Necessity and laws May 1, 2008
Posted by pererik7 in Epicurus.Tags: Democritus, Necessity
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I think that what Schiesaro (as quoted by Don in an eariler post) says about Lucretius’ conception of laws in DRN is compelling. It definitely gives an answer to one half of the question I asked at the beginning of class two weeks ago (week 4), namely, what is the status of laws in DRN. However, another half of my question, which I never explicitly voiced in class, is still bothering me. Now that we have a sense of what Lucretius means by laws and that he (may) conceives of them as “prevailing forms of association among compatible atoms that emerged at the beginning of the world and which natural reproduction has inherited,” I want to know how exactly he and other Epicureans (including Epicurus himself) differed from someone like Democritus who supposedly committed himself to a very deterministic world.
As I understand it, Democritus held that the state of the world at any point is the way it is by necessity. This is confirmed by Cicero in De Fato (excerpted in The Epicurus Reader), where he claims that Epicurus tainted the purity of Democritean deterministic atomism by positing ‘the swerve’. Clearly, the swerve is the central difference. Democritus’ atomic motion was necessitated, while Epicurean atomic motion is necessitated but with occassional swerves. At the level of explanation employed by Lucretius, I understand the nature of the swerve and its role in explaining observable phenomena (free willing). I do not, however, completely understand the nature of necessity, which seems to require explanation at a lower (more basic) level.
What exactly is necessary about atomic motion and interaction for Democritus and Epicurus-minus-swerve? Is it the geometrical properties that give rise to their necessary associations? In his explanation of Lucretian laws, Schiesaro talks about ‘prevailing forms of association’ and also about ‘compatible atoms’. I assume that ‘prevailing forms of association’ refers to the regularities observed when, for example, a being reproduces sexually a new being of the same type. Is the notion of ‘compatible atoms’ the notion that is relevant to necessity? Is compatibility to be understood geometrically? If so, is this the limit of necessity? Does their natural downward tendency count as part of their necessary motion?
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A couple of thoughts, based on DRN 2.216-262, one of the key texts on the swerve.
1. By virtue of their inherent weight (pondus), (a) all bodies have a natural downward motion, which (b) in a void is equally fast in all, regardless of their weights (an anticipation of Galileo?). Given this, if weight were the only factor to consider, there would never be any collisions among bodies. Consequently, it is necessary to posit that bodies “incline a little,” though “not more than the least possible” (245). On the face of it, this strikes me as a valid scientific argument. We have reason to ascribe one kind of natural motion to bodies. But this motion appears to be inadequate to account for the phenomena, and so an additional factor is posited. So far as I can see, Lucretius makes no claim about the modality/causality of these small “oblique motions.” He does ascribe a priority and naturalness to the downward motion of bodies: “heavy things, as far as it lies in them, [quantum in se est] cannot move obliquely” (247). And he stresses the lack of predictability of oblique motions (they occur “at times quite uncertain and uncertain places”: 218-9). Yet this is consistent with these motions being truly chance events, uncaused by anything at all, or with them being ascribable to some unknown property of atoms.
2. Although it appears to be a continuation of the same line of argument, the caveat regarding free or voluntary motion at 251ff makes a very different claim. Here the problem is not the supposition that all natural motion is downward motion, but that all motion is determined by prior causes, according to a “definite order,” or the “decrees of fate” (fati foedera). If this were the case, Lucretius argues, there would be no room for voluntary agency. And so, we must have the ability to incline our motion wherever the mind leads (declinamus item motus… ubi ipsa tulit mens).
In this case, Lucretius is not gesturing at a uncaused, or chance, event, but one that is initiated by the agent (”it is his own will in each that begins these things, and from the will movements go rippling through the limbs”). Furthermore, he explicitly cites the motive that is relevant in accounting for such action: “whence I say is this will [voluntas] wrested from the fates by which we proceed whither pleasure [voluptas] leads each, inclining also our motion not at fixed times and fixed places, but just where our mind leads us?”
The most straightforward reading of this passage would be to see it as positing some kind of sui generis agent causation, but I’m not convinced that this is the best reading.