On the Nature of Things

It has always facinated me how we as humams come to a point in our lives, if we are lucky, where it occurs to us NEW thoughts, new realizations, brand new ways to see and experience our lifes. How is it that we think the way we think and not another way? Why does it occur to others, the great thinkers, that they can change the way they think and completely change the life experience?This is one of this original thinkers book. Can you change your life experience? Sure, you can!Good luck!!!!

"On the Nature of Things" by Lucretius. A translation by Frank Copley of the famous Latin poem, written by Lucretius, who lived circa 95-50 B.C., setting forth the atomistic philosophy of Epicureus 340-270 B.C. The poem was lost with the collapse of the Roman empire and only came to light again in 1417 when a copy of a copy of a copy...was found in a German monastery by a discharged papal secretary--see "The Swerve".Astoundingly, much of this poem is consistent with scientific models today---invisible and minute atoms forever moving in a void under internal and external forces, joining together in various ways to form the visible objects of the world. The atoms themselves were eternal but the bodies came to an end and the atoms recycled into other bodies so that the mass of the world remains constant. He got it wrong about the speed of " heat atoms" being faster than the speed of "light atoms", but by and large this is the atomic theory of Maxwell and Boltzmann and later physicists, without the math of course.While not denying the existence of gods of various sorts,Lucretias' view was that the universe goes on without their aid or attention. The world as we know it was brought into being and maintained by natural forces and follows natural laws, not in any degree by divine intervention. Since the world is a conglomerate of atoms and void, it is impermanent and must someday inevitably be destroyed, including the soul upon death. Seeing things thusly, there is no room for the afterlife, no need for gods major or minor, no reason to despair of death, and certainly no reason to forgo the pleasures of this world for a reward in the afterlife. What we see in this life is all there is and we should enjoy it. Small wonder that this view was not welcomed by the Church of Rome upon discovery of the poem.Although he was basically right on the atoms, Lucretias' labored and today laughable explanations of the causes of physical phenomena in terms of the different properties of "smooth" or " rough" atoms, of differences in "heat" and "light" atoms, the flows of air, etc. only serve to illustrate the fallacies of pure reason without an anchor to empirical observation. Ironically, his Epicurean view of the things that could be seen was altogether wrong--earth, water, air and ether being the basic components of which everything was constituted, the motion of heavenly bodies on circular currents of ether, the size of the sun, moon and stars being as they seemed (totally lacking the concept of perspective that a little knowledge of the available mathematics would have given). It clearly never occurred to the thinkers of his age to check any of these postulated causes by comparison with experiment. However, the speculation on biological evolution through many failures is not far from the modern theory.

I'm not going to write a book review here, just read it and understand that people have had great thoughts and understanding since well before any of us were born; thousands of years before for that matter. I identify with what he wrote and so am probably quite biased at the philosophy here as it is like looking in a mirror; just weird that I never got around to reading this book before. Tough poem, wish I knew Latin...

A fascinating book about the views of a philosopher who was ahead of his time and was unjustly criticized by the religious mainstream, first the Romans and later the Christians. Now his name is abused by using it to describe fancy foods.

This is a fascinating and at times spellbinding philosophical poem from one of the great minds of ancient Rome. Though we can point to modern science to explain how he doesn't get everything right about how nature works, it is still astonishing to read how much he gets right.

Wonderful rendering of a true classic treasure. My complaint: the type, or font, is too damn small making it difficult to read and appreciate.

Loving this book. It was recommended by my daughter’s doctor. I’m not sure why, except he just knew I would enjoy it.

a mighty shame it was not fully recovered, though. guess we're lucky to have it at all. stole the thunder from darwin, einstein, kinsey and countless many.

To read it