
Cassius: And the practical point, Joshua? Why does equal speed of atoms matter for the overall system?
Joshua: The collision and dispersal of atoms is how things come together in the first place. You don’t get aggregate bodies unless atoms are constantly coming together. If all atoms travel on parallel lines and never intersect, you never get larger bodies. You need infinite motion, and then when they hit something they change direction and latch on or move elsewhere. There wouldn’t be any recognizable image reaching the eye if half the atoms were faster than the other half — you’d get a jumbled image. That’s why this matters.
Cassius: Section 62 says that in moments of time perceptible only by thought the atoms are constantly jostling one against another — so even something that looks absolutely motionless like a rock has this constant motion going on within it. That explains how a statue finger wears away when touched over the ages.
Joshua: And the dust motes visible in rays of light streaming through a window — that’s probably what he is describing. That’s thought to be one of the very early descriptions of something like Brownian motion. I don’t think we have it anywhere else in surviving Epicurean texts.
Cassius: Now let’s turn to sections 63 through 66, the soul. He says: “Referring always to the sensations and the feelings, you must consider that the soul is a body of fine particles distributed throughout the whole structure.” It’s important that he gives this preliminary — we’re talking about the soul being composed of fine particles, but we have to refer to our sensations and feelings to get the most trustworthy grounds for our conclusions.
Joshua: He says there is also a part which is many degrees more advanced in fineness than wind and heat — more capable of feeling in harmony with the rest of the structure. And the soul atoms are so fine that they can move through the body quickly enough to carry sensation. Lucretius in Book 2 has some interesting additional material — there’s a comparison to something like atoms of molasses, where certain things move more slowly because of their properties.
Cassius: And if you cut off your arm, do you lose a portion of your soul?
Joshua: According to Lucretius, yes — a bit of the soul is in that arm. But the body is still alive unless you bleed to death, and the soul that remains in the main body still functions. He says in section 65 that “so long as the soul remains in the body, even though some part of the body be lost, it will never lose sensation.”
Martin: We can consider by analogy that if you cut off an arm, the body is still alive, and the same we can consider for the soul — the part in the arm does not affect the integrity of the whole soul.
Cassius: Let me make an observation that I think is the key takeway from the Marcus Aurelius passage Joshua brought in today. He read from the Meditations, Book 2, where Marcus says: “Consider what the spirit is — it is air, never the same air, vomited out and gulped in again every instant.” He concludes that you should stop allowing your mind to be a slave and conform yourself to your fate. The contrast with Epicurus is stark — Marcus is telling you to despise your flesh and use your reason only to bring yourself into conformity with the logos, with divine providence. Epicurus is saying the opposite: your senses and your feelings of pleasure and pain are the very things nature gave you as guides.
Joshua: Right. And the upshot for Epicurus is that you don’t have to live on faith — you can take intelligent steps to secure bodily pleasure. You don’t have to just endlessly endure pain and hardship in pursuit of the nebulous goal of virtue living in accord with the logos.
Cassius: And sections 64, 65, and 66 all hammer the same point: the soul possesses the chief cause of sensation, but it cannot exist outside the body. When the body dissolves and the soul escapes, there’s no longer any sensation. That which lacks sensation is nothing to us. That is Principal Doctrine 2.
I was reading this morning an essay by Erland MacGillivray from the University of Aberdeen — “Epicurean Mission and Membership from the Early Garden to the Late Roman Republic.” He makes a strong case that the Epicureans were not hermits behind walls, but an outward-reaching movement. He discusses how letters like the Letter to Herodotus were written with the intention that followers who were not professional philosophers — people involved in daily life — would memorize or become very familiar with these key summaries. There’s a passage in Philodemus complaining that some people were relying too much on summaries and not reading the original texts, but in any case the whole organization of these letters suggests Epicurus was extending his philosophy to people who would never read his 37 books on nature.
Martin: Nothing to add.
Joshua: My main takeaway is I need to read that essay. It sounds very interesting.
Cassius: We’ll come back next week with more on the soul and sensation, and then move further along on the general question of what the universe is about and how our senses and minds can make sense of it for us. Thanks to Martin and Joshua, and we’ll talk next week.
Martin: Okay, bye.
Joshua: Thanks, bye.