On the Nature of Things

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In his didactic poem, the Roman philosopher and poet Lucretius argued (among many things) that everything in the universe is composed of tiny atoms moving about in an infinite void, rather than being the creation of deities as was common belief.

On the Nature of Things (Latin: De rerum natura) is a first century BC epic poem by Lucretius that grandly proclaims the reality of man's role in a universe without a god to help him along. It is a statement of personal responsibility in a world in which everyone is driven by hungers and passions with which they were born and do not understand.

[edit] Seeing with compassion

Literally, the title translates as On the Nature of Things. The title is sometimes translated as On the Nature of the Universe, perhaps in order to reflect the scale of its subject matter. Lucretius's view is austere, but nevertheless he points out that a few enlightened individuals can escape periodically from their own hungers and passions and look down with compassion on poor humanity, including themselves, who are on average ignorant, unhappy, and yearning for something better than what they see around them. Personal responsibility then consists of speaking and living personal truth.

Accordingly, On the Nature of Things is Lucretius's personal statement of truth to an ignorant audience. He hopes that someone will hear, understand, and pass on a seed of truth to help improve the world.

The poem consists of the following main arguments.

• Substance is eternal.
  • Atoms move in an infinite void.
  • The universe is all atoms and void, nothing else. (Hence, Lucretius's view is labeled as atomism.)

• The human soul consists of minute atoms that dissipate into smoke when a person dies.
  • Gods exist, but they did not start the universe, and they have no concern for men.

• Likely there are other worlds in the universe much like this one, likewise composed of changing combinations of atoms.
  • Being mere shifting combinations of atoms, this world and the other worlds are not eternal.
  • The other worlds out there are not controlled by gods any more than this one.

• The forms of life in this world and in the other worlds change, increasing in power for a time and then losing power to other forms.
  • Humankind went through a savage beginning, and there has been noticeable improvement in skill and ability, but even this world will pass away.

• Humankind know by either the senses or by reason.
  • Senses are dependable.
  • Reason infers underlying explanations, but reason can reach false inferences. Hence, inferences must be continually verified against the senses.
  • (Compare to Plato, who believed that senses could be fooled and reason was reliable.)

• The senses perceive the macroscopic collisions and interactions of bodies.
  • But reason infers the atoms and the void to explain what the senses perceive.

• Humankind avoid pain and seek what gives them pleasure.
  • The average person then is driven to maximize pleasure while avoiding pain.

• People are born with two big vulnerabilities for hurt, the fear of gods and the fear of death.
  • But the gods will not hurt you, and death is easy when life is gone.
  • When you are gone, the atoms in your soul and the atoms in your body will still be here making up something else, a rock, a lake, or a flower.

[edit] The Swerve

The problem that arises from an entirely deterministic and materialistic account of reality is free will. Lucretius maintains that the free will is possible through the random tendency for atoms to swerve (Latin: clinamen).

[edit] Lucretius's skepticism

Lucretius maintained that he could free mankind from fear of the gods by demonstrating that all things occur by natural causes without any intervention by the gods. Historians of science, however, have been critical of the limitations of his Epicurean approach to science, especially as it pertained to astronomical topics, which he relegated to the class of "unclear" objects. (Lloyd 1973, p. 26; Stahl 1962, pp. 81-3)

Thus, he began his discussion by claiming that he would

explain by what forces nature steers the courses of the Sun and the journeyings of the Moon, so that we shall not suppose that they run their yearly races between heaven and earth of their own free will [i.e., are gods themselves] or that they are rolled round in furtherance of some divine plan.... (V, 76-81)

However, when he set out to put this plan into practice, he limited himself to showing how one, or several different, naturalistic accounts could explain certain natural phenomena. He was unable to tell his readers how to determine which of these alternatives might be the true one. (Alioto 1987, p. 97)

Let us now take as our theme the cause of stellar movements.

• First let us suppose that the great globe of the sky itself rotates....
• There remains the alternative possibility that the sky as a whole is stationary while the shining constellations are in motion. This may happen

• because swift currents of ether ... whirl round and round and roll their fires at large across the nocturnal regions of the sky. Or
• an external current of air from some other quarter may whirl them along in their course. Or
• they may swim of their own accord, each responsive to the call of its own food, and feed their fiery bodies in the broad pastures of the sky.

One of these causes must certainly operate in our world.... But to lay down which of them it is lies beyond the range of our stumbling progress. (V, 510-533)

Drawing on these, and other passages, William Stahl considered that "The anomalous and derivative character of the scientific portions of Lucretius' poem makes it reasonable to conclude that his significance should be judged as a poet, not as a scientist." (Stahl 1962, p. 83)

Of course, one must also consider that such criticisms are motivated by the desire to put a distance between the materialism of Lucretius and the materialism of modernist scientists and most analytical philosophers. The modern physicalist movement must criticize Lucretius for scientific mistakes in order to seemingly validate their own positions, yet, let it not be forgotten that the underlying philosophy is exactly the same and thus subject to the same sort of errors in today's scientific endeavours. To say Lucretius' only worth is his poetic contribution shows the ignorance of the distinction between philosophy and science all too common today. For the principles established by Lucretius do not err in that regard, but only in the context of his scientific limitations. One would not call Newton a poet because his physics was not entirely correct or complete. Nor would one call Virgil a scientist because his poetry didn't use correct meter, yet described meteorological phenomena accurately. Actually, Lucretius was a philosopher. As a poet he was competent. But as a scientist, he never claimed to be one, nor did his work claim to be scientific. "De Rerum Natura" is an epistemological foundation for what should be studied, not a study itself.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Characters in the drama

There are several characters in the drama of this epic poem. Epicurus is a teacher who passed to Lucretius the light of understanding. The character Religion is a monster that attacks men from the sky and seeks to destroy truth. Epicurus wins against Religion because he explains to the comprehending person the vast and infinite universe, and brings a sudden realisation of what can be and what cannot be. This sudden understanding of the underlying atoms, void, and possible interactions of the universe will free individuals from the inherited fears of gods and of death.

Here are the words of Lucretius translated to English by William Ellery Leonard and provided by courtesy of the Gutenberg e-text project. [1]

While human kind

Throughout the lands lay miserably crushed

Before all eyes beneath Religion--who

Would show her head along the region skies,

Glowering on mortals with her hideous face--

A Greek [Epicurus] it was who first opposing dared

Raise mortal eyes that terror to withstand,

Whom nor the fame of Gods nor lightning's stroke

Nor threatening thunder of the ominous sky

Abashed; but rather chafed to angry zest

His dauntless heart to be the first to rend

The crossbars at the gates of Nature old.

And thus his will and hardy wisdom won;

And forward thus he fared afar, beyond

The flaming ramparts of the world, until

He wandered the unmeasurable All.

Whence he to us, a conqueror, reports

What things can rise to being, what cannot,

And by what law to each its scope prescribed,

Its boundary stone that clings so deep in Time.

Wherefore Religion now is under foot,

And us his victory now exalts to heaven. (I, 62-79)

[edit] What draws men to religion?

Lucretius has compassion for those men who do not understand the mechanisms of the universe that gave them birth. He felt these ignorant and unfortunate men need religion to explain where they came from, why good things sometimes occur, and what could possibly shield them from the misfortunes they see fall upon others.

Nor [is this the place] to pursue the atoms one by one,

To see the law whereby each thing goes on.

But some men, ignorant of matter, think,

Opposing this, that not without the gods,

In such adjustment to our human ways,

Can nature change the seasons of the years,

And bring to birth the grains and all of else

To which divine Delight, the guide of life,

Persuades mortality and leads it on,

That, through her artful blandishments of love,

It propagate the generations still,

Lest humankind should perish. When they feign

That gods have stablished all things but for man,

They seem in all ways mightily to lapse

From reason's truth: for ev'n if ne'er I knew

What seeds primordial are, yet would I dare

This to affirm, ev'n from deep judgment based

Upon the ways and conduct of the skies--

This to maintain by many a fact besides--

That in no wise the nature of the world

For us was builded by a power divine--

So great the faults it stands encumbered with:

The which, dear Memmius, later on, for thee

We will clear up. Now as to what remains

Concerning motions we'll unfold our thought. (II, 167-183)

Lucretius wrote this epic poem to "Memmius", who may be the Gaius Memmius who in 58 BC was a praetor, a judicial official deciding controversies between citizens and between citizens and the government. There are over a dozen references to "Memmius" scattered throughout the long poem in a variety of contexts in translation, such as "Memmius mine", "my Memmius", and "illustrious Memmius". Apparently, Lucretius wrote On the Nature of Things in an attempt to convert Gaius Memmius to atomism, but was unsuccessful.

[edit] See also

• Lucretius

[edit] External link

• Project Gutenberg e-text of On The Nature Of Things

[edit] References

• Alioto, Anthony M. A History of Western Science. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1987. ISBN 0-13-392390-8
• Lloyd, B. E. R. Greek Science after Aristotle. New York: W. W. Norton, 1973. ISBN 0-393-04371-1
• Lucretius The Way Things Are: The De Rerum Natura, translation by Rolfe Humphries, Indiana University Press 1968, ISBN 0-253-20125-X
• Stahl, William. Roman Science. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1962.
• E-text of On the Nature of Things [2]
• Summary of On the Nature of Things, by section [3]
• Analysis of Lucretius's "conversion" challenge in terms of designing a "meme" that would compete with the surrounding memes of creationism; "as doctors sweeten bitter medicine with honey", so Lucretius sweetened the conversion pill as poetry [4]

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Translations

• Lucretius. On the Nature of Things: De rerum natura. Anthony M. Esolen, transl. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Univ. Pr., 1995. ISBN 0-8018-5055-X
• Lucretius the Way Things Are: The De Rerum Natura. Rolfe Humphries, transl. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1968. ISBN 0-253-20125-X.
• Lucretius. On the Nature of the Universe. R. E. Latham, transl. London: Penguin Books, 1994. ISBN 0-14-044610-9.
• Lucretius. On the Nature of Things (Loeb Classical Library No. 181). W. H. Rouse, transl., rev. by M. F. Smith. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1992, reprint with revisions of the 1924 edition. ISBN 0-674-99200-8.
• Lucretius. On the Nature of Things (Hackett Classics Series). Martin Ferguson Smith, transl. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing Co., 2001. ISBN 0-87220-587-8. (Reviewed at [5]; responses to the review at [6])

[edit] Commentary

• Brown, P. Michael (ed.). Lucretius, De Rerum Natura III. Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1997. ISBN 0-85668-694-8 (hb). ISBN 0-85668-695-6 (pb). (Reviewed at [7])
• Campbell, Gordon. Lucretius on Creation and Evolution: A Commentary on De Rerum Natura Book Five, Lines 772-1104. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Pr., 2003. ISBN 0-19-926396-5. (Reviewed at [8])

Link to a sympathetic review of Campbell's book. At page 160, the reviewer concludes the following. "Lucretius on Creation and Evolution offers a bold and sophisticated attempt to come to terms with Lucretius' arguments on evolution in the spirit of the poem's most ambitious commentators. It deserves not only consultation but active perusal. I could not agree more with Campbell's commitment to putting Lucretius and Epicureanism into conversation with the present and with our own attempts to figure out where humans belong in a world of chance and impersonal necessity."

• Fowler, Don. Lucretius on Atomic Motion: A Commentary on De Rerum Natura, Book Two, Lines 1-332. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Pr., 2002. ISBN 0-19-924358-1. (Reviewed at [9])
• Gale,Monica R. Lucretius and the Didactic Epic. London: Bristol Classical Pr., 2001. ISBN 1-85399-557-6 (Reviewed at [10])
• Johnson, W.R. Lucretius and the Modern World. London: Duckworth, 2000. ISBN 0-7156-2882-8. (Reviewed at [11])
• Kennedy, Duncan F. Rethinking Reality: Lucretius and the Textualization of Nature. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Pr., 2002. ISBN 0-472-11288-0. (Reviewed at [12])
• Sedley, David. Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1998. ISBN 0-521-57032-8. (Reviewed at [13])