Smooth Motions

While depriving laws of any metaphysical origin, Lucretius places them at the very heart of his atomistic cosmos as he constructs in the DNR a legal model of the universe…. In Lucretius’ account of the universe, nexus ‘bonds’, foedera ‘pacts’ and leges ‘laws’ account for the behavior of atoms and their combination into concilia ‘unions’, another term with legal and political implications, and thus form a coherent system for the rational understanding of nature. Lucretius’ foedera naturae and leges possess a strong empiricist foundation; ‘laws of nature’ are the projection into the infinity of time of the prevailing forms of association among compatible atoms that emerged at the beginning of the world and which natural reproduction has inherited. As such, they are reliable, yet consistent with the indeterminacy and contingency of a mechanistic universe…. Lucretius’ laws of nature do not exist outside and above the physicality of atoms, do not answer an inscrutable teleological project and have not been promoted by a provident lawgiver. ‘Natural laws’ crystallise post factum the workings of nature, and embody a ‘deeply fixed’ (1.77) terminus for each creature, a limitation of possibilities which prevents anarchy in the physical world.

From Alessandro Schiesaro, “Lucretius and Roman politics and history” (in The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, ed. Gillespie and Hallie, pp. 47-8). See also A.A. Long, “Chance and natural law in Epicureanism,” Phronesis 22 (1977): 63-88.