Lucretius and scientific thought PDF
Preview Lucretius and scientific thought
Books by Alban D. Winspear Augustus and Roman Reconstruction ( with Leonard Geweke) Who Was Socrates? (with Tom Silverberg) The Genesis of Plato's Thought The Roman Poet of Science ALBAN D. WINSPEAR LUCRETIUS AND SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT [I[] AN EMULATION BOOK HARVEST HOUSE, MONTREAL First Edition May 1963 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 63-17242 Copyright ~ Canada 1963 by Harvest House Ltd. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form. Printed by The Runge Press Ltd., Ottawa CONTENTS Preface The Originality of Lucretius II Lucretius, The Legend 16 III The Times of Lucretius 22 IV The Fight Against Roman Religion 30 V The Debt to Epicurus 52 VI How Men Should Live 64 VII The World Outlook of Lucretius I. Physical Theory and its History: 80 Scientific Method 2. The Theory of Natural Evolution 117 3. The Growth of Human Institutions 128 Suggestions for Further Reading 146 Notes on Thinkers Mentioned in this Book 147 Index ISi In this volume footnote references which occur frequently are not repeated in full. The first time such a reference appears it is treated thus: Lucretius, De Rerum Natura (D.R.N.), ed. Smith and Leonard, Wis consin 1942. Thereafter, it is cited simply as D.R.N. followed by the identifying chapter and page number. PREFACE It is my conviction that Lucretius as a thinker has been too much neglected. The reason for this I have, I think, sufficiently analyzed in The Genesis of Plato's Thought. In a slave--0wning society, Plato and the Pythagoreans, Aristotle and the Stoics developed idealism as a defense of social inequality. This outlook proved all too congenial to the thinkers of later feudal and aristo cratic societies. It was only with the eighteenth century A.D., and the rise of scientific thin.king that Lucretius began to come into his own as the most articulate exponent of the philosophy of science in classical antiquity. But even so, the recognition has been half hearted. The tendency to depreciate Lucretius has continued on and on. It is time that someone put forward the thesis of Lucretius' philosophical originality and essential profundity. This is the theme of my book. I am conscious of a throng of obligations, even while I dissent most-to my great and good friend, William Ellery Leonard, now dead, with whom I enjoyed twenty years of intimacy and almost daily discussion on our poet; and Cyril Bailey, the great English Lucretian scholar; Usener, Guissani and many others who have toiled with the interpretation of Lucretius. From Lambinus to the present day, Lachmann, Monroe and Diels have given me much illumination. Second hand, I have drawn from the studies of Duvau, Hosius and Chatelaine. The Tuehner edition of Martin I have consulted from time to time. The citations from Lucretius are taken from the translation published as the Roman Poet of Science, New York, 1956, London, 1959, by kind permission of the translator. For this permission I am very grateful to myself. I should like to pay tribute to the unfailing courtesy and help fulness of the staff of the University libraries of British Columbia and Alberta (both Edmonton and Calgary). Mrs. David J. Gravells, Miss Christine Davis and Miss Del Bording have toiled womanfully with the preparation of the manu script and with reading the proof. Some readers may prefer to leave the closely-argued scholarly ,ummary of Chapter I to the end. These may plunge immediately into the life and time~ of Lucretius, the subjects of Chapters /I and lll. University of Alberta, Calgary. CHAPTER I THE ORIGINALITY OF LUCRETIUS' Most students who have given serious attention to the subject would admit, I think, that Lucretius was a poet of quite extra ordinary talent, that he combines an almost prophetic fervour with a supreme mastery of the techniques of poetical composition and that as a consequence of this combination of earnestness and skill he has produced one of the most profoundly moving poems in the whole history of literature. But while admitting all this, scholars tend with a perp1exing unanimity to deny Lucretius' intellectual originality. Lucretius, it is suggested, was great as a translator and versifier. The system of ideas which he expounded can be found ready made in Epicurus. Lucretius' contribution was to translate the system of Epicurus into the Latin language and expound it in a tour de force of high poetry. Of original thought in Lucretius there is, in the received opinion, little trace. For this negative attitude there may be a historical reason. Lucretius made his greatest impact on the thought of the Western world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of our era. This was precisely the period when the atomic theory of matter and the mechanistic interpretations of the findings of science were most challenging to thoughtful men. (Dalton's New System of Chemical Philosophy appeared in 1808). Moreover the ethical implications of these views, hedonism and utilitarianism, were to some most challenging, to others most disturbing. In both these fields the thought of Lucretius seemed like exciting anticipa tions of modem conclusions-in cosmology the views of Boyle, Newton, and Dalton; in ethics the views of Hume, Bentham, and Mill. Now in both these fields Lucretius was admittedly a follower of Epicurus. In passage after passage of luminous verse he acknowl edges his obligation to the master whom he held divine.' No one can accuse Lucretius of failing to acknowledge sufficiently his obli gations. I. This part. of the. work is_ a condensatio.n or. a paper originally prepared for presentation to th.c Ph1los4:1ph1cal Society _of t~e Uruvc~s1ty of Alberta and subsequently to the Philo sophical Seminar at the Umversny of Bristol, England. It owes much to di~cussion by P~ofessors Mar~iros_ and Ha_rdy of the Univen,ity of Alberta, Professors Kucrner and K11to of the Uruvcrsity of Bnstol and Pro.fessor A. Dalzell of the University of Toronto, •hough none. of 1hese gentlemen nece~san!y agree with the thesis. 2. E.G., l.ucrcc1us, De Rerum Na1ura (D.R.N.), ed. Smith and Leonard Wisconsin 1942: I. 62-7\1; J. 1-~0; 51-54, 6. I 42. ' ' 2 LUCRETIUS AND SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT But to return to the argument. When, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the thought of Darwin made its full impact on the thought of the Western World and men began to look at each other with a wild surmise and to wonder whether human institutions were not also susceptible to an evolutionary interpretation, the pattern of interpretation was already well set. But Lucretius did have a theory of evolution and most excitingly anticipates the views of those modems who hold to the theory of evolution in both its biological and social aspects. We find the idea of evolution both in the inorganic and organic. The concept of creation is not, as in the Hebraic a fiat of a Creator, but a growth, a process. The starry sky and the earth have developed. Moreover, the same forces that work today for both worked for their beginning and will work for their end .... In the organic realm there is the same idea of process, particularly of origin out of earth herself, which is to Lucretius far more pro foundly and eloquently Mother Earth than in any mythology. There is the same idea of heredity by means of germ seeds that descend from parent to offspring, reproducing characteristics even of remote ancestors.• There is of course, no conception of the evolution of specie., . . . . Yet there are two moments in Lucretius' zoology that are notably Darwinian: the effect of organic adaptation and of domes tication upon the preservation of species: the survival value of swift legs for example; and of animal life in mountains, woods, thickets, in barnyards and pastures.' Lucretius' idea, of course, Leonard goes on to argue, includes explicitly the dying out of species unadapted to their environment or unprotected by man. The other notably Darwinian moment that Leonard notes is the Lucretian reiteration against teleology, that is, design in nature, a favourite idea of Aristotle and of Lucretius' own much scorned Stoics. Not only are there no gods planning from without; but Nature herself, he says, from within is not planning ahead: she merely grows and things happen and particular functions develop out of what ha~pens. The tongue was not created that we might speak, but having tongues, we get to using tongues for speech. Speech is a by-product of tongues, not the original purpose of tongues. The debate is still on between the two schools of thought, ,9 1.DRN. 4.lJR.N. 60.
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