Book was good, and made medieval bookhunting surprisingly interesting, with a sideline in handwriting reform, which after some steps led to my using Garamond for everything.

He is cool, though I think you give him too much original credit on the physical side of things; do you have a source? We don't have much surviving from Democritus, but I've always seen the 'swerve' as the only original Epicureanism, with the rest being Democritus. (Edit: Democritus thought 'weight' was a secondary property, not intrinsic to the atoms.) And the motivation wasn't necessarily good: it was to make room for "free will", as if randomness was free will. Bad philosophy!

He wasn't original on the hedonistic philosophy bit, either; Democritus was "the laughing philosopher" to the Greeks, and a book I looked at years ago (_Democritus, Epicures, and the Pre-Socratics_, or maybe Pre-Atomics? I dunno) said, I don't know with what basis, that Democritus granted politics sucked but said you should get involved to keep the world from sucking even worse, while Epicurus just said you shouldn't get involved. Of course Democritus lived while democracy was developing, while Epicurus lived under the Macedonian bootheel.

And I think the proto-natural selection -- it doesn't have the refinement of Darwin, just a vague "random animals and the bad ones die" -- comes from another philosopher, A-something. (Lots of those.) Give Epicurus credit for knowing what to steal, though.

Democritus is said to have thought the Milky Way was a bunch of stars too far away to see. Of course, at this point we can just dub Democritus our time traveling alien instead.

And this all led to Lucretius and the only epic poem about physics and de facto atheism, which had even detractors like Cicero praising its Latin.

Even in childhood I felt I was a Democritan/Epicurean, and that this wasn't an entirely good thing; great physics and private morality, but public disengagement fails the optimal outcomes test.

For one of my last grad school papers, a Hofstadter class on "Mind and the atom", early philsophy stuff, I had fun reversing things, arguing that Heraclitus ("the weeping philosopher", "everything is change and fire") was right instead. After all, atoms aren't indivisible or immutable, and his 'fire' was obviously just what we'd call energy, the ultimate cosmic currency.
http://mindstalk.net/mindatom.pdf

Edited at 2012-11-18 07:28 am (UTC)

"And I think the proto-natural selection -- it doesn't have the refinement of Darwin, just a vague 'random animals and the bad ones die' -- comes from another philosopher"

I think Empedocles was the first to propose something like that.

The graphic novel Epicurus the Sage by William Messner-Loebs and Sam Kieth is a fun romp that sets Epicurus as a straight man with quite modern day sensibilities against the weird stuff from Greek mythology that keeps embarrassingly popping up into existence. Not very serious overall, but it does seem to pick up on the idea that Epicurus had strangely modern and reasonable ideas compared to his Greek contemporaries.

It is very good fun. Sadly, completely out of print now.

It is fun, though it has the same respect for historical accuracy -- or anything -- as Xena, Warrior Princess.

"He even walks like Democritus".

Out of print maybe but I was able to find copies easily online. I mean to order, not scans.

> Understanding the importance of ritual in people's lives, he told his cult to observe a joyous annual festival: his own birthday. In anyone else I would call this hubris. Given his accomplishments, I'm prepared to allow it.

February 4th, by the way. The nearest competing holiday is groundhog day which, despite being a cool movie, is pretty clearly antireductionist.

Hm. I was going to link to this article about how "The Swerve" is a whole lot of nonsense, but then this post went off in an entirely different direction.

I have mixed feelings about this sort of thing. On one hand, secular writers do often exaggerate and oversimplify history to make their points. On the other hand, I can't really reconcile "there were never any dark ages" type views with the fact that the vast majority of the science and math I've learned about in school either comes from the Hellenistic era, or from the 1500s or later, with precious little in between, despite the intervening period representing quite a long period of time.

Those who claim that progress was retarded by the intellectual dominance of supernaturalist/idealist type views, such as Neo-Platonism and Christianity, over empiricist/naturalist type views at least have a plausible mechanism for explaining the observed pattern, and it would be nice if opponents of these views would offer an explanatory framework in its place rather than just picking holes in particular examples.

Thanks a lot! Thoughtful and thought-provoking as usual. As I specialize in the ancient science and thought I too should say you give Epicurus too much credit. Nearly all the discoveries you attribute to him was made by Democritus and other Ancient Greek scientists and thinkers.

There was an interesting discussion of the subject in LJ concerned with Armand Leroi's claim that Aristotle was a biological genius
(Armand Leroi is a Professor of Evolutionary Developmental Biology at Imperial College, London, answers the question "Who is the greatest biologist of all time?": "the answer is absolutely clear. It's Aristotle."
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/leroi11/leroi11_index.html )

http://fregimus.livejournal.com/146582.html

I pointed out there that S. Hawking (unwillingly) attributes the discovery of quantum mechanics to Aristotle
http://fregimus.livejournal.com/146582.html?thread=3958166#t3958166

also that in the opinion of M. White

[Michael J. White: The Continuous and the Discrete: Ancient Physical Theories from a Contemporary Perspective. Pp. xiv + 345, 8 illustrations. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.]

the math and physics of the Ancient Stoics clearly resemble modern math and physics (in particular - String theory)
http://fregimus.livejournal.com/146582.html?thread=3963286#t3963286

Charles Hignet wrote in his "A history of the Athenian constitution to the end of the fifth century B.C.". Oxford. 1970

"The historical survey in the Athenaion Politeia resembles a careful essay written by a modern research student who brings to his task much industry but no judgement"

http://fregimus.livejournal.com/146582.html?thread=3956630#t3956630

The rest is in Russian :(

First of all, english is not my native language, so sorry for every crime to English grammar that is going to follow. Secondly, sorry for every inconsistence that could result from my poor expression. Please throw your rocks gently. Thirdly, maybe you said all i'm going to say in another post and i haven't seen it.
Democrites did the most important work on the atomistic theory. But to attribute him (or to Epicurus) quantum physics is exagerating : the clinamen only mean they had an undeterministic point of view, not that they thought a particule could "split" and interact with itself, or that the world was, in the end, unknowable(Heisenberg principle). It was mostly an argument to explain earth’s formation : all the atoms fell, the heaviest formed the center of the earth, then the water of the sea, then the atmospher. But to explain how the hell it wasn’t all flat and smooth, he added that «clinamen» that deviation, supposedly conceived as he watches dust dancing erratically in the light(yeah, I know, it looks a lot like Brownian motion), and it was really pratical for proving free will(I don’t remember if it’s Lucretius or Epicurus, or even Democrites that said that). If the particles can choose their way, so do I (like those people saying that quantic physics is the key to free will, insert here sighs). So it could become anything ! He had an undeterministic point of view, he couldn’t achieve to produce physical laws, as we know them today, or as a few greek philosophers, mainly Sceptics, knew something that resembles them pretty much. It was, in fact, concepts as spiritual and as idealistics as Plato’s and Aristoteles’. Well, not as Plato's, but hey, it’s Plato. Atoms it closed the door for further reflexion, as Epicurus stated the impossibility to predict the moves of any atom.
The atoms he imagined had little to do with our atoms. Epicurus, or some of his followers, I don’t know, used the metaphor of the alaphabet. A letter, when turn upside down could mean something completely different and so were the atoms. Their position could change their properties, or if they are symetrical. A caracteristic of molecules(chiral ?), more than atoms, in modern chemistry.
So we have a world deterministic, but spiritualist and with a goal (and the spirit of god animating it), for the Stoics ; and a world materialistic but completely random for the Epicurians. Atomic determinism comes later.
The problem with looking at our modern physics and searching for precursors or, more biased, for the entire theory in the past, is that you can always see what you want to see since you know you’re gonna look for it.
For exemple, when Galileo wrote down his laws of inertia, there were people to tell him that Democrites and Epicurus had done it before. And pointing at the scriptures they still got, they demonstrated that the atomic motion into the void was exactly the idea of infinite inertia, until the corpse moving collides with something. Maybe they were wrong and Epicurus and Democrites were amazing geniuses, occulted by the sand of time and the lost of their work, and they knew exactly what Galileo thought to be original. But probably not. And as Heidegger said in «what is a thing ?» it was easy for them to see in Democrites’ texts what Galileo had so clearly exposed. Another example quoted by Heidegger was Kant, who reacted - surprisedly angry - when he was accused of only retelling the philosophy of Leibniz, to those critics he answered that if it was that easy to see in Leibniz what he had written, why the many years of commentaries on Leibniz haven’t showed it yet.

Second half, damn characters limit :
I don’t think it’s profitable to History of Science in general to say that Epicurus was in the «good path», cause he hasn’t convinced enough, his school remains a sect among others, without any further theorizations. Later he would be remained only for a few concepts, mainly moral ones, and people remembered his theories about atoms but refused them. He hadn’t developped proofs, experiment, etc.needed for a real science. I think science is more the method and less the intuition.
I agree on the importance of intuitions, metaphors, etc. Pythagoras and his music of the spheres, Niels Bohr and his atom-sun, Mendeleiev was inspired by music to imagine the periodicity of his table of elements, and many others. But Giordano Bruno, for example, proned the multiplicity of worlds, but on a theological argument : God’s power is infinite, so it must exist an infinity of worlds, so every star we see is a sun like ours, with planets orbiting around. You can say so for Copernicus. The sun must be in the center of the universe because «Who in this splendid temple would put a lamp in a better place, where it can illuminate everything at once ? Some are not mistaking in calling it light, or soul (...) of the world, that Trismegiste call il «the visible god», or Sophocle’s Lectra the Omniscient. Bescous, like sit in a royal throne, the sun rules over the rotating family of the astres.» Yeah, two great ideas, too, but established on mystical and non-materialistic views.
I think a good idea, is good. But it’s not science until prooved, and neither Democrites, Epicurus, Lucretius have gone this way. It’s the difference between Galileo the scientist (though, he didn’t prove Earth’s motion, we know) and Copernicus the i’ve-got-a-good-idea. Intuition is the best way to go forward. Scientific method is the best way to not go back.
Whatever, if you want to go that way you can mention that Democrites already said that life emerged from «water excited by the sun» before Epicurus, and see a parallel to modern theorizations.
And about gods, he also said, not only that we must look insects to them but that as everthing else in the universe, they are made of atoms, and so are also going to perish and be dissolved in the world.
Another thing, HS, about "Thales said that all was water" he probably just meant that everything was polymorphic, and changing, like Heraclitus about fire. The idea of attributing an element to a certain philosopher (Fire for Heraclites, water for Thales, etc.) comes form Aristoteles. He was asking the question "what are things made of" and he gave us the answers of the ancient, we don't know if they would have answered that. We don't even know if they would have set the question that way.
Sorry for the rant. I love your blog by the way, and i don't know how to write short comments.

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