Lucretius' "The Nature of Things": pre-class thoughts

Atomic Swerve

Lucretius' The Nature of Things begins with an invocation to Venus, best known as the goddess of love, but here specifically named "Life-stirring Venus, Mother of Aeneas and of Rome" (1.1).  He denies the human attraction to superstition (organised religion) and invites Venus to be his muse as he begins his "discourse on the lofty law of gods and heaven above" (1.54), and "reveal[s] the building blocks all things are fashioned of, / Natures prime particles, from which she nourishes and grows / All things and into which once more she makes them decompose" (1.55-57).

I hate reading rhyming couplets... instead of focusing on the text, I tend to gloss over it.  For me, this method of information delivery is the opposite of effective.  Thankfully, many of the key points are in italics, so they're hard to miss. The text is comprised of a strange mixture of poetry and science.. as mentioned, it flows and rhymes with phrases such as "my honeyed tongue shall pour / Such bountiful and copious fountains from my mind's rich store" (1.412), but it is also speckled with the language of deductive reasoning such as "therefore", "It only makes sense that", "a deduction would be" and "prove/, in and of themselves" (1.421-422). 

The main focus of the the first few chapters of the text is on the science of matter, the validity of which I cannot comment, as my own scientific knowledge appears to be about 2000 years old.  The fact that Lucretius, or Epicurus' contemporaries had even the idea of atomic theory, without any tools to prove their theories is just amazing.

The key points of the arguments are as follows:

Book 1:  Matter and Void

• "Nothing's brought / Forth by any supernatural power out of naught" (1.149-150)
• "Nothing can be made from nothing" (1.155)
• "Nature does not render anything to naught" (1.214)
• "For anything that is must be / By definition, something" (1.432-433)
• Everything that is not something is nothing or the void.
• "Each [] must contain material that stays the same" (1.591) (see the idea of "kind" in Genesis)
• Matter is formed of small moving particles known as "atoms" (1.627)
• "It makes all the difference in the world in what position / And with what bonds the atoms are held in place, what kind of motion / The give and take from one another." (1.908-910) This defines what forms the atoms take.

Book 2:  The Dance of Atoms

• Atoms have no willpower of their own, but are either "carried along by thier own weight or by a random blow" (2.84), "ceaslessly separating and regathering in groups" (2.119)
•  "Nothing physical can lift itself by it's own force" (2.185)
• When atoms fall under their own weight, "they swerve a little" (2.219), thus allowing collisions with other atoms to take place.
• This is the root of Free-Will which everyone shares.
• Atoms come in many shapes (2.380), making each individual unique, although "the number of different shapes of atoms have a limit" (2.480).  Liquids are made of round atoms, things that bite are made of sharp atoms.Different positions create different colours. (2.759)
• "Nothing [is] composed of atoms of a single kind. " (2.583)
• As the gods require peace to enjoy their eternal life, it follows that the Earth is not sentient (2.647-652), and the course of Nature is independent of the gods' direction (2.1094)
• "Touch is the key / to all our physical sensations" (2.433-434)
• Atoms have no sensations, but animate beings made of these atoms have sensations.
• Matter is limitless - this means that the universe is limitless, and the Earth is one of many as "nothing in creation is the only one" (2.1077)

Book 3:  Mortality and the Soul

• A human is made up of mind and spirit, body and Judgement, which rules (3.135-140)
• The soul is made up of atoms comprised of breath, heat, air and something un-namable which combine to keep a body intact until the matter disperses shortly afer death (3.230-240)
• Character flaws are also a result of the combination and placement of atoms (3.300-325)
• Youth, illness, drunkenness, are all due to illness, immaturity, or weakness of the spirit
• Likewise, if the body is weak, the atoms forming the soul disperse (3.590)
• This means we need not fear death, for even if these atoms reunite, our unique living existence will be interrupted. (3.866)

Works Cited:
Lucretius. The Nature of Things. Trans. A.E Stallings. New York: Penguin, 2007. Print.