“Clear verse about dark matters”: Thoughts on Book 1 of De Rerum Natura by Lucretius

Fools have more love and admiration, always
For things their blindness sees in hidden meanings;
They base their truths on what can sometimes tickle
Their ears, or what is soaked in sweetish sound. (p. 38)*

Lucretius really lays into fans of Heraclitus in the preceding lines for the folly of believing that all things are made of fire rather than of a mixture of matter and void. Lucretius: If things are made of fire, then why don’t they get hotter the denser they are? You just got served.

**********General context************

Around the time of the fall of the Roman Republic, Lucretius the philosopher/scientist/poet must have stumbled upon the philosophy of the Greek stoic, Epicurus, and thought it offered the most coherent and simple explanation there was for the behavior of observable reality. So he turned that philosophical system into an epic sort of poem. I’ve just finished the first of six books, and thought I’d share a few thoughts.

So instead of being filled with high drama, heroes, reversals of fortune, vicissitudes of fate, etc., The Way Things Are sings of scientific proofs, like: that nothing comes from nothing, that matter is indestructible, things are composed of matter and void, that matter resists motion and void makes way for movement, and that atoms must not be infinitely small but rather must be indivisible.

Frankly, I get why someone might find it boring. If you’re not an historian of science, the plainly didactic content of the poem is a pretty dry lesson. Much of Book 1 consists of Lucretius refuting the arguments of competing theories of nature. (The one refutation that got me to laugh out loud a bit concerned the idea that when a log is set on fire, then fire must have already been contained within the log before igniting. Lucretius basically asks, “then why, when we grind corn, doesn’t blood pour out? We eat the corn and it sustains us, so the blood must already be in the corn, but where’s the blood?”)

**********Critique of Religion************

Much more interesting to me is the critique of religion and superstition throughout the poem. Lucretius, true to the epic form, opens his verse with an invocation of Venus. However, his invocation, perhaps more than petitioning the goddess for inspiration, is primarily a request for Love to neutralize War, and give the human race some time and space to calmly think.

Ah, goddess, pour yourself around [War], bend
With all your body’s holiness, above
His supine meekness, drown him in persuasion,
Imploring, for the Romans, blessed peace. (20)

An anti-invocation, perhaps? Later Lucretius refers to that “grim Religion” that once forced human life to grovel until Epicurus dared “raise his mortal eyes / Bravely against this menace” (21), and he describes priests as fear-mongers, offering nothing but terrifying fantasies “to overturn your sense / Of logic” (22).

Plain about his intentions, Lucretius describes the purpose of the poem thus:

                                     I teach great things,
I try to loose men’s spirit from the ties,
Tight-knotted, which religion binds around them. (46)

So perhaps then, after all, there is something of high epic drama about The Way Things Are in the way Lucretius configures himself in opposition to the gods, as a liberator of human life from the foul tyranny of capricious overlords, except—you know—the gods are just bullshit, so no Krakens get released, no committees of elves and hobbits need forming, no cosmic battle require mythical weaponry, or anything like that.

**********Poetry as Sweetener************

Such epic framing, and yet when it comes down to it, the action of the poem is basically Lucretius saying: “Have a seat and make yourself comfortable. Let me tell you about these things called atoms. Now some guys are going to tell you that you can just keep cutting stuff in half forever, but those guys are idiots! Obviously….”

In fact, looking again at the epigraph at the top of this post equating “sweetish sound” with junk science, I wonder whether the choice of poetic form doesn’t overly-adulterate and thereby undermine the lesson. The Way Things Are is “edu-tainment,” and Lucretius admits as much:

Just as when doctors try to give to children
A bitter medicine, they rim the cup
With honey’s sweetness, honey’s golden flavor,
To fool the silly little things, as far
As the lips at least, so that they’ll take the bitter
Dosage, and swallow it down, fooled, but not swindled,
But brought to health again through double-dealing,
So now do I, because this doctrine seems
Too grim for those who never yet have tried it,
So grim that people shrink from it, I’ve meant
To explain the system in a sweeter music,
To rim the lesson, as it were, with honey,
Hoping, this way, to hold your mind with verses
While you are learning all that form, that pattern
Of the way things are. (46-7)

For Lucretius, obviously, the Epicurean system is true in any form, founded on clear logic and reason. The poetry merely conveys—does not corrupt, presumably because Lucretius knows his own intent is not disingenuous. But will this be the case? Will the pure and clear knowledge of ungodly nature not suffer violence from the mouth of the poet? Will the quiet serenity of the philosopher not give way to dithyrambic frenzy when aesthetic reason commands it?

___

*All quotations come from:

Lucretius, Carus Titus. The Way Things Are: The De Rerum Natura of Titus Lucretius Carus. Trans. Rolfe Humphries. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1969. Print.

which was purchased from Another Story Used Books in Allentown, PA for a buck seventy-five.

Driving Without Ego

It’s no secret how much ego American’s invest in their cars. In more than just a marketing, self-commodifying, status-seeking sense, our cars (or bicycles, or even our bus routes) are an extension of ourselves. How could our motility in whatever form not have an effect on how we view ourselves interacting with the social world?

My experience of driving is still limited. I’ve had a license for only about 14 years, and for a not insignificant amount of that time I lived an urban, no-drive lifestyle. But I’ve also driven the long way around the USA, from Philadelphia to Vancouver to San Diego to Houston and back, a trip of several thousand miles. I’ve taken numerous other long distance trips. So far I’ve gotten 1 speeding ticket and caused 1 collision (property damage only, no injuries, I’m fortunate). And lately I’ve been delivering Chinese food part time, which has proven to be a somewhat novel experience. I also love to drive.

For a while now, I’ve also been interested in the ways that we live our ethics. Philosophy sometimes has this appearance of being a leisure-time pursuit, a thing somehow outside of the various practices of everyday life…outside of sleeping, eating, working, watching tv, etc. But just a little reflection can usually belie that appearance. When we eat meat or abstain, when we do our duty or follow our heart, when we stare at the boob-tube or attend the cinema, we are living the ideas we have about our place and conduct in the world. Even when we’re just reading philosophy, we’re living philosophy.

And driving style is like this also.

Sometimes it can seem really cut-throat out there on the road amidst the traffic. And we might make of that a kind of metaphor for the world. That the world is cut-throat, a “rat race,” each of us paddling our separate canoes, trying to make our way in spite of everyone else. What I’m saying, I guess, is that while driving can be a metaphor for the larger world it also is the larger world.

And I’ve been thinking lately about how my own driving style could both reflect and embody a more ethical practice of life. It boils down to 3 general behaviors: be aware, be generous, and drive without emotion.

BE AWARE

• I think it’s generally true that if you think you’re a good driver, then you’re not. A good driver is one who always strives to be good, not one who rests satisfied in the knowledge that they are good. A proud driver is a complacent driver.
• Unchain yourself from that pride in your skill by being aware of the limits of your control. Can your skill prevent another driver from having a heart attack and swerving across your lane? Can your skill ensure that the transmission of the car ahead of you does not suddenly slip or freeze? A person can’t even claim to control their own body except in limited ways, so much of it runs automatically without our conscious input. Remember that and be humble.
• But what you can control makes you responsible for the safety all of the drivers, bicyclists, pedestrians and property within your range of action. Behind the wheel, you vastly expand your potential for harm and destruction. Any time you’re driving, a split-second of inattention could make you a paralyzer or a murderer. You must protect others from yourself.
• While you can’t prevent other drivers from acting like fools, you’d be a fool yourself not to make allowances for them. Speaking of which…

BE GENEROUS

• The road does not belong to you alone, so don’t think you have the right to feel abused when someone cuts you off. The difference between them taking the road and you giving the road is only a question of attitude. Be generous and give the road freely.
• Let other drivers be your guests, not your enemies, even when they are rude.
• Give the driver in front of you room to brake as you would wish your guests to be comfortable.
• Give other drivers room to merge as you would open your front door to a friend.
• Give other drivers the ability to predict your behavior with efficient and effective use of turn signals. Drive with deliberate and clear intent, so as not to put other drivers on edge.

DRIVE WITHOUT EMOTION

• Emotion won’t get you where you need to go, and it won’t make traffic move any faster, but it can slow you down by making you sloppy.
• When you’re running late, stress can build, but there is no malice in the advance of time, just as there would be no ill-will in the crush of steel. These things are not your enemies. You cannot defeat them by hating them. Anger will not slow the passage of time or allow you to pass through solid objects, so keep your cool and your wits about you.

Cyborg Aesthetics

Writing is technology, and the reader is a cyborg.  Through (or with?) the text one establishes zones of contact (thought tendrils) between two systems (at least two, why couldn’t it be more?), one strange…alien…and initially outside, and the other familiar, adapting the familiar to fit the strange (which is also changed by the operation).

The cyborg reader is a decentered subject.  It does its thinking in different places.  In the brain but also out of the brain.  In the eyes, the hands, and the skin, but also in the ink, the paper, and the screen.  Cyborg thought has no absolute outside.  This makes an aesthetics built around the sovereign judgment of an autonomous cogito impossible.  The aesthetics of the cyborg are instead a function of estrangement and utility.  Its art is mutation and disruption; its sublime is ugliness; its harmony is efficiency.

It isn’t always useful to see the particular substance of objects or to be deliberate about every activity.  Sometimes it is better to see empty forms.  Sometimes it’s better to shuffle along like zombies.  But not always, and art snaps you out of your sleepwalk and renders difference visible. 

When Robot-Hell is Full, Will the Robot-Dead Walk the Earth?

I've done such an excellent job keeping up with this adventure, haven't I? Last post was in March. What have I done all summer and a good part of the fall? Some stuff, to be sure. But what can I say? The will-to-nothing is strong in me, and I think I should read more Schopenhauer.

Anyway, I came across an abstract of a decade-old essay recently posted by the author at On the Human. The essay is William G. Lycan's "Qualitative Experience in Machines," which performs a two-fold sort of thought-experiment comparing human beings and machines. (He refers to those who maintain essential boundaries between the two as "chauvinists," which is fun.) But the gist of the experiment involves Harry, a flawless human simulator, and Henrietta, a human who has been gradually, piece by piece, had her organic parts replaced with inorganic parts until no flesh is left.

It is fairly uncontroversial to me to suggest that the differences between humans and machines are only accidental (this is not meant as a slight against Lycan). But I found the conclusion of the essay thought-provoking:

She [Henrietta] started out as a normal human being but was gradually turned into a machine. Did she go from being a living organism to being non-living, inanimate? In that case, if she had been alive and then ceased to live, she died, and obsequies are in order. It would be both hard and easy to make her funeral arrangements: Hard, because we would first have to persuade her that she was dead and that services should be held at all; she might resist that suggestion fairly indignantly, especially when we got around to the question of burial vs. cremation. But then easier, because we would not have to guess posthumously at her wishes; we could just ask her what hymns she wanted, whether there should be a eulogy or a general sermon, and so forth, right up till the last minute. I must say I think I would enjoy attending that funeral; I am not so sure that Henrietta would, herself.

A classic reductio ad absurdum, I suppose. Except that I've been coming around to the position that what makes aesthetic thinking different from other (more proletarian...pardon me if I just scoffed all over you) thinking is it's relationship to death, whether that relationship take the form of attraction or repulsion.

Certainly a machine could develop to experience 'qualia' but could it experience tragedy? Which, if un-conceiving the subject we also un-anticipate the inevitability of its death, is also to ask, can we [sic]? Tragicomedy, a la Beckett, maybe?

I'm in the middle of reading a longish story by Stanislaw Lem, "Tale of the Three Storytelling Machines of King Genius," which has a 1001 Arabian Nights structure sort of structure to it which is relevant to the point I'm trying to make as far as the connection between narrative and survival is concerned, but the reason I bring it up is because in the middle of one story within a story within the story, robotic organisms, acting out a revenge fantasy against a sort of robot Marx who died over a hundred years earlier (he suggested they all wire themselves together serially rather than in parallel), derive the algorithm (soul) of robot Marx from his writings and reconstitute him in a new body regularly in order to beat him to death once more.

Well, I don't know. My thoughts have become muddled again. I don't know what I'm anxious about. Henrietta can always pretend she did die, and that would be just as good, I think.