oA Canticle for Leibowitz. Describes a post apocalyptic world in which monks maintain the books containing knowledge from the distant past before the Apocalypse.
I found it fascinating when Greenblatt describes the monastic lifestyle: read and conserve, but don’t discuss the subject, nor even attempt to correct “mistakes”.
My personal philosophy tended towards Epicureanism, long before I ever heard of Epicurus and his works from thousands of years ago.
The Swerve prompted me to read “On the Nature of Things”. If I had read Lucretius hundreds of years ago it would have inspired me on the Nature of our universe. “On the Nature of Things” reminds me of another book. “Life 3.0” explores the possibility and the consequences of building ever more intelligent machines. If this process continues it is possible that we will build machines more intelligent than we are.
On the Nature of Things by Lucretius
It is a declaration of war on religion!
Using reason and easily understood examples Lucretius relentlessly debunks and mocks the basic tenets of religion.
Overeating was already a problem!
Book 1
Religion is soundly mocked and debunked; as are competing hypotheses of natural philosophy. One popular hypothesis was that all things are made up of 4 elements: Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire. The atomistic hypothesis is explained clearly, and accompanied by well known examples from the physical world. The beautiful Latin verses are the honey used to attract the reader to the text, and to make the explanations less arid.
Book 2
Book 3
The mind and soul are inseparable from our bodies. Our minds are born and grow inside our bodies. When our body dies so does our mind.
third book is about the mind
The Earth, seas, human beings were formed from random ground of elementary particles.
Causes of movement of the stars. Explains several possible explanations without reaching a conclusion. Lucretius also admits that the true origin of some phenomena are not yet known.
Why does the Sun not shine all the time? One possibility air, exhaustion etc. Anothers but closer to reality is that the sun moves under the Earth.
Why does the moon shine, and why its appearance change over time (phases of the Moon)? There is a fairly correct explanation that the light is reflected from the sun, and that the relative position of both bodies explains the shadow on the Moon’s surface. Another possible explanation is that another heavenly body passes in front of the Moon obscuring it. How difficult it is to find good explanations for so many naturally occurring phenomena!
Beginning of the scientific method?
Description of how humans invented gods out of fear of death and not being able to understand the origins of natural phenomena.
“Thus the human race labors in vain consuming men’s lives with empty worries for clearly they are ignorant about a limit to their possessions, and about hope how far true pleasure can increase”
Book 4, on Light, mirrors, and optics
The explanations given for the phenomenon of “images” (e.g reflections from mirrors, dreams, imagined objects seen in clouds) are comically misguided! Lucretius tells us that these images are seen through a combination of light and air. These confusions highlight how difficult it was to understand the true nature of things without modern instruments (microscopes, thermometers, etc.)!
See https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lucretius/