Democritus and the Ensuing Degeneration of Scientific Atomism: a Suggestion (original) (raw)
The Fourfold Democritus on the Stage of Early Modern Science
Isis, 2000
The renewed success of ancient atomism in the seventeenth century has baffled historians not only because of the lack of empirical evidence in its favor but also because of the exotic heterogeneity of the models that were proposed under its name. This essay argues that one of the more intriguing reasons for the motley appearance of early modern atomism is that Democritus, with whose name this doctrine was most commonly associated, was a figure of similar incoherence. There existed in fact no fewer than four quite different Democriti of Abdera and as many literary traditions: the atomist, the "laughing philosopher," the moralizing anatomist, and the alchemist. Around the year 1600 the doctrines of these literary figures, three of whom had no tangible connection with atomism, began to merge into further hybrid personae, some of whom possessed notable scientific potential. This essay offers the story of how these Democriti contributed to the rise of incompatible "atomisms."
Special Issue on “Crooked Thinking or Straight Talk: Modernizing Epicurean Scientific Philosophy”
Homo Oeconomicus
The extended comments by distinguished philosophers and economists on Ken Binmore's modernization of Epicurean scientific philosophy that are collected in this special issue of Homo Oeconomicus speak for themselves. But except for mentioning it in the title Binmore does not explicitly address the methodological issues raised by pursuing a program of "scientific philosophy". It seems that he deems it sufficient to practise in the book what he preaches in its title. We tend to agree. Yet, many if not most philosophers and scientists regard "scientific philosophy" as an oxymoron.
Democritus – scientific wizard of the 5th century bc
1998
Roughly 2400 years ago, during an era largely characterized by unscientific thought, a school of natural philosophers led by Democritus of Abdera developed a remarkably accurate understanding of our physical world. How could this small group have discovered so much at a time when technology and mathematics were at such a rudimentary level? What if their methods and ideas had
Science, ethics, and ἀνάγκη in Epicurean Thought
Francesca Masi, Pierre-Marie Morel, and Francesco Verde, Epicureanism and Scientific Debates. Epicurean Tradition and Ancient Reception. Volume II: Epistemology and Ethics, (Leuven University Press, 2024), 119-138., 2024
The paper argues that Epicurus rejects the notion that there are any necessary laws in the world given that he denies bi-valence for future contingents, in part because the swerve makes any necessary causal chains impossible at the physical level. Since the swerve has always been in force, no causal chains of necessity have arisen or could ever arise. Lucretius as well argues that there are temporary foedera natura that arise randomly, but these are not necessary nor can they be identified with causal laws. The paper begins by focussing on Ad Men. 133 where an erroneous supplement to the text has led to the notion that some things are by necessity, and argues that this supplement makes no sense in the argumentative context of the passage nor does it correspond it any evidence that we have from elsewhere.
The maladies of enlightenment science
Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics
Science started to acquire its modern sense (as 'natural philosophy') during the Scientific Revolution, from Copernicus to Newton and the Age of Enlightenment, as it gradually freed itself from the shackles of theology and absolutism, from a thousand years of stasis and obscurantism (Russo 1996). Under the influence of Descartes, Leibniz, and others, faith and dogma gave way to rationalism. 'Gradually, theoreticians behind the movement that had begun as a grand attempt to merge God and syllogisms realized that logic did not require the link to the divine' (Schlain 1998). When the Royal Society of London was founded in 1660, it tried to protect itself from intellectual fallacies, from the 'four kinds of illusions which block men's minds'. These illusions, listed by Francis Bacon in his Novum Organum Scientiarum, were (1) the idola tribus (idols of the tribe), perceptual errors due to the limitations of the senses; (2) the idola specus (idols of the cave), personal prejudices; (3) the idola fori (idols of the marketplace) caused by shared language and commerce; and (4) idola theatri (idols of the theatre), i.e. systems of philosophy and proof-whence came the Royal Society's motto 'Nullius in verba' (which means do not take anybody's word for it), and the exclusion of discussions concerning politics and religion, impediments to clear thought, from its conduct. From then until quite recently, science was almost universally regarded as a system which formulates laws to describe information and turn it into knowledge, the systematic study of nature by methodical processes of observation, experiment, measurement and inference which generate that information, and tests of the laws. These procedures are collectively called the scientific method. 'It is the matter-of-fact as against the romantic, the objective as against the subjective, the empirical, the unprejudiced, the ad hoc as against the a priori' (Waddington 1948, p. 61).
Leucippus and Democritus - Chapter 5 Routledge Companion to Ancient Philosophy
In the history of ancient philosophy, Leucippus and Democritus seem hardly separable from each other. Not even their works are always kept apart, and certainly Aristotle, our oldest source for their ideas and arguments, does not really try to distinguish between them as far as their ideas go, attributing them sometimes to one of the pair and sometimes to both together. We know that Leucippus was the inventor of atomism, formulating the idea that the whole of reality consists of indivisible, changeless and eternal bits of matter moving around in the void, some time shortly after the middle of the fifth century bc, though we do not have any certainty as to his dates; and that Democritus, presumably born some time before the middle of that century, took over Leucippus' core ideas and worked them out in a rather prolific way. But we do not really know how much of the core atomistic theory can already be attributed to Leucippus, and how much of the core theory is Democritus' invention.
Traditionalism and Originality in Roman Science
Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World, 2018
This chapter characterizes an important feature of Roman scientific discourse that sets it apart from the Greek tradition. Valorization of the mos maiorum (custom of the ancestors) spawned a conviction among Roman intellectuals that voices from the past possess more authority than those of the present. Those who wrote about natural philosophy thus tended to idealize tradition in ways that ended up effacing their own contributions. This habit did not preclude innovation and debate, but did serve to obscure the sources of ideas, with figures from the remote past such as Pythagoras often given credit for lore of much more recent vintage. Illustrations of this phenomenon are drawn from a wide range of authors including Cato, Fuluius Nobilior, Varro, Ovid, and Moderatus of Gades.
The Name and Nature of Science: Insights from Jane Jacobs and Greco-Roman Society
International Journal of Science in Society, 2010
We can simultaneously address both the nature of science and its progress by considering under what circumstances science evolves. Science exists in some form in every culture, and consists at least of recipe-collections believed efficacious; typically, the collections are organized and systematic, and include principles conceived as explanatory. Recipes that are efficacious are preferred, and recipes will rarely be static: practitioners adjust them to suit new circumstances. Evolution is a substrate-neutral algorithm, and occurs in any system exhibiting variation and replication moderated by differential fitness – thus recipes and explanations evolve as people employ and alter them. Any Popperian falsification of a recipe or principle serves as a demonstration of its lack of fitness, i.e., as a demonstration that the explanation is internally incoherent or else that the recipe does not conform to the knowable world. Unconsciously-selective evolution can become conscious – especially in a polity that provides a rich context of debate and challenge. Jacobs argued that polities manifesting the “commercial” syndrome produce more debate and challenge in contrast to those manifesting the “guardian” syndrome. The rise and decline of science during the 13-century Greco-Roman world strongly correlates with the degree of freedom of debate and thought. That freedom increases the selection pressure on science and thus accelerates its evolution. Page has demonstrated that diversity of outlooks and methods among collaborators is vastly more likely to produce innovation and results that are more efficacious, i.e., are more fit. Science may validly be defined as that set of practices (recipes) plus theories (explanations) which evolves in a suitably robust ecology of debate and challenge, and the evolution of science may validly be described as its progress.
European Journal of Philosophy, 2021
On 24 March 1877, in a lecture recognized as "the first and indeed the most decisive attack on established historical scholarship," the German physiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond addressed the topic of "Civilization and Science" (du Bois-Reymond, 1912; Fuchs, 1994). Passing over "the unedifying details of politics," du Bois-Reymond pointed to a comparable absence of moral or aesthetic improvement among "the heroes of literature and art" (du Bois-Reymond, 1912, pp. 608-620). As he saw it the true basis of historical development was to be found in the study of the natural world. "Science is the chief instrument of civilization," he announced, "and the history of science the essential history of humanity" (du Bois-Reymond, 1912, p. 596). Du Bois-Reymond's proclamation could serve as the charter of my field. Indeed, George Sarton repeated its argument six decades later in an address inaugurating a "seminary on the history of science" at Harvard University: Definition. Science is systematized positive knowledge, or what has been taken as such at different ages and in different places. Theorem. The acquisition and systematization of positive knowledge are the only human activities that are truly cumulative and progressive. Corollary. The history of science is the only history that can illustrate the progress of mankind. In fact, progress has no definite and unquestionable meaning in other fields than the field of science (Sarton, 1936, p. 5). The last volume of Stephen Gaukroger's four-part history, Civilization and the Culture of Science, takes aim at this familiar story of triumph. Gaukroger's book is divided into four parts. First, it recounts how champions of science presented the investigation of the natural world as the basis of Western superiority. Then, it describes how claims for the unity of science came to substitute for the dogma of Christian universality. Next, it shows how scientists grounded those claims in an Epicurean doctrine that reduced nature to matter and energy. Finally, it recalls how economics, philosophy, technology, eugenics, and popular culture endorsed this secular characterization of the world. Such a presentation has its merits. It is not hard to find a line of continuity between Christian missionaries who strove to enlighten the world and 19th-century boosters who spread the gospel of science. Improvements in knowledge lent Condorcet, Comte, and Spencer the same conviction that Ricci, Bossuet, and Intorcetta drew from teachings of the Church. Similarly, Virchow, du Bois-Reymond, and Büchner's calls to unite biology with chemistry and physics helped to compensate for the disappointments of the Revolution of 1848. Haeckel, Dobzhansky, Simpson, and Mayr saw evolution as the key to progress in nature; Mill attempted to unify "ethics, politics, economics, and logic" (p. 251); Cohen, Windelbrand, and Cassirer employed Kantian reasoning to defend science "as the motor of civilization and culture" (p. 287); touts hawked science in children's books,
Science in the Enlightenment, Revisited.
Nearly a quarter of a century ago, a brash young author published in these pages a rather tendentious review of a book by a respected senior scholar. Greeting the publication of Thomas L. Hankins's Science and the Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 1985), the reviewer ignored most of the content of the book, focusing instead on the relationship signalled in the title, that between the sciences in the eighteenth century and the contemporaneous movement of the Enlightenment. The reviewer insisted that the relationship was in urgent need of clarification. He liberally recommended more theoretical consideration of this, but had little to show to represent the kind of historical scholarship he favoured. Several readers found the ending of the review anticlimactic. It gestured toward the possibility of reconstructing an integrated vision of the Enlightenment, but made only vague recommendations as to how this might be achieved. The invocation of Michel Foucault in this connection did not seem particularly promising. Fortunately, Professor Hankins accepted the ambivalent tribute with remarkable forbearance and good grace, and the reviewer was forgiven the youthful impetuosity of his venture. 1