Table Of ContentBooks by Alban D. Winspear
Augustus and Roman Reconstruction
( with Leonard Geweke)
Who Was Socrates?
(with Tom Silverberg)
The Genesis of Plato's Thought
The Roman Poet of Science
ALBAN D. WINSPEAR
LUCRETIUS
AND
SCIENTIFIC
THOUGHT
[I[]
AN EMULATION BOOK HARVEST HOUSE, MONTREAL
First Edition May 1963
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 63-17242
Copyright ~ Canada 1963 by Harvest House Ltd.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book
or parts thereof in any form.
Printed by The Runge Press Ltd., Ottawa
CONTENTS
Preface
The Originality of Lucretius
II Lucretius, The Legend 16
III The Times of Lucretius 22
IV The Fight Against Roman Religion 30
V The Debt to Epicurus 52
VI How Men Should Live 64
VII The World Outlook of Lucretius
I. Physical Theory and its History: 80
Scientific Method
2. The Theory of Natural Evolution 117
3. The Growth of Human Institutions 128
Suggestions for Further Reading 146
Notes on Thinkers Mentioned in this Book 147
Index ISi
In this volume footnote references which occur frequently are not
repeated in full. The first time such a reference appears it is treated thus:
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura (D.R.N.), ed. Smith and Leonard, Wis
consin 1942.
Thereafter, it is cited simply as
D.R.N. followed by the identifying chapter and page number.
PREFACE
It is my conviction that Lucretius as a thinker has been too
much neglected. The reason for this I have, I think, sufficiently
analyzed in The Genesis of Plato's Thought. In a slave--0wning
society, Plato and the Pythagoreans, Aristotle and the Stoics
developed idealism as a defense of social inequality. This outlook
proved all too congenial to the thinkers of later feudal and aristo
cratic societies. It was only with the eighteenth century A.D., and
the rise of scientific thin.king that Lucretius began to come into his
own as the most articulate exponent of the philosophy of science
in classical antiquity. But even so, the recognition has been half
hearted. The tendency to depreciate Lucretius has continued on
and on. It is time that someone put forward the thesis of Lucretius'
philosophical originality and essential profundity. This is the theme
of my book.
I am conscious of a throng of obligations, even while I dissent
most-to my great and good friend, William Ellery Leonard, now
dead, with whom I enjoyed twenty years of intimacy and almost
daily discussion on our poet; and Cyril Bailey, the great English
Lucretian scholar; Usener, Guissani and many others who have
toiled with the interpretation of Lucretius. From Lambinus to the
present day, Lachmann, Monroe and Diels have given me much
illumination. Second hand, I have drawn from the studies of Duvau,
Hosius and Chatelaine. The Tuehner edition of Martin I have
consulted from time to time.
The citations from Lucretius are taken from the translation
published as the Roman Poet of Science, New York, 1956, London,
1959, by kind permission of the translator. For this permission I
am very grateful to myself.
I should like to pay tribute to the unfailing courtesy and help
fulness of the staff of the University libraries of British Columbia
and Alberta (both Edmonton and Calgary).
Mrs. David J. Gravells, Miss Christine Davis and Miss Del
Bording have toiled womanfully with the preparation of the manu
script and with reading the proof.
Some readers may prefer to leave the closely-argued scholarly
,ummary of Chapter I to the end. These may plunge immediately
into the life and time~ of Lucretius, the subjects of Chapters /I
and lll.
University of Alberta, Calgary.
CHAPTER I
THE ORIGINALITY OF LUCRETIUS'
Most students who have given serious attention to the subject
would admit, I think, that Lucretius was a poet of quite extra
ordinary talent, that he combines an almost prophetic fervour with
a supreme mastery of the techniques of poetical composition and
that as a consequence of this combination of earnestness and skill
he has produced one of the most profoundly moving poems in the
whole history of literature. But while admitting all this, scholars
tend with a perp1exing unanimity to deny Lucretius' intellectual
originality. Lucretius, it is suggested, was great as a translator and
versifier. The system of ideas which he expounded can be found
ready made in Epicurus. Lucretius' contribution was to translate
the system of Epicurus into the Latin language and expound it in
a tour de force of high poetry. Of original thought in Lucretius there
is, in the received opinion, little trace. For this negative attitude
there may be a historical reason. Lucretius made his greatest impact
on the thought of the Western world in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries of our era. This was precisely the period when the atomic
theory of matter and the mechanistic interpretations of the findings
of science were most challenging to thoughtful men. (Dalton's New
System of Chemical Philosophy appeared in 1808). Moreover the
ethical implications of these views, hedonism and utilitarianism,
were to some most challenging, to others most disturbing. In both
these fields the thought of Lucretius seemed like exciting anticipa
tions of modem conclusions-in cosmology the views of Boyle,
Newton, and Dalton; in ethics the views of Hume, Bentham, and
Mill. Now in both these fields Lucretius was admittedly a follower
of Epicurus. In passage after passage of luminous verse he acknowl
edges his obligation to the master whom he held divine.' No one
can accuse Lucretius of failing to acknowledge sufficiently his obli
gations.
I. This part. of the. work is_ a condensatio.n or. a paper originally prepared for presentation
to th.c Ph1los4:1ph1cal Society _of t~e Uruvc~s1ty of Alberta and subsequently to the Philo
sophical Seminar at the Umversny of Bristol, England. It owes much to di~cussion by
P~ofessors Mar~iros_ and Ha_rdy of the Univen,ity of Alberta, Professors Kucrner and
K11to of the Uruvcrsity of Bnstol and Pro.fessor A. Dalzell of the University of Toronto,
•hough none. of 1hese gentlemen nece~san!y agree with the thesis.
2. E.G., l.ucrcc1us, De Rerum Na1ura (D.R.N.), ed. Smith and Leonard Wisconsin 1942:
I. 62-7\1; J. 1-~0; 51-54, 6. I 42. ' '
2 LUCRETIUS AND SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT
But to return to the argument. When, in the latter half of the
nineteenth century, the thought of Darwin made its full impact on
the thought of the Western World and men began to look at each
other with a wild surmise and to wonder whether human institutions
were not also susceptible to an evolutionary interpretation, the
pattern of interpretation was already well set. But Lucretius did
have a theory of evolution and most excitingly anticipates the views
of those modems who hold to the theory of evolution in both its
biological and social aspects.
We find the idea of evolution both in the inorganic and
organic. The concept of creation is not, as in the Hebraic a fiat of
a Creator, but a growth, a process. The starry sky and the earth
have developed. Moreover, the same forces that work today for
both worked for their beginning and will work for their end ....
In the organic realm there is the same idea of process, particularly
of origin out of earth herself, which is to Lucretius far more pro
foundly and eloquently Mother Earth than in any mythology.
There is the same idea of heredity by means of germ seeds that
descend from parent to offspring, reproducing characteristics even
of remote ancestors.•
There is of course, no conception of the evolution of specie.,
. . . . Yet there are two moments in Lucretius' zoology that are
notably Darwinian: the effect of organic adaptation and of domes
tication upon the preservation of species: the survival value of
swift legs for example; and of animal life in mountains, woods,
thickets, in barnyards and pastures.'
Lucretius' idea, of course, Leonard goes on to argue, includes
explicitly the dying out of species unadapted to their environment
or unprotected by man.
The other notably Darwinian moment that Leonard notes is
the Lucretian reiteration against teleology, that is, design in nature,
a favourite idea of Aristotle and of Lucretius' own much scorned
Stoics. Not only are there no gods planning from without; but
Nature herself, he says, from within is not planning ahead: she
merely grows and things happen and particular functions develop
out of what ha~pens. The tongue was not created that we might
speak, but having tongues, we get to using tongues for speech.
Speech is a by-product of tongues, not the original purpose of
tongues. The debate is still on between the two schools of thought,
,9
1.DRN.
4.lJR.N. 60.
