72 ideas
20678 | The Scientific Revolution was the discovery of our own ignorance [Harari] |
Full Idea: The great discovery of the Scientific Revolution was that humans do not know the answers to their most important question. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 14 'Ignoramus') | |
A reaction: I think of that revolution as raising the bar in epistemology, but this idea gives a motivation for doing so. Why the discovery then, and not before? |
20686 | For millenia people didn't know how to convert one type of energy into another [Harari] |
Full Idea: For millenia people didn't know how to convert one type of energy into another, …and the only machine capable of performing energy conversion was the body. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 17 'Intro') | |
A reaction: Hence the huge and revolutionary importance of the steam engine and the electricity generator. |
5728 | The concept of truth was originated by the senses [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: The concept of truth was originated by the senses. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], IV.479) | |
A reaction: This is a refreshing challenge to the modern view of truth, which seems entirely entangled with language. Truth seems a useful concept when discussing the workings of an animal mind. As you get closer to an object, you see it more 'truly'. |
5702 | The senses are much the best way to distinguish true from false [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: What can be a surer guide to the distinction of true from false than our own senses? | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.700) | |
A reaction: This doesn't say they are the only guide, which leaves room for guides such as what is consistent or self-evident or inferred. There is enough here, though, to show that the Epicureans were empiricists in a fairly modern way. |
5729 | If the senses are deceptive, reason, which rests on them, is even worse [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: The structure of your reasoning must be rickety and defective, if the senses on which it rests are themselves deceptive. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], IV.518) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as one of the most basic tenets of empiricism. It denies the existence of 'pure' reason, and instead asserts that it is built out of complex and abstracted sense experience, which makes it ultimately a second-class citizen. |
5697 | The only possible standard for settling doubts is the foundation of the senses [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: If a belief resting directly on the foundation of the senses is not valid, there will be no standard to which we can refer any doubt on obscure questions for rational confirmation. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.422) | |
A reaction: A classic statement of empiricist foundationalism. The Epicureans don't appear to have any time for a priori truths at all. I wonder if they settled mathematical disputes by counting objects and drawing diagrams? |
5727 | Most supposed delusions of the senses are really misinterpretations by the mind [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: Paradoxical experiences (such a dreams and illusions) cannot shake our faith in the senses. Most of the illusion is due to the mental assumptions we ourselves superimpose, so that things not perceived by the senses pass for perceptions. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], IV.462) | |
A reaction: Some misinterpretations of the senses, such as thinking a square tower round, are the result of foolish lack of judgement, but actual delusions within the senses, such as a ringing in the ears, or a pain in a amputated leg, seem like real sense failures. |
5714 | Even simple facts are hard to believe at first hearing [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: No fact is so simple that it is not harder to believe than to doubt at the first presentation. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], II.1022) | |
A reaction: Hence induction is just 'drumming it in' until you come to believe it. There are good evolutionary reasons why we should be like this, because we would otherwise believe all sorts of silly half-perceptions in the gloaming. |
5718 | The mind is in the middle of the breast, because there we experience fear and joy [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: The guiding principle of the whole body is the mind or intellect, which is firmly lodged in the mid-region of the breast. Here is felt fear and alarm, and the caressing pulse of joy. Here, then is the seat of the intellect and mind. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.140) | |
A reaction: Even by this date thinking people were not clear that the mind is in the brain. They paid insufficient attention to head injuries. The emotions are felt to have a location, but intellect and principles are not. |
5717 | The mind is a part of a man, just like a hand or an eye [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: First, I maintain that the mind, which we often call the intellect, the seat of guidance and control of life, is part of a man, no less than hand or foot or eyes are parts of a whole living creature. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.95) | |
A reaction: Presumably Lucretius asserts this because some people were denying it. Sounds like common sense to me. The only reason I can see for anyone denying what he says is if they are desperate to survive death. |
21387 | The separate elements and capacities of a mind cannot be distinguished [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: No single element [of the soul] can be separated, nor can their capacities be divided spatially; they are like the multiple powers of a single body | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.262), quoted by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 2.7 | |
A reaction: It is interesting that this comes from someone with a strongly physicalist view of the mind (though not, if I recall, focusing on the brain). He is still totally impressed by the unified phenomenology of mental experience. He is an empiricist. |
5709 | The actions of the mind are not determinate and passive, because atoms can swerve [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: The fact that the mind itself has no internal necessity to determine its every act and compel it to suffer in helpless passivity - this is due to the slight swerve of the atoms at no determinate time or place. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], II.294) | |
A reaction: No one likes this proposal much, but it is very intriguing. The Epicureans had seen a problem, one which doesn't bother me much. If, nowadays, you are a reductive physicalist who believes in free will, you have a philosophical nightmare ahead of you. |
5695 | Only bodies can touch one another [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: Nothing can touch or be touched except body. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.303) | |
A reaction: This is the key objection to interactionism, and the main reason why the atomists have a thoroughly material view of the mind. It is an induction from a very large number of instances, but the argument is not, of course, conclusive. |
5711 | The earth is and always has been an insentient being [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: The earth is and always has been an insentient being. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], II.658) | |
A reaction: The fact that Epicurus needs to deny this shows that some idea close to panpsychism must still have been around in his time. He is discussing gods at the time, so maybe pantheism was the view being attacked, but that is a subset of panpsychism. |
5712 | Particles may have sensation, but eggs turning into chicks suggests otherwise [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: There is the possibility that particles have senses like those of an animate being as a whole, …but from the fact that we perceive eggs turning into live fledglings, we may infer that sense can be generated from the insentient. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], II.914) | |
A reaction: He gives other arguments for his view. The egg example is not a strong argument, but is precisely our puzzle of how consciousness can emerge from the process of evolution, and natural selection makes dualism look unlikely. |
5719 | The mind moves limbs, wakes the body up, changes facial expressions, which involve touch [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: Mind and spirit are both composed of matter, as we see them propelling limbs, rousing the body from sleep, changing the expression of the face, and guiding the whole man - activities which clearly involves touch, which involves matter. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.164) | |
A reaction: This is the inverse of Descartes' interaction problem, and strikes me as a straightforward common sense truth. However, if you believe in spiritual gods, this gives you a model for the interaction (however mysterious) of matter and spirit. |
5724 | Lions, foxes and deer have distinct characters because their minds share in their bodies [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: Why are lions ferocious, foxes crafty, and deer timid? It can only be because the mind always shares in the specific growth of the body according to its seed and breed. If it were immortal and reincarnated, living things would have jumbled characters. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.743) | |
A reaction: A nice argument which I have not encountered in modern times. Of course, even Descartes admits that the mind is intermingled with the body, but it seems that the essential character of a mind is dictated by the body. |
5713 | You needn't be made of laughing particles to laugh, so why not sensation from senseless seeds? [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: One can laugh without being composed of laughing particles, ..so why cannot the things that we see gifted with sensation be compounded of seeds that are wholly senseless? | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], II.988) | |
A reaction: Lovely argument! You might feel driven to panpsychism in your desperation to explain the 'weirdness' of consciousness, but it would be mad to attribute laughter to basic matter, so comedy has to 'emerge' at some point. |
6611 | One man's meat is another man's poison [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: What is food to one may be literally poison to others. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], IV.638) | |
A reaction: This seems to be the origin of the well-known saying. This is not relativism of perception, but a relativism of how individuals actually respond to the world. It sums up the position with, say, the operas of Wagner. |
5730 | Our bodies weren't created to be used; on the contrary, their creation makes a use possible [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: Nothing in our bodies was born in order that we might be able to use it, but the thing born creates the use. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], IV.834) | |
A reaction: This remark (strongly opposed to Aristotle's view of human function and nature) raises the obvious question of why the body is so very useful for staying alive. Most of its uses are not random. Lucretius would abandon this view if he read Darwin. |
5726 | The dead are no different from those who were never born [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: One who no longer is cannot suffer, or differ in any way from one who has never been born. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.867) | |
A reaction: There is a special kind of pain in being poor if you were once rich, which is not suffered by those who experience only poverty. Lucretius is right, but we are concerned with how we feel now, not with how we won't feel once dead. |
5705 | Nature only wants two things: freedom from pain, and pleasure [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: Nature only clamours for two things, a body free from pain, a mind released from worry and fear for the enjoyment of pleasurable sensation. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], II.21) | |
A reaction: I can't help agreeing with those (like Aristotle) who consider this a very demeaning view of human life. See Idea 99. Bentham agrees with Lucretius (Idea 3777). I think they are largely right, but not entirely. Other motives are possible than sensations. |
20692 | Money does produce happiness, but only up to a point [Harari] |
Full Idea: An interesting conclusion (from questionnaires) is that money does indeed bring happiness. But only up to a point, and beyond that point it has little significance. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 19 'Counting') | |
A reaction: The question is whether that flattening-off point is relative to those around us, or absolute, according to the needs of living. Though these two may not be separate. |
20663 | If a group is bound by gossip, the natural size is 150 people [Harari] |
Full Idea: Sociological research has shown that the maximum 'natural' size of a group bound by gossip is about 150 individuals. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 02 'Legend') | |
A reaction: On the other hand, most of us can learn the names of a group of about 450. Maybe the 'known' group and the 'gossip' group are equally significant. Not much use for a modern state, but of interest to communitarians. |
20677 | Since 1500 human population has increased fourteenfold, and consumption far more [Harari] |
Full Idea: In the year 1500 there were about 500 million Homo sapiens in the world. Today there are 7 billion. …Human population has increased fourteenfold, our production 240-fold, and energy consumption 115-fold. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 14 'Discovery') | |
A reaction: We really need to grasp how extraordinary this is. |
20688 | People 300m tons; domesticated animals 700m tons; larger wild animals 100m tons [Harari] |
Full Idea: The combined mass of homo sapiens is about 300 million tons; the mass of all domesticated farmyard animals is about 700 million tons; the mass of the surviving larger wild animals (from porcupines up) is less than 100 million tons. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 18 'Permanent') | |
A reaction: These really are figures that deserve much wider currency. Every school entrance hall needs a board with a few of the basic dramatic statistics about human life on Earth. |
20674 | The Nazi aim was to encourage progressive evolution, and avoid degeneration [Harari] |
Full Idea: The main ambition of the Nazis was to protect humankind from degeneration and encourage its progressive evolution. …Given the state of scientific knowledge in 1933, Nazi beliefs were hardly outside the pale. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'Worship') | |
A reaction: It still sounds a fairly worthy ambition, close to the heart of educationalists everywhere. The problems start with the definition of 'degeneration' and 'progress'. |
20679 | We stabilise societies with dogmas, either of dubious science, or of non-scientific values [Harari] |
Full Idea: Modern attempts to stabilise the sociopolitical order either declare a scientific theory (such as racial theories for Nazis, or economic ones for Communists) to be an absolute truths, or declare non-scientific dogmas (such as liberal values) | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 14 'Ignoramus') | |
A reaction: [compressed] |
20690 | The state fostered individualism, to break the power of family and community [Harari] |
Full Idea: States and markets use their growing power to weaken the bonds of family and community. They made an offer that couldn't be refused - 'become individuals' (over marriage, jobs and residence). The 'romantic individual' is not a rebel against the state. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 18 'Collapse') | |
A reaction: [compressed] See the film 'Breaking the Waves'. An interesting slant on the Romantic movement. See Wordsworth's 'Michael'. Capitalism needs shoppers with their own money, and a mobile workforce. |
20689 | In 1750 losing your family and community meant death [Harari] |
Full Idea: A person who lost her family and community around 1750 was as good as dead. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 18 'Collapse') | |
A reaction: This is a very good advert for liberal individualism, and marks the downside of 'too much community'. |
20682 | The main rule of capitalism is that all other goods depend on economic growth [Harari] |
Full Idea: The principle tenet of capitalism is that economic growth is the supreme good, or at least a proxy for it, because justice, freedom, and even happiness all depend on economic growth. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 16 'Growing') | |
A reaction: In this respect, the main opponent of captitalism is green politics, rather than marxism. |
20681 | The sacred command of capitalism is that profits must be used to increase production [Harari] |
Full Idea: In the new capitalist creed, the first and most sacred commandment is: The profits of production must be reinvested in increasing production. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 16 'Growing') | |
A reaction: In this sense, capitalism is less greedy than its predecessors. 17th century aristocratic monopolists simply spent the profits of their activities. See the gorgeous clothes then (and pyramids and palaces), and the quiet suits of capitalists. |
20683 | The progress of capitalism depends entirely on the new discoveries and gadgets of science [Harari] |
Full Idea: The history of capitalism is unintelligible without taking science into account. …The human economy has managed to keep on going only thanks to the fact that scientists come up with a new discovery or gadget every few years. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 16 'Growing') | |
A reaction: For example, the desperate but unconvincing attempts to persuade us of the novelty of new models of car. Built-in obsolescence is needed once a design becomes static. |
20687 | In capitalism the rich invest, and the rest of us go shopping [Harari] |
Full Idea: The supreme commandment of the rich is 'invest!', and the supreme commandment of the rest of us is 'buy!' | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 17 'Age') | |
A reaction: Hence not only do the rich get much richer, while most of us remain roughly where we were, but there is a huge gulf between the investors and the non-investors. Encouraging small investors is a step forward. |
20685 | No market is free of political bias, and markets need protection of their freedoms [Harari] |
Full Idea: There is no such thing as a market free of all political bias, …and markets by themselves offer no protection against fraud, theft and violence. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 16 'Cult') | |
A reaction: Is this in theory, or in practice? In Sicily the free market has been a tool of the mafia. |
20693 | Freedom may work against us, as individuals can choose to leave, and make fewer commitments [Harari] |
Full Idea: The freedom we value so highly may work against us. We can choose our spouses, friends and neighbours, but they can choose to leave us. With the individual wielding unprecedented power to decide her own path, we find it ever harder to make commitments. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 19 'Counting') | |
A reaction: This is the worry of the communitarian. I take freedom to be a great social virtue - but an overrated one. |
20691 | Real peace is the implausibility of war (and not just its absence) [Harari] |
Full Idea: Real peace is not the mere absence of war. Real peace is the implausibility of war. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 18 'Pax') | |
A reaction: I have a nasty feeling that war only becomes implausible because it hasn't happened for a long time. War looked implausible for Britain in 1890. War certainly now looks implausible in western Europe. |
20684 | Financing is increasingly through credit rather than taxes; people prefer investing to taxation [Harari] |
Full Idea: The European conquest of the world was increasingly financed through credit rather than taxes. …Nobody wants to pay taxes, but everyone is happy to invest. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 16 'Columbus') | |
A reaction: This is presumably the mechanism that drives the unstoppable increase of the gulf between the rich and the poor in modern times. With investment, the rich get richer. |
20675 | The more you know about history, the harder it becomes to explain [Harari] |
Full Idea: A distinguishing mark of history is that the better you know a historical period, the harder it becomes to explain why things happened one way and not another. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 13 'Hindsight') | |
A reaction: Presumaby that means it resembles statistics. Each individual reading is perplexing, but some patterns emerge on the large scale. |
20676 | History teaches us that the present was not inevitable, and shows us the possibilities [Harari] |
Full Idea: We study history not to know the future but to widen our horizons, to understand that our present situation is neither natural nor inevitable, and the we consequently have many more possibilities before us than we can imagine. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 13 'Hindsight') | |
A reaction: On the whole winners forget history, and losers are branded through and through with it. If you don't know history, you can never understand the latter group. |
5716 | Nature runs the universe by herself without the aid of gods [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: Nature is free and uncontrolled by proud masters and runs the universe by herself without the aid of gods. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], II.1094) | |
A reaction: A nice remark. This apparent personification of nature implies the application of laws to an essentially passive reality. See Idea 5442 and Nature|Laws of Nature|Essentialism for a different view. |
5704 | There can be no centre in infinity [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: There can be no centre in infinity. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.1069) | |
A reaction: This is highly significant, because if we can establish that the universe is infinite (as Epicurus believes), it follows that the human race cannot be at the centre of it, as the Ptolemaic/medieval view proposed. |
5703 | The universe must be limitless, since there could be nothing outside to limit it [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: The universe is not bounded in any direction. If it were, it would necessarily have a limit somewhere, but a thing cannot have a limit unless there is something outside to limit it. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.959) | |
A reaction: This is a subtler argument than the mere enquiry about why you would have to stop at the end of the universe. It still seems a nice argument, though Einstein's curvature of space seems to have thwarted it. |
5693 | Everything is created and fed by nature from atoms, and they return to atoms in death [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: The ultimate realities of heaven and the gods are the atoms, from which nature creates all things and increases and feeds them, and into which, when they perish, nature again resolves them. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.46) | |
A reaction: Sounds right to me. Nothing in modern particle theory and string theory has refuted this claim. But what makes the atoms move, and what makes them combine in an orderly way? Is the orderliness of atoms made of atoms? Essences? |
5701 | If an object is infinitely subdivisible, it will be the same as the whole universe [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: If there are no atoms, the smallest bodies will have infinite parts, since they can be endlessly halved. ..But then there will be no difference between the smallest thing and the whole universe, as they will equally have infinite parts. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.620) | |
A reaction: Another argument which remains effective even now. There must surely (intuitively) be more divisions possible in a large object than in a small one? Unless of course there were many different sizes of infinity…. See Cantor. |
5708 | In downward motion, atoms occasionally swerve slightly for no reason [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: When atoms are travelling straight down through empty space by their own weight, at quite indeterminate times and places they swerve ever so little from their course. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], II.217) | |
A reaction: Never a popular theory because it seems to breach the Principle of Sufficient Reason (Ideas 306 + 3646). This seems to be the beginning of a strong need for the concept of free will, and an underlying explanation. Most thinkers put mind outside nature. |
17004 | Nothing can break the binding laws of eternity [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: Nothing has power to break the binding laws of eternity. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], 5.56) | |
A reaction: This seems to be virtually the only remark from the ancient world suggesting that there are 'laws' of nature, so I'm guessing it is a transient metaphor, not a theory about nature. 'Even the gods must bow to necessity'. |
5706 | Atoms move themselves [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: Atoms move themselves. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], II.133) | |
A reaction: Something has to move itself, I suppose, but then that could be psuché, giving us free will (see Idea 1424). Why does Epicurus need the 'swerve' if atoms are self-movers? See Idea 5708. |
5696 | If there were no space there could be no movement, or even creation [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: We see movement everywhere, but if there were no empty space, things would be denied the power of movement - or rather, they could not possibly have come into existence, embedded as they would have been in motionless matter. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.342) | |
A reaction: This still seems a good argument, if reality is made of particles. People can move in a crowd until it becomes too dense. |
5700 | It is quicker to break things up than to assemble them [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: Anything can be more speedily disintegrated than put together again. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.558) | |
A reaction: Clearly the concept of entropy was around long before anyone tried to give a systematic or mathematical account of it. |
5698 | We can only sense time by means of movement, or its absence [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: It must not be claimed that anyone can sense time by itself apart from the movement of things or their restful immobility. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.465) | |
A reaction: This seems a remarkably Einsteinian remark, though he is only talking of the epistemology of the matter, not the ontology. We are not far from the concept of space-time here. |
5715 | This earth is very unlikely to be the only one created [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: It is in the highest degree unlikely that this earth and sky is the only one to have been created. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], II.1057) | |
A reaction: I can only admire the science fiction imagination of this, which roughly agrees with the assessment of modern cosmologists. We think imagination was cramped in the ancient world, and now wanders free - but that is not so. |
5694 | Nothing can be created by divine power out of nothing [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: In studying the workings of nature, our starting-point will be this principle: nothing can ever be created by divine power out of nothing. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.152) | |
A reaction: This claim seems to cry out for a bit of empiricist caution. What observation has convinced Lucretius that creation out of nothing is impossible? The early Christians switched to the view that divine creation is 'ex nihilo' - out of nothing. |
5699 | If matter wasn't everlasting, everything would have disappeared by now [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: If the matter in things had not been everlasting, everything by now would have gone back to nothing, and the things we see would be the product of rebirth out of nothing. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], I.544) | |
A reaction: See Idea 1431, which is Aquinas's Third Way of proving God. Aquinas thinks there must be a necessary being outside of the system, but Lucretius thinks there must be some necessary existence within the system (as Hume had suggested). |
5707 | The universe can't have been created by gods, because it is too imperfect [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: The universe was certainly not created for us by divine power: it is so full of imperfections. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], II.180) | |
A reaction: This is certainly a problem if God is 'supremely perfect', as Descartes proposed, because then the universe would also have to be supremely perfect. See Idea 2114 for a possible answer from Leibniz. Hume agrees with Epicurus about design. |
20671 | In order to explain both order and evil, a single evil creator is best, but no one favours that [Harari] |
Full Idea: Monotheism explains order but not evil, and dualist religion explains evil but not order. One logical solution is a single omnipotent God who created the universe, and is evil - but nobody in history has had much stomach for that belief. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'Battle') | |
A reaction: Eh? Is there not also good, which also needs explaining? And there is some chaos to be explained too. Hume offers the best explanations. An inexperienced god, a team of squabbling gods, a god with shifting moods…. Study the facts first. |
5710 | Gods are tranquil and aloof, and have no need of or interest in us [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: The nature of deity is to enjoy immortal existence in utter tranquillity, aloof and detached from our affairs. It is free from all pain and peril, strong in its own resources, exempt from any need of us, indifferent to our merits and immune from anger. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], II.652) | |
A reaction: This seems to be the seed of late seventeenth century deism - the idea of a Creator who is now absent, and ignores our prayers. At that time 'Epicurean' became a synonym for atheist, but Epicureans never quite reached that point. |
5731 | Why does Jupiter never hurl lightning from a blue sky? [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: Why does Jupiter never hurl his thunderbolt upon the earth and let loose his thunder out of a sky that is wholly blue? | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], VI.400) | |
A reaction: Nice question! It really doesn't take very much to see through superstition, and the fact that most people believed such things shows how staggeringly uncritical they were in their thinking, until philosophers appeared and taught them how to reason. |
20664 | Animism is belief that every part of nature is aware and feeling, and can communicate [Harari] |
Full Idea: Animism is the belief that almost every place, every animal, every plant and every natural phenomenon has awareness and feelings, and can communicated direct with humans. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 03 'Talking') | |
A reaction: So does this count as a 'supernatural' belief system? It seems not, if the awareness is integral to the natural feature, and dies with it. Panpsychism is not supernatural either. A problem for anyone trying to define Naturalism. |
20666 | Most polytheist recognise one supreme power or law, behind the various gods [Harari] |
Full Idea: Polytheism does not necessarily dispute the existence of a single power or law governing the entire universe. Most poytheist and even animist religions recognised such a supreme power that stands behind all the different gods, demons and holy rocks. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'Benefits') | |
A reaction: Presumably this one supreme power was always taken to be too remote for communication or worship. Are the other gods seen as slaves, or friends, or ambassadors of the Supreme One? |
20667 | Polytheism is open-minded, and rarely persecutes opponents [Harari] |
Full Idea: Polytheism is inherently open-minded, and rarely persecutes 'heretics' and 'infidels'. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'Benefits') | |
A reaction: The Old Testament tells of the Jews turning on local pagans, and India was presumably tolerant Hindus encountering less tolerant Muslims. Then there's Christians in Africa. Dreadful bunch, the monotheists. Romans killed very few Christians. |
20665 | Mythologies are usual contracts with the gods, exchanging devotion for control of nature [Harari] |
Full Idea: Much of ancient mythology is a legal contract in which humans promise everlasting devotion to the gods in exchange for mastery over plants and animals. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'Silencing') | |
A reaction: [He cites the first book of Genesis] So how readily do you swith allegiance, if someone else's gods are more successful? Why be loyal a loser. It should be like shopping - but I bet it wasn't. |
20669 | Dualist religions see everything as a battleground of good and evil forces [Harari] |
Full Idea: Polytheism gave birth to monotheism, and to dualistic religions. Dualism explains that the entire universe is a battleground between good and evil forces, and everything that happens is part of that struggle. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'Battle') | |
A reaction: Presumably we are supposed to support the good guys, so the gods are not equals. God v Satan seems the right model, but Satan has to be beyond God's control, or else the problem of evil has to be solved. Empedocles held something like this. |
20670 | Dualist religions say the cosmos is a battleground, so can’t explain its order [Harari] |
Full Idea: Dualist religions solve the problem of evil, but are unnerved by the Problem of Order. …If Good and Evil battle for control of the world, who enforces the laws governing this cosmic war? | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'Battle') | |
A reaction: You might explain it if one side was persistently winning, which is roughly God v Satan. |
20673 | Manichaeans and Gnostics: good made spirit, evil made flesh [Harari] |
Full Idea: Manichaeans and Gnostics argued that the good god created the spirit and the soul, whereas matter and bodes are the creation of the evil god. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'Battle') | |
A reaction: Hm. What motivated the evil god to do that? The evil god's achievement looks a lot more impressive. |
20668 | Monotheism appeared in Egypt in 1350 BCE, when the god Aten was declared supreme [Harari] |
Full Idea: The first monotheist religion known to us appeared in Egypt c.1350 BCE, when Pharaoh Akenaten declared that one of minor deities of the Egyptian pantheon, the god Aten, was in fact the supreme power ruling the universe. | |
From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'God') | |
A reaction: Zeus seems to have started like a tribal chief, and eventually turned into something like God. |
1513 | The Egyptians were the first to say the soul is immortal and reincarnated [Herodotus] |
Full Idea: The Egyptians were the first to claim that the soul of a human being is immortal, and that each time the body dies the soul enters another creature just as it is being born. | |
From: Herodotus (The Histories [c.435 BCE], 2.123.2) |
5720 | Spirit is mortal [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: Spirit is mortal. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.542) | |
A reaction: This is asserted at an historical moment when immortality is beginning to grip everyone's imagination. |
5722 | For a separated spirit to remain sentient it would need sense organs attached to it [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: If spirit is immortal and can remain sentient when divorced from our body, we must credit it with possession of five senses; but eyes or nostrils or hand or tongue or ears cannot be attached to a disembodied spirit. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.624) | |
A reaction: This is a powerful argument against immortality. If you are going to see, you must interact with photons; to hear you must respond to compression waves; to smell you must react to certain molecules. Immortality without those would be a bit dull. |
5725 | An immortal mind couldn't work harmoniously with a mortal body [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: It is crazy to couple a mortal object with an eternal and suppose that they can work in harmony and mutually interact. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.799) | |
A reaction: An interesting thought, though not a terrible persuasive argument. A god would indeed be a bit restless if it were chained to a human being, but it would presumably knuckle down to the task if firmly instructed to do it by Zeus. |
5721 | The mind is very small smooth particles, which evaporate at death [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: Since the substance of the mind is extraordinarily mobile, it must consist of particles exceptionally small and smooth and round, ..so that, when the spirit has escaped from the body, the outside of the limbs appears intact and there is no loss of weight. | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.201) | |
A reaction: Lucretius is wonderfully attentive to interesting evidence. He goes on to compare it to the evaporation of perfume. The fine-grained connections of the brain are not far off what he is proposing. |
5723 | If spirit is immortal and enters us at birth, why don't we remember a previous existence? [Lucretius] |
Full Idea: If the spirit is by nature immortal and is slipped into the body at birth, why do we retain no memory of an earlier existence, no impress of antecedent events? | |
From: Lucretius (On the Nature of the Universe [c.60 BCE], III.670) | |
A reaction: Plato took the view that we do recall previous existence, as seen in our innate ideas. This problem forced the Christian church into the uncomfortable claim that God creates the soul at conception, but that it then goes on to immortality. |