Some Observations on Lucretius

Editorial note. This abridgement preserves Ian Johnston’s wording in the passages retained. Material has been omitted primarily from the extended opening discussion of individual English translations and from some of the more detailed scientific examples. Section headings are retained. The original lecture was released into the public domain in January 2010.

Lucretius’ poem, of course, belongs to a genre most English readers are not very familiar with, a long poetical work on a “philosophical” or “scientific” subject (the reason for the quotation marks will soon be apparent).

So the decision of many translators to render Lucretius in English prose appears sensible enough on the surface: they are establishing contact with the tradition most familiar to the reader. Who has any desire to read about science or philosophy in verse? In the spirit of Carlyle, we might say that in such a treatise what matters are the ideas, and the versification simply gets in the way.

What objections could one make to such a stance? Well, the first objection might be that Lucretius constantly reminds us that he is writing a poem, is very insistent that the poetic form is an important part of his purpose, and is evidently very proud of the result (even if he did not fully revise it and prepare it for the reading public).

Objections to the tradition of translating Lucretius into English prose become more substantial if one pauses to explore an important question: What is this work trying to do? What is its purpose? To reach a tentative answer to these questions, we need to take our lead from Lucretius and follow a circuitous road.

It takes no profound reflection to realize that the main purpose of this poem is not to present and defend in any rational manner a comprehensive scientific argument about the nature of the world. To demonstrate this point one does not have to assess the scientific content of the poem (more about that later) but simply point out what is obvious enough from the start: the main point of the work is not scientific but ethical.

Lucretius wants to encourage people to live more successfully, to experience life without the constant anxieties brought about by their ignorance of natural causes and by their excessive dependence on customary religious practices and political ambitions. Knowledge of the materialistic nature of things, he believes, is the most certain route to such an improved awareness and thus to a better life. It addition it will motivate the reader to seek out appropriate pleasures.

In writing the poem he is undertaking a task of persuasion, trying to convince the reader to follow the advice he is offering. And that persuasion involves, not simply the prosaic reasonableness of the scientific views he is advancing, but more importantly the rhetorically persuasive effects of poetry.

In other words, this poem is not simply a presentation of rational ideas; it is about the emotional feelings associated with those ideas (nowhere is this more evident than in the superb closing section of Book 3, where the speaker addresses directly the reader’s fear of death).

Now, this gives us the basis for a more substantial objection to prose renditions of Lucretius. If he is, indeed, seeking, like Wordsworth, to convey feelings about a particular understanding of the cosmos in order to persuade the reader to share those feelings, then abandoning the poetic form in favour of prose would seem to work against that purpose, since it means turning away from the literary form best suited to exploring such emotions.

This observation may carry a little more weight when we reflect that the scientific content of Lucretius’ poem has had little to no effect on the history of science (indeed it rarely merits consideration in accounts of that history); whereas, what the poem reveals about an attitude towards life (and science) has always had an enormous influence among those who read his work in Latin—scientists and non-scientists alike.

There is, however, at least one compelling argument in favour of a prose translation, an important point which helps to account for the fact the Smith translation is still the first choice of many teachers, and that is the questionable quality (to use the politest term available) of many of those versions offered up as poetry.

But if the poetry in translation cannot catch and hold the tone and intensity of Lucretius (what one reviewer has called the “relentless urgency” of the poem), if, that is, it fails to deliver direct emotional insight into the speaker’s feelings, especially at those moments when Lucretius’ poem really soars (as in the closing section of Book 3, for example), but instead holds the reader back and forces her to wade through awkward, inflated, and rhythmically inert or limping English, then give me good prose every time.

This is especially important when one is considering a text for students, because bad poetry will probably reinforce any convictions they may already have about how long poems are boring and irrelevant (especially those from ancient times).

A response to a good deal of what I have said so far will depend to a large extent on one’s opinion of the scientific content of Lucretius’ poem. After all, if the work contains a treasure of scientific information and argument, then one might reasonably defend a prose version as a contribution important for its factual and rational content (especially given the deficiencies in most poetic alternatives).

Now, it’s clear enough that Lucretius is, in part, writing a polemic. He is, as it were, jumping into an energetic intellectual battle, keen to announce his support for Epicurean science and his admiration of Epicurus and to wage war against the opponents of those views, especially the Stoics, the forces of organized religion, and the traditional values of politically ambitious Romans.

I also wish to stress that in trying to sort out the value of Lucretius’ scientific contributions, we need to remember that there is an important difference between a specific contribution to a scientific understanding of the natural world and the effort to encourage a particular approach to understanding nature (scientific or otherwise).

The first is a matter of reasoned argument and convincing evidence; the second is an attempt at rhetorical persuasion (which may well involve rational argument but is not limited to that).

On the face of it, Lucretius’ poem is something of a disappointment as a scientific work. He is probably at his scientific best when he is refuting an opponent (although he is not always fair to his rival’s ideas, as in the case of Anaxagoras), when, that is, he raises key objections to the theories of those materialists who wish to explain that all matter is produced from one or more basic substances (fire, air, water, earth, individually or in combination).

The objections may be obvious enough, but his treatment is effective and thorough. And his argument for the existence of atoms, for their properties, and for the ways in which a limited number of atomic shapes can produce the variety in materials we see all around us and also account for variations in colour, smell, and other sensations is, although not original to him, the strongest and most interesting scientific theory in the poem.

At this point one should acknowledge what many people find particularly interesting in the poem: its apparent anticipation of a number of modern ideas. These include the social contract, non-visible sources of solar heat, the water cycle, the development of language, and (perhaps) certain aspects of sexuality and heredity, among others.

However, in the poem these are, for the most part, not given a firm theoretical basis—that is, they are not scientifically explained in any detail by atomic theory or anything else (other than the velocity of falling particles in empty space)—and, as often as not the differences between modern theories and what Lucretius offers are more significant than the superficial similarities, so that the very notion of an “anticipation” of modern theories is pure Whiggery (for example, in what people see in Book 5 as an early account of natural selection).

His most famous doctrine, that of the unpredictable swerve of the atomic particles in their linear motion (the clinamen), the source of the atomic collisions which result in the initial material combinations which create everything, saves us from the determinism of the Stoics and guarantees free will in living creatures, but it has long been dismissed as arrant speculation without scientific credibility.

At this point one might well protest that such criticisms are manifestly unfair. To measure Lucretius against the methods and purposes of modern science is to make demands neither he nor any other ancient thinker could be expected to meet. They did not have an agreed upon method of enquiry and their reflections on nature had a purpose fundamentally different from the modern preoccupation with gaining power over nature. That is very true.

But I am not trying to assess the merits of Lucretius methods, merely to point out that his poem has serious problems if we wish to see in it a valuable contribution to specific developments in the methodology and achievements of science.

However, Serres’ book is a vitally important contribution to an understanding of Lucretius (and I am very indebted to his arguments) because he quite correctly places most of his emphasis on the single most important point about On the Nature of Things: the poem is not primarily about this or that explanation of natural phenomena, nor does it have much to offer by way of outlining a detailed method of scientific enquiry (other than repeatedly emphasizing sense experience and reason); it is instead, first and foremost, an eloquent plea for a certain way of orienting oneself to nature and, beyond that, to one’s own life.

And this aspect of the poem has exerted an enormous and continuing impact on European intellectual life, not only among natural scientists but among educated people of every imaginable description, from Catholic priests to materialistic atheists, from nuclear physicists to Romantic poets and democratic politicians.

What I am claiming about On the Nature of Things is that the merit of the poem emerges from the eloquence of its observations and recommendations rather than from the facts or explanations it offers.

In other words, On the Nature of Things is not a scientific treatise (merely or primarily) but an amazing and influential poem, which succeeds because of its poetic insight and power. To overlook that or brush it aside in the interests of isolating its scientific content is to negate the very reason the work has played such an important role in our historical development and is still a wonderful read.

For Lucretius is about as important to the history of philosophy as he is to the history of science. Yes, he is a justly celebrated proselytizer for a certain way of looking at the world and of conducting oneself in it: in fact, he is the most famous, eloquent, long-lasting, and influential literary champion of Epicurean ideas and a crucial voice in the spread of classical humanism.

What, then, is Lucretius’ view of nature? What lies at the heart of his impulse to teach us how to view the natural world? And how does that impulse shape what he has to say? Here we come to the heart of the matter, the “vision” which inspired him and which he offers to us.

It is clear enough that Lucretius’ major purpose is, as I said before, ethical. He wants people to live happier, more successful lives. His Epicurean sympathies naturally enough see the route to such better lives in the relief of pain, especially pain of mental anxieties fostered by the pursuit of unworthy and self-defeating aims (money, fame, political power), by the fear of death, and by organized religion and its doctrines.

Such avoidance of pain and enjoyment of pleasure, especially in contemplation, are best achieved by understanding the material basis of the world, thus acquiring knowledge which will provide a much healthier perspective on what truly matters (particularly knowledge of our own mortal physicality).

Hence, his teaching does not involve the study of nature for its own sake or as a means of spiritual discipline or as a method for increasing our power over natural phenomena: its major purpose is utilitarian—it will make our lives happier.

The most obvious and famous result of this attitude is Lucretius’ extreme hostility to traditional religion—which, in his view, is neither reasonable or natural and is the source of endless anxiety and cruelty. And responses to his poem often begin and end with that.

In many places, the materialistic explanations for certain phenomena (particularly for the famous series of seventeen proofs of the mortality of the soul in Book 3) are obviously designed to neutralize the effect of organized religion’s most potent weapon: the fear of death and the afterlife.

Lucretius does, of course, believe in the gods, but his vision of these entities does not admit that they have any significant interaction with human beings other than providing them images of their divine but material persons (by a process he promises to explain but never does) so that human beings may engage in the only appropriate form of worship, the contemplation of divine forms.

Lucretius’ vision of nature, however, has other important targets. He wishes to counter skeptics who claim that there is no certain knowledge of anything, let alone of nature, as well as the determinists, for whom nature operates by permanently fixed universal laws of cause and effect.

The first and most obvious point about Lucretius’ view of nature is its extraordinary dynamism. Everything is always moving all the time.

Objects may be apparently at rest, but all their particles are always in restless motion, matter is streaming to and from them all the time, the air is full of particles in motion (sunlight, images, smells, noises, and so on) and its composition is always changing, corporeal stuff enters and leaves the cosmos continuously, below the earth all matter is constantly shifting, and everywhere around us the battle between heat and water continues without pause.

No writing about nature is so dominated by verbs of motion, change, collision, combat, creation, explosion, destruction, and dissolution.

Allied to this dynamism is the randomness of nature. At the heart of all natural processes is the random swerve which cannot be reduced to some universal deterministic law. And, like that swerve, nature often operates suddenly, unpredictably, and often with enormous force. The overwhelming sense one gets is of an intense vitalism, whose effects we can acknowledge but cannot contain, control, or entirely foresee.

The vitalism helps to produce an interesting ambiguity in the poem, since Lucretius moves back and forth between a sense of earth as a caring and endlessly creative mother and a sense of the world as an inanimate stage for the survival of the fittest and for the enduring mechanical and often violent wars between the forces of production and dissolution.

The importance of this irrational vitality at the heart of nature may help to explain one of the greatest attractions of Lucretius’ poem—the emphasis it places on particular perceptions of single natural phenomena.

Again and again, Lucretius links the point he is making to a specific scene: a horse halfway across a flowing river, sheep grazing in the meadow, trees rubbing in the wind, severed limbs twitching on the ground, lions going berserk in battle, garments hanging up beside the sea, huge dogs playing with their pups, a cow searching for her slaughtered calf, the appearance of oars above and below the water, stars glimmering in the heavens, a race horse in the starting gate, the build up of clouds before a storm, and on and on.

Such experiences, the style of the poem insists, are much more important than any explanations we might try to come up with to account for them. Lucretius clearly does not wish to subsume the particularity of our sense perceptions under some universal principle (hence, all mechanical explanations which satisfy our sense experience are equally correct). It’s as if he wants our interaction with nature to be specific, local, individual—anything but some exemplification of a general rule.

In addition, his poem frequently calls attention to the destructive effects of natural processes (earthquakes, whirlwinds, floods, and so on) and to the mutability of everything. Yes, such passages provide plenty of material for some gloomy reflections. But offsetting this is the enormous delight he communicates in his pictures of the natural world and the confident joy he expresses in thinking about it as a source of unending activity, beauty, sublimity, and power.

Like Socrates in Plato’s early dialogues, Lucretius is urging us to have the courage to reorient our priorities to nature and to our own lives, and (again, like Socrates) the most persuasive means he has at his disposal is an insight into his own intense convictions and his determined courage in the face of an unpredictable, powerful, dynamic, and dangerous but always fascinating world.

Whether this qualifies as a scientific stance is, I suppose, open to debate—it certainly flies in the face of our accepted notions of what science is all about—but it is a call to reorient the way we look at, comprehend, and feel about the world and about ourselves.

If we need a “proof” of the value of such a stance before signing on, we find it, not in the scientific or philosophical arguments, but in the character of the narrator of the poem, in the intense confidence, resolution, and delight he reveals in contemplating this vision of the nature of things.

I have referred above to the significant impact Lucretius has had on all sorts of developments in our culture, up to and including the present day. I have no wish to offer a detailed or comprehensive account of that influence, even if I had the time and expertise to do so.

The Latin text of Lucretius was first published as a printed book around 1473, and the first English translation, by a “Puritan blue-stocking,” Lucy Hutchinson, appeared in the mid 17th century (Taylor). Since the first appearance of the Latin text in print, the list of those who have acknowledged Lucretius as an important influence reads like a Who’s Who of Western Culture.

It includes, as one might expect, those who welcome the poet’s attacks on organized religion and endorsement of reason and sense experience in pursuit of a life of moderate pleasure (e.g., Voltaire, Diderot, Hume) but it also includes pious Catholics (e. g. Gassendi), who seem to have experienced little difficulty with the anti-religious sentiments in the poem, leading Romantic poets (e. g., Wordsworth, Shelley), and a slew of nineteenth-century figures (e. g., Arnold, Tennyson, Marx, Fitzgerald, Pater, Whitman, Goethe), among many, many others. Thomas Jefferson, it seems, owned eight copies of On the Nature of Things, declared himself a firm disciple of Epicurus, and may have derived that phrase “pursuit of happiness,” at least in part, from his reading of Lucretius (Hamilton).

One figure in this tradition who obviously stands out is Montaigne, who was immersed in Latin as a child and grew up with the great Latin classics as his constant companions. Montaigne knew Lucretius backwards, quotes him more than any other classical author, and covered his copy of Lucretius’ text with his own annotations.

Of course, there are some obvious differences between the two thinkers, for Montaigne has a much more skeptical, ironic, and wry imagination than Lucretius does, but for all that there is a great deal in Lucretius which Montaigne finds to his liking, especially the brave resolve to live with the pleasures which are possible and to turn away from the storms of political life and religious controversies in very uncertain times, relying upon reason and sense experience of nature as a guide.

Ian Johnston, “Some Observation on Lucretius,” Vancouver Island University, released January 2010. Original lecture: https://web.viu.ca/johnstoi/lucretius/lecture.htm