Lucretius 7
Alastor
There, that's penance enough. In my last post, I called it an
anapestic hexameter and somebody gave me a deserved broadside. I
accept the punishment yet I have to admit it irritated me at the time,
which set me thinking:
Why don't we like to be caught out in an error?
I think its biological. In this world, the great law is 'survival of
the fittest'. The animal with the limp is the animal that gets stalked
by the predator. A mother duck will fake a broken wing in order to
draw the fox away from her brood. Similarly, or conversely, homo
apteros pretends not to be injured when he gets caught out in an
error.
What's this to do with Lucretius? The mark of a great poem is its
relevance to almost every occasion. Some people open the Bible at any
page and read at random any verse for the guidance it gives. I have
heard that Romans used to do the same with The Aeneid. Well, it just
so happens that I stumbled on some lines in Lucretius that seem
relevant here. I didn't go looking for them. They just happened to be
the next set of lines I was due to read in Book IV. Lucretius is
answering those philosophers who believe the senses are deceptive and
shouldn't be trusted:
[ ...tamen praestat rationis egentem
reddere mendose causas...
quam manibus manifesta suis emittere quoquam
et violare fidem primam et convellere tota
fundamenta quibus nixatur vita salusque. (IV,502-6)
Paraphrase: but where a reason is lacking, it is better to come up
with a false explanation than let go of the obvious or lose basic
faith or pull up the foundations on which life and health rest.]
What Lucretius is saying is this - the senses are the very foundation
of our physical existence and it is better to accept their lies than
to embrace an ideal that would destroy life. It's like something
Nietzsche said:
"All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth comes
only from the senses." (aphorism 134, Beyond good and Evil)
Getting something wrong is not our primal fear. Being seen to get
something wrong - that is our primal fear. Because the truth isn't so
important as survival. On the other hand, I think we do have an urge
to truthfulness, even if it kills us. And I think Lucretius had that
kind of truthfulness even in spite of what he appears to be saying.
Ed Cryer
"Alastor" <ros...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:551bed1f-ed20-409f...@i29g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
This Lucretius quote reminds me very much of recent philosophy of
science.
Historically speaking there's the history of Aristotelian/Ptolemaic
solar system. Circles; perfect motion. And when anomalies were found in
planetary motion, then epicycles were added. And so it went on until the
whole shebang was a messy system of cycles and epicycles. At which point
the alternative Copernican revolution in thought became attractive.
That's the Thomas Kuhn view of scientific progress; shore up a theory
until it becomes impossible to support it any longer in the light of
most recent empirical findings. At which point a complete revision
becomes necessary; a scientific revolution.
Such occurred with the heliocentric solar model. Such occurred after
Einstein's relativity models.
Ed
Alastor
preposterous than String Theory? It's like the kind of theory a
husband develops to explain away evidence of his wife's infidelity -
anything would be easier to accept than the blindingly awful truth!
For science, that awful truth is the fact that there must be something
wrong in the basic blueprint and somewhere we have to knock something
important down and start all over again. String Theory just doesn't
belong in a system of thought that strives towards greater simplicity.
It's a mathematical wart of gigantic proportions. A disordered dream
after too much beer and oysters. And yet it chews up millions maybe
billions of dollars every year, thousands of our best and brightest
minds trying desperately to make it work. Good material for a satire.
I have only an amateur's knowledge of physics but I do know what kind
of universe I want to live in. I want a universe whose foundations are
simple enough for me to understand. I don't want to go to Professor
Hmpph for the truth about the universe. I want the truth to be the
self-evident result of a few basic principles. Physics is the new
Papacy and I'm an old-fashioned protestant of Scottish descent. Down
with the papists! Down with the physicists! Up with bonny Prince
Charlie! And death to the Sassenach!
Oh. Looks like a got up on the wrong side of bed this morning.
John Briggs
Not really. It is conspicuous that Kuhn made no use of his own theory in
his study of the history of black body radiation :-)
--
John Briggs
John Briggs
> Yes, contemporary science is in denial, I think. What's more
> preposterous than String Theory? It's like the kind of theory a
> husband develops to explain away evidence of his wife's infidelity -
> anything would be easier to accept than the blindingly awful truth!
> For science, that awful truth is the fact that there must be something
> wrong in the basic blueprint and somewhere we have to knock something
> important down and start all over again. String Theory just doesn't
> belong in a system of thought that strives towards greater simplicity.
> It's a mathematical wart of gigantic proportions. A disordered dream
> after too much beer and oysters. And yet it chews up millions maybe
> billions of dollars every year, thousands of our best and brightest
> minds trying desperately to make it work. Good material for a satire.
Hardly. Theory is remarkably cheap.
--
John Briggs
Alastor
John W. Kennedy
Copernicus also relied on cycles and epicycles. He merely reduced the
number by a few. It was Kepler who solved the problem, with his three
laws of planetary motion.
--
John W. Kennedy
"But now is a new thing which is very old--
that the rich make themselves richer and not poorer,
which is the true Gospel, for the poor's sake."
-- Charles Williams. "Judgement at Chelmsford"
Odysseus
<86ade8f9-62fd-40e6...@u10g2000prn.googlegroups.com>,
Alastor <ros...@gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
> [...] Physics is the new Papacy and I'm an old-fashioned protestant
> of Scottish descent. Down with the papists! Down with the physicists!
> Up with bonny Prince Charlie! And death to the Sassenach!
Your sentiments concerning "the papists" and the Young Pretender seem
rather contradictory. Not that there weren't any Protestants on the
Jacobite side in the '45 rebellion -- indeed, some ancestors of mine fit
the bill -- but I'm pretty sure that all the more fervent anti-Catholics
would have supported the government in that conflict, Sassenach or no.
--
Odysseus