Episode 131 - Letter to Pythocles 05 - Weather Phenomena
Date: 07/23/22
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/2597-episode-one-hundred-thirty-one-letter-to-pythocles-05-weather-phenomena/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Joshua reads sections 99–104 on weather signs, clouds, rain, thunder, lightning, thunderbolts, and cyclones, with section 104 closing: “early superstition must be excluded as it will if one successfully follows the lead of seen phenomena to gain indications about the invisible.” The episode opens with a wide-ranging discussion of the Hymn to Venus at the start of Lucretius Book 1 — Venus as a figure for nature or pleasure rather than a supernatural goddess, with Cassius noting that the real point of the hymn is to invite the reader to look through the phenomena to the material principles behind them. The group examines weather as the oldest attribute of the Olympian gods — Zeus’s lightning bolts forged by Hephaestus — and uses the Iphigenia sacrifice as Lucretius’s own paradigm case of how false assumptions about supernatural weather-control lead to catastrophic conclusions, since Agamemnon’s entire army clamored for the sacrifice of his daughter to placate Poseidon and allow the fleet to sail for Troy. Cassius addresses two recurring objections: the Pyrrhonist charge that Epicurus provides no certain answers, and the demand for a specific daily schedule of pleasures — answering that Epicurus occupies the rational middle ground between radical skepticism and supernatural certainty, and that individual circumstances make a universal pleasure-list impossible. Martin connects the episode’s themes to modern analogies including barometers, the atmospheric wood-expansion that gives Jack Daniels whiskey its color and flavor, and the role of climate in preserving or destroying ancient texts such as the Herculaneum papyri.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 131 of Lucretius Today. I’m your host Cassius, and today we continue with Epicurus’s Letter to Pythocles with a look at the implications of the Epicurean position on certain weather phenomena. Let’s join Joshua reading today’s text.
Joshua: Signs of the weather may occur owing to the coincidence of occasions as happens with animals we can all see on earth, and also through alterations and changes in the atmosphere, for both these are in accordance with phenomena. But under what circumstances the cause is produced by this or that we cannot perceive. Admissions may be produced and formed both by the condensation of the atmosphere owing to the compression by winds and by the interlacing of atoms clinging to one another and suitable for producing this result, and again by the gathering of streams from earth and the waters, and there are several other ways in which the formation of such things may not be impossibly brought about. And from them again rain may be produced, if they are squeezed in one part or changed in another, or again by a downward current of wind moving through the atmosphere from appropriate places, a more violent shower being produced from certain conglomerations of atoms suited to create such downfalls. Thunder may be produced by the rushing about of wind in the hollows of the clouds as happens in vessels on earth, or by the reverberation of fire filled with winds inside them, or by the rending and tearing of clouds, or by the friction and bursting of clouds when they have been congealed into a form like ice. Phenomena demand that we should say that this department of celestial events, just like them all, may be caused in several ways. And lightnings too are produced in several ways, for both owing to the friction and collision of clouds, the conformation of atoms which produces fire slips out and gives birth to lightning; and owing to wind, bodies which give rise to this flash are dashed from the clouds; or compression may be the cause when clouds are squeezed either by one another or by the wind. Lightning precedes thunder in such a conformation of the clouds either because at the moment when the wind dashes in the formation of atoms which gives rise to lightning is driven out but afterwards the wind whirls about and produces the reverberation, or because they both dash out at the same moment but lightning moves at a higher speed toward us. Thunderbolts may occur because there are frequent gatherings of wind which whirls about and is fanned into a fierce flame, and then a portion of it breaks off and rushes violently on the places beneath. Early superstition must be excluded as it will if one successfully follows the lead of seen phenomena to gain indications about the invisible. Cyclones may be produced either by the driving down of a cloud into the regions below in the form of a pillar because it is pushed by the wind gathered inside it and is driven on by the violence of the wind, while at the same time the wind outside impels it sideways, or by wind forming into circular motion while mist is simultaneously thrust down from above. When the spout is let down onto the land whirlwinds are produced in all the various ways in which their creation may occur, but if it reaches the sea it produces waterspouts.
Cassius: Thank you, Joshua. This is follow-up from Episode 130, where we spent much more time on the rules of epistemology — including Christopher Hitchens’s observation that it was not so important what the ancients thought but how they thought. This section has at least two epistemological observations embedded in it. Before we start, the first thing he mentions is “signs of the weather” — animals sensing changes before people do. Martin, what do we measure atmospheric pressure with?
Martin: A barometer.
Cassius: I’ve got one of those German-looking houses in my kitchen with a man with an umbrella on one side and a woman on the other, and they move in and out depending on pressure. It’s particularly important for agrarian and seafaring societies. He concludes the animal-signs paragraph by saying “under what circumstances the cause is produced by this or that we cannot perceive” — so rather than attribute it to a spirit whispering in an animal’s ear, he simply suspends judgment and moves on.
Joshua: Weather really is one of the oldest attributes of the gods. Zeus carried a quiver full of lightning bolts forged by Hephaestus. For Epicurus to come onto the stage in ancient Greece and say those bolts were not forged by Hephaestus but by nature herself out of atoms and void — that was not a small claim. And the way Lucretius opens Book 1 with the Hymn to Venus raises exactly this issue. Venus is ostensibly doing everything in that hymn — making seas calm, making animals breed, summoning spring. But she is not a supernatural goddess steering events. Venus is a figure for nature, for pleasure, for the ceaseless movement of atoms that gives rise to all we see.
Cassius: There is a dual role in how people read Venus there. Some say she represents nature, others say she represents pleasure. But there’s no contradiction, because we don’t consider pleasure to be supernatural. The point is that the hymn is inviting you to look through the phenomena to the principles behind them — and those principles are entirely material. That is what we’re doing throughout this whole section on meteorology.
Joshua: And the weather really is at the heart of why this matters. The genesis narrative of Greek civilization starts with the Trojan War. But before the Greeks could sail to Troy they had offended Poseidon, god of the sea. And so Agamemnon — in some versions of the story — summoned his daughter Iphigenia under the pretext of her wedding to Achilles, and had her sacrificed at the altar to placate the gods. The entire Greek army was clamoring for her death. Lucretius saw this as the paradigm case of the danger in false assumptions about nature. When you start from the premise that storms are divine punishment, the logical endpoint is that someone has to die.
Cassius: And that is why section 104 says “early superstition must be excluded as it will if one successfully follows the lead of seen phenomena to gain indications about the invisible.” He’s saying: use the evidence you do have to analogize toward the things you don’t have direct evidence of. Don’t fill the gap with superstition.
Joshua: Someone might say to you: Epicurus was supposed to be the great philosopher of pleasure — why doesn’t he give me a specific list of pleasures to pursue from morning to night? The Stoics are happy to give me techniques. Why doesn’t Epicurus?
Cassius: Because he is a philosopher who wants to give you the foundation from which you can analyze your own circumstances. In a universe where there is no absolute right or wrong, there cannot be an absolute list of activities that every person should engage in regardless of their circumstances. Every individual’s preferences, tolerances, and situations are different. He does give general principles — necessary versus unnecessary desires, different kinds of pleasure, warnings about hazardous activities. But you yourself are the judge of whether you’ve spent your life well.
Martin: There is also the difference between those who accept authority and those who investigate for themselves. Here, the goal is not just to know that weather is natural, but to understand why it is natural.
Cassius: And that raises the Pyrrhonist objection: if Epicurus keeps saying he doesn’t know the single cause of things, why listen to him? But that’s not the right reading. He’s very clear on the things he does know: no life after death, no supernatural realm, no fate. He carves out the rational middle ground between radical skepticism — which says nothing is knowable — and the supernatural certainty of those who attribute lightning to Zeus. Pyrrho’s own argument refutes itself.
Joshua: And there is the pneuma issue. Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations writes that whatever this is that I am it is flesh and a little spirit and intelligence, and the spirit is air — vomited out and gulped in again every instant. The ancient Greeks thought of the breath as the soul, that when you die you give up the ghost. So observations of the air and its condensation and movements were tied by these thinkers to deep questions about human life.
Cassius: Martin, you’ve been to the Jack Daniels distillery recently. You said there was something about atmosphere and the wood?
Martin: Yes. When the whiskey comes out of the still it is clear — no color at all. They put it in charred oak barrels and store it in the Tennessee countryside for several years. In summer the wood expands and draws the whiskey into the wood. In winter the wood contracts and pushes it back out. After several years of that cycling the whiskey acquires all of its color and much of its flavor. That is the influence of the atmosphere.
Cassius: Which is the same principle that ruins ancient texts. It is not the temperature or humidity itself so much as the cycling changes that cause the fibers to contract and expand until they break down and crumble. And the most interesting example of the opposite is the Herculaneum papyri — texts preserved by the very eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Climate is not incidental to the history of philosophy.
Joshua: And it is a reminder that for those who don’t investigate, the supernatural explanation is always ready to hand. There is a passage in the New Testament where the disciples ask Jesus about a man born blind: “who sinned, this man or his parents?” — that is the worldview that Epicurus is writing against. You look for good and evil as the cause of things instead of natural processes.
Cassius: And that distinction holds as much today as it did in the third century BC. With that, let’s close for this week and come back next week to cover more of the meteorological passages in the letter. Thanks everybody, see you next week.
Joshua: Goodbye.
Martin: Bye.