by Tim O'Keefe
Our cosmos is spherical, as we can see by looking at the dome of the sky, although cosmoi come in various shapes (scholion to Ep. Hdt. 74). The earth rests on a cushion of air beneath it (scholion to Ep. Hdt. 73, DRN V 534–63). This doctrine raises troubling questions, such as why this portion of air did not get forced upwards in the settling process, and what (if anything) this cushion of air itself rests on. The Epicureans also believe, strangely, that the sun, moon and other celestial bodies are “just as big as they appear to be”, unlike most other bodies, which appear smaller than they are as they get further away (DRN V 564–73, Ep. Pyth. 91). The upshot of this is that these bodies are much smaller than most cosmologists believe they are, although what it means for a body to be just as big as it appears to be, apart from any estimate of how far away it is, is unclear.
In any case, the cosmos, like every finite compound body, has come into existence and will eventually fall apart (Ep. Hdt. 73, DRN V 351–63). But the universe as a whole has no beginning and no end, being simply the totality of atoms moving in the void. As we have seen before (Ch. 2, § “The existence of atoms and void”), the Epicureans accept Parmenides’ contention that nothing comes into being from nothing, and so the universe as a whole must always have existed. Likewise, nothing perishes into nothing; instead, compound bodies are resolved into their constituent atoms.
Furthermore, the universe is unlimited spatially. Epicurus says that what is limited has an extreme, an edge. For example, my car is spatially limited, and it has an outer boundary. But an extreme is seen in contrast with something else; that is, there is the edge, and then there is what is beyond the edge. But if that is right, the totality cannot have an edge, since there would then, absurdly, be something in addition to “the all”. Hence, the totality of things has no limit (Ep. Hdt. 41; see also Simpl. in Phys. 203b15 [IG I-90] and DRN I 958–67).
Lucretius gives a further argument in support of a spatially unlimited universe (DRN I 968–83). (It was originally developed by Archytas of Tarentum, active around Plato’s lifetime.) Suppose, for the sake of argument, that there is an “edge” to space. Then I could run to that edge and throw a spear. Either the spear will fly past the point at which I launch it, or it will not. If it does, then the supposed “edge” was not really the edge. But if it does not, then something was there to stop the spear from flying onwards, and the supposed “edge” was not really the edge (as the barrier stopping the spear was beyond it). So there cannot be any edge to the universe.
This argument presupposes a Euclidean geometry. It would be grossly unfair to fault the Epicureans on this assumption, as non-Euclidean geometries were not developed until the nineteenth century. Still, it is worth pointing out. On a three-dimensional elliptic geometry, it is possible for a trajectory to continue indefinitely without reaching an edge, even though space is limited. The easiest way to visualize this is to think of the analogous geometry of the surface of a sphere, which is a two-dimensional non-Euclidean geometry. The area of a sphere’s surface is limited, even though it has no edge, and you could continue travelling indefinitely along the surface of the sphere (eventually arriving back where you started, if your path is a great circle).
If we leave aside this anachronistic objection, Lucretius’ argument seems strong. Lucretius points out that the supposed “edge” of the universe would have to be bounded by empty space, that is, void, which is something, although not a “thing”. Nonetheless, if he were to hear Lucretius’ argument Aristotle would deny this point. Aristotle believes in a unique, spherical, spatially limited cosmos, with the earth at the centre and the stars rotating around the centre of the cosmos in the outermost heavenly sphere.2 He would say that, beyond the edge of the cosmos, there is literally nothing at all, not even empty space.
That is because, for Aristotle, the fundamental “location” concept is not space, but place. Aristotle defines the place of some body as “the innermost motionless boundary of what contains it” (Ph. IV 4 212a21). If I am sitting in a boat, then the boat would be my “place” in a rough and ready sense, but, strictly speaking, my place is the boundary at the surface of my body, so that nothing is between me and my place. So place exists, but it depends for its existence on the existence of body, because place is just the motionless boundary of some body, which gives it its location. (Place is the motionless boundary of a body because moving bodies change their place, while they carry their surfaces with them, and one body can occupy the place previously occupied by another body.) So the idea of there being “place” that is not the place of some thing would be rejected by Aristotle; as he puts it, every place has a body in it (Ph. IV 1 209a26). Saying that there is a place with no body would be like saying that there is a stretch of time in which no change whatsoever occurred.
If space is infinite, as the Epicureans argue, then there must be an infinite number of atoms and an infinite amount of void. If the number of atoms were limited, they would scatter through the void and not form the bodies as we see them (the effective “density” of atoms would be zero), and if the amount of void were limited (and the effective density of atoms 1), there would not be enough void to allow atoms to move (Ep. Hdt. 41–2). And with an infinite number of atoms moving through a limitless void during an infinite stretch of time, there will be an infinite number of cosmoi (Ep. Hdt. 45). Lucretius adds that there must be life on some of these other worlds, including intelligent life (DRN II 1048–1104).
The purposeless universe
The cosmos formed simply because of a sorting process of “like to like” when a large number of atoms are congregated together. The Epicureans think that being able to give a non-purposive explanation of the formation of the cosmos in this way excludes intentional explanations. As Lucretius puts it, the atoms did not get together and make any agreement with one another about how to form the cosmos; individual atoms are not the sorts of things that can think. Instead, they fortuitously happened to form it because of “blind” factors such as their weight and shape. And this exclusion of purpose applies also to meteorological phenomena within the cosmos, such as eclipses, lightning bolts and earthquakes (Ep. Hdt. 76).
Let us suppose that a lightning bolt strikes the hillside above my sister, and a large tree falls down and crushes her to death. I might wail, “Why? Why did she die?” The Epicureans would reply that some clouds above my sister collided and struck out numerous seeds of fire, analogous to the way in which two stones or a stone and a chunk of iron strike one another and make sparks (DRN VI 160–218). This bolt of fire was strong enough to make a tree fall, and the force of the tree falling on her was enough to crush her, with the resulting shock and loss of blood causing her death. So that is why my sister died. I might not be satisfied with this sort of answer. But the Epicureans would reply that there was no further “reason why” my sister died of the sort I am looking for: no purpose or plan behind the death. It was not punishment for her (or my) sins; it was not meant to teach me a lesson about the transience of life, or anything else like that.
The Epicureans wish to exclude divine agency from the workings of the natural universe. They have an eminently practical reason to do so: a belief in meddling gods is one of the main causes of fear and misery in human life, so to achieve happiness we need to eliminate it. In the opening to book one of De Rerum Natura, Lucretius offers a blistering indictment of the evil of superstition and the need for correct philosophy to overcome this evil. Human life was grovelling in the dust, crushed beneath the weight of superstition, until Epicurus discovered the truth about what could be and what could not, and with this knowledge cast down and trampled superstition underfoot and raised us to the heavens in victory (DRN I 62–79). Lucretius concludes a long and heartrending description of Agamemnon sacrificing his own daughter in order to appease the gods and gain good winds for sailing off to the Trojan War (DRN I 80–101) with the famous line “Such evil deeds can superstition prompt!” (tantum religio potuit suadere malorum).
The opponents of the Epicur
eans – those who wish to attribute natural phenomena to divine agency – can be divided into three camps, camps that may overlap. The first camp contains those who think that heavenly bodies or the cosmos as a whole are living beings. Plato, for example, says that the cosmos is an animal with a soul (71 30b), and the Stoics say god is an immortal animal identical with the world (Plut. St. Rep. 1052c–d, LS 46E). And viewing the celestial bodies as divine is widespread in Greek popular religion. The Epicureans have a simple argument against such immanent cosmic deities. Just as fish cannot live in fields, or sap cannot grow in stones, minds cannot exist within any and all sorts of bodies. Minds exist in living creatures; as we shall see, the Epicureans think that they exist in the chests of creatures. But in any case, clods of earth, balls of fire and seas of water cannot have minds, because they are not even alive (DRN V 110–45).
The second camp contains those who view the cosmos as an artefact, created by a beneficent god. Famously, the Epicureans raise the problem of evil in order to argue against this position. Nowadays, the so-called “logical problem of evil” is often formulated as an alleged inconsistency between the existence of evil, for example the Holocaust, natural disasters and birth defects such as anencephaly, and of an omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing) and omni-benevolent (all-good) God. That sort of god is central to orthodox Judaeo-Christian theology, where God is thought to be “that than which no greater can be conceived”, in Anselm’s formulation, and thus as possessing all perfections such as power, knowledge and goodness to the greatest degree possible. The early Christian writer Lactantius, in reporting the Epicurean argument, focuses on God’s power and goodness (Lactant. De Ira Dei 13.20–22, IG I-109). According to Lactantius, the Epicureans say there are four possibilities. Either God (i) wishes to eliminate evil but cannot, or (ii) can eliminate evil but does not wish it, or (iii) neither can nor wishes to prevent evil, or (iv) both can and wishes to prevent evil. But on (i) God is weak, on (ii) God is spiteful and on (iii) God is both weak and spiteful. So the only option left that is fitting for God is (iv), but this is inconsistent with the existence of evil, since, if God both wishes to and can eliminate evil, there would be no evil.
But we should be cautious about reading this precise problem back on to the Epicureans. For one thing, as we shall see later (in Chapter 16), the Epicureans wish to assert that the gods live perfect lives but have no concern for us at all. So they would probably reject Lactantius’ suggestion that gods who do not wish to eliminate evil are spiteful and thus flawed. More importantly, the Epicureans’ opponents do not believe in the omni-X god of Anselmian theology. In Plato’s Timaeus, the Craftsman is wise and extremely powerful and, being free of jealousy, he generously does his best to fashion an orderly cosmos. But he does not create the world ex nihilo; instead, he imposes form and order on a disordered mass of pre-existing stuff, and this recalcitrant matter limits how well he can do his job. Likewise, the Stoics are happy to portray god both as an animal identical to the cosmos, and as a craftsman who creates the cosmos for our benefit (e.g. Cic. Nat D. II 133, LS 54N). But god is still limited by the matter he uses: for example, the relative thinness and fragility of the skull is a foreseen but unintended concomitant of god’s beneficent plan, as he could not make the skull any thicker without compromising our rationality (Gellius 7.1.1–13, LS 54Q).
And the main Epicurean report we have of the problem of evil, in Lucretius, does not mention omnipotence. Instead, he simply asserts that the world was not created by the gods for our benefit, because it is far too flawed (DRN V 195–9). He then goes on to catalogue the imperfections of the world, all of which are examples of “natural” and not “moral” evil: evils that are not the result of human choice but of the other workings of nature. For example, Lucretius notes that much of the world is inhospitable to human life, that it is difficult to raise the food we need to survive, and that drought, tornadoes or other natural disasters often destroy the crops we do raise. He then throws wild animals that devour us and terrible diseases into the unsavoury mix. Lucretius concludes his litany of troubles by remarking that newborn infants are right to cry out woefully when they first enter the world, considering the sorrows awaiting them (DRN V 200–227). So the Epicureans’ argument has a wider target than the logical problem of evil, but they seem confident that the world is messed up enough that the argument can still succeed.
The final camp of opponents contains those who believe in the gods of the traditional Greek and Roman pantheons. The existence of these gods seems unaffected by the problem of evil, because they are not beneficent. After all, Zeus is portrayed as doing things like changing himself into a swan and raping an innocent woman. And the existence of such gods would seem far more troubling to our tranquillity than the existence of the beneficent Platonic or Stoic gods. The Epicureans have two strategies for disposing of these deities.
The first is to appeal to the idea of what it is to be a god. The Epicureans claim that our natural preconception of a god (see Ch. 10, § “Preconceptions”) is of a perfectly blessed being, and perfect blessedness is inconsistent with jealousy and anger (KD 1). So there cannot be jealous and angry gods. This may seem to be a dubious victory by definition: even if he accepts the conclusion, the believer in the traditional pantheon could simply wave it away as a linguistic quibble and say that he still believes in the existence of Zeus, Hera and all of the others. But now he will concede that they are not “gods”, but “googes”: non-blessed stooges who otherwise are like gods. Still, this line of argument might have some bite, in so far as there are tensions within popular Greek religion: Zeus is portrayed both as raping women and as the lord of justice; Athena both as squabbling over a golden apple and as the exemplar of wisdom; and the like. So a traditional believer committed to the idea that the gods are admirable may be unwilling to make the reply that Zeus and Athena are merely “googes”.
The second strategy is shown briefly in Lucretius’ description of the thunderbolt. After giving a detailed non-teleological account of the nature of the thunderbolt (DRN VI 219–378), Lucretius specifically tries to debunk the idea that thunderbolts are the weapons of Jupiter (the Latin name for Zeus). Lucretius’ basic point is that the distribution of thunderbolts seems not to fit into any sort of divine plan at all (good or bad), but they fall here and there for no purpose. He notes that thunderbolts fall on deserts and the sea, which would seem to be a total waste of time, although he adds sarcastically that maybe throwing them about in this way helps Jupiter get some exercise and build up his muscles. Furthermore, they hit the innocent and guilty alike (so they do not serve the purposes of Jupiter as upholder of justice), and in fact they sometimes fall on Jupiter’s own shrines and statues, and those of other gods (DRN VI 379–422). So we have excellent reason, especially once we have a satisfying atomic and naturalistic account of the phenomenon, to reject the notion that thunderbolts occur as the result of the will of the gods.
SIX
Biology and language
As we have seen, the Epicureans try to exclude the gods from the creation and administration of the world. But to complete the job, the Epicureans need to give a non-teleological account for the formation not only of the heavenly bodies and of phenomena like thunderbolts, but also of organisms. And this is a difficult task. It is one thing to say that the thunderbolt is merely the squeezing out of seeds of fire from the collisions of clouds, and that the distribution of thunderbolts over the seas, mountains and deserts shows no pattern or purpose, quite another to say that the eye and heart exhibit no purpose. In ancient times, the apparent craftsman-like skill exhibited in the cunning organization of our bodily parts was often taken as one of the primary pieces of evidence for the existence of a wise craftsman god, and this sort of argument has persisted through William Paley and current proponents of intelligent design.
In response to this challenge, the Epicureans propose that the organisms around today are the result of a long process of natural selection, and so we can acc
ount for organisms’ well-adaptedness for survival and reproduction without appealing to any sort of purpose. This explanation has been rightly compared to Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection. However, it is important not to overstate the similarity, as the Epicurean theory appeals to natural selection but without the evolution of species.
Another phenomenon sometimes attributed to the gods that the Epicureans wish to give a non-teleological explanation for is language. They offer an innovative account on which the meanings of words are not entirely a matter of contrivance. Instead, language is the product of the instincts of animals – human and non-human – to give forth various sorts of utterances in response to impressions.
Artefacts and organs
Artefacts such as knives and houses are functional items: that is, they have a job to do, such as cutting things or providing shelter. Other facts about these artefacts can largely be explained by appealing to the artefacts’ functions. For instance, it is not a coincidence that some particular knife is made of steel instead of marshmallow, and that it has the shape it does (with a portion suitable for use as a handle and another with a sharp edge) rather than the shape of a chopstick; marshmallow material composition and chopstick shape would be unsuitable for cutting things. In the case of more complex artefacts such as houses, we can specify sub-parts of the house as having sub-functions of their own that allow the house as a whole to function well. Plumbing is not just a series of tubes: it has the job of transporting water around the house for the benefit of its inhabitants, which (in part) is why plumbing is made of metal or plastic rather than cardboard.
