The Origin of the World
A double feature today. Two versions of the nature of the universe, and how everything works. Lucretius’ “On the Nature of the Universe” was written around 50-100BC by a Roman Epicurean. Lucretius was an atomist, which means that he believed that all matter was composed of a bunch of unseen atoms that, while they have different natures, combine to form all that we see. This is in contrast to the 4 element proponents like Plato and most everyone until, probably Niels Bohr.
In reading this book I was struck be two things. One, how close to our way of thinking this guy was able to come using only reason, as he had no technological apparatus to confirm his speculations. Two, how our own version of the universe is probably just as wrong as his even though we consider it to be mostly right.
The Timaeus is a Platonic dialog which concerns itself with the creation of the universe and how things work in a physical sense. In some ways its very similar to the Lucretius book, in that it purports to explain how the senses work, why the planets move, etc. The most interesting bit, to me, was where he described how people ,because of our construction, strive after perfection. Which is kind of interesting because, everyone seems to do just that, even if we have a warped sense of what perfection is, we still strive for it. Also interesting was his attribution of the function of the liver, specifically that it was what allows us to receive divine inspiration, or oracular visions. I guess this shows the importance of divination to the ancient Greeks, if such a large organ is dedicated to this purpose.
Also of interest is the Atlantis story. It starts off with a story of how Solon traveled to Egypt and meets the Pharaoh. The Pharaoh tells him “You Athenians have no no memory, you live in the present.”, and then goes on to tell him of a previous generation of Athenians and how they fought the Atlantians. He attributes their collective amnesia to periodic destruction of their city by natural disaster and their lack of literacy, up until the present.
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