Happy Twentieth! I’m excited to announce that the newest member of the Society of Epicurus, Alan, contributed very professional quality video editing for Epicurean Doctrines On Wealth, the first educational video that we post in years. We will be posting more modules of this sort in the coming months.
One update on behalf of Patreon: those who are abroad and have considered becoming Patreon subscribers may be happy to know that everyone in the UK, EU and U.S. can now pledge my Patreon in their local currency of Euros (€), British Pounds (£) or U.S. Dollars ($). This will help prevent you paying extra conversion fees from your bank or card when pledging in a currency that’s not your own. For those of you who would like to switch your preferred currency you can follow these steps:
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For those of you outside of these currencies, you’ll continue to see your pledge priced in my currency. Patreon subscriptions help to pay for the societyofepicurus.com webpage, and also will hopefully one day help me to live up to the teachings of Philodemus of Gadara in his scroll On the art of property management, where he teaches that the ideal way to make a living is from teaching philosophy. I do not believe I’ll ever make a living from teaching Epicuranism, but I enjoy doing it and I’ll be happy if it’s one of multiple streams of income. Here are a few literary updates:
One member of our Garden of Epicurus FB group shared the essay The Lazy Way To An Awesome Life: 3 Secrets Backed By Research, suggesting that BAT (Behavioral Activation Therapy) might be a good Epicurean alternative to CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy). The essay says: “The gist of Behavioral Activation Therapy is we gotta do happy to feel happy.” The truth is that CBT is not the exclusive product of Stoicism (it also exists, for instance, in the scrolls written by Philodemus of Gadara 2,100 years ago). BAT does bear close resemblance to materialist conceptions of identity that say that we are what we habitually do.
In the essay The End of Epicurean Infinity: Critical Reflections on the Epicurean Infinite Universe, Frederik A. Bakker repeats the accusation that Epicurean cosmology is untenable because it was argued in order to serve the purposes of the ethics. The counter-argument to this is that the Epicurean theory of atoms and void (on which all else, including both the ethics and the physics, is founded) is based on empirical observations attested, for instance, in Lucretius’ poetic mention of a mote of dust dancing in the air, his description of the evaporation of water, and his discussion of sponges and how they would not be able to absorb water if there was no void in them. From this, and from subsequent reasoning, the Epicureans drew the doctrine of innumerable worlds and their theology–which posits that the gods are blissful superior animals who live in their planetary abodes and do not intervene in our affairs. All of these ideas are connected and all of these theories sustain each other, and all of them are inferred from previous observations. The author, however, asserts that the Epicureans
did not doubt which of the accepted explanations was true: they were adamant that all accepted explanations – even mutually incompatible ones – were true
If two hypotheses are mutually incompatible, it’s difficult to see how anyone can argue that one must hold that they are both right, rather than withhold judgment until clear evidence is available. Lucretius VI.703-711 seems to call for a variety of causes, so that at least one of them might turn out to be true, but I believe polyvalent logic does not need to exclude the possibility that more than one theory is true simultaneously. What we call polyvalent logic is exemplified most eloquently in Epicurus’ Epistle to Pythocles, where Epicurus says:
When one accepts one theory and rejects another which is equally consistent with the phenomenon in question, it is clear that one has thereby blundered out of any sort of proper physics and fallen into mythology.
This means that only in the realm of myth do things only have a single explanation, and that we should not reject any theory which does not contradict the evidence. Referring to the evidence of nature is what justifies polyvalent logic. For instance, when we observe the rain and condensation cycles, we can appeal to multiple explanations to what we see based on the laws of gravity, based on water’s observed behavior at different temperatures, and based on the evaluation of air pressure in different places. These “theories” do not compete, and all correlate with evidence and are all simultaneously true, and if the intervention of the gods is excluded from these “theories” it’s because the gods have not been observed intervening in the weather, in astronomical phenomena, or in human affairs. If an immortal non-terrestrial being is ever observed intervening in this manner, any person of common sense will be forced to evaluate the evidence he or she has seen.
Similarly, we have evidence that tardigrades can survive in space, and that therefore the first forms of life may have come to Earth from space fully formed. But we also know that many or most comets in our solar system are full of ice water, and that many of the elements that make up carbon-based life must have arrived on Earth via meteoric impacts. And we know that RNA precedes DNA, so that the various molecules that make up RNA must have accidentally emerged many times prior to combining and evolving into complex life. We also know that vents in the deep ocean carry nutrients and elements that may support or give rise to life, so it’s possible that life (and/or the elements that make up life) emerged multiple times and in multiple ways, none of which contradicts the evidence of nature, on which we base all of our opinions. These theories are not mutually contradictory. They are all valid.
Furthermore, the Epicurean cosmos does not have creators because it has always existed, so there was no beginning of all things. “Nothing comes from nothing” is an Epicurean mantra. That nothing has ever been seen to come from nothing is a foundational observation of the atomists. Any gods that are based on empirical observation must therefore not only be non-supernatural, physical, super-evolved beings, but also not the creators or sustainers of the universe, which requires no such feature. Therefore, any reference by Epicureans to how things were “in the beginning” must only be hypothetical, refer to the nature of things at all times, and mean to illustrate a point.
Still, the essay produces an interesting set of intellectual challenges, and–together with Epicurus’ Epistle to Herodotus–is a great stimulus for anyone who wishes to consider questions of natural cosmology.
The Autarkist 