“The Epicureans denied that the gods had created the world and also denied that they played any role in it.” WorldRolesDeniedEpicurean Author:Catherine Wilson
“Even if the gods did exist, the Epicureans argued, they didn't care about us. Rather, everything comes from nature, and all that really exists are atoms and void, moving and congregating.” IfsCareMovingAtomsVoidEpicurean Author:Catherine Wilson
“Some critics thought the ontology and theory of qualities absurd. No one had ever seen these little atoms, and furthermore, how could their mere arrangement produce a noisy, colourful, world in which day followed night and animals generated their own kind? Instead of a world created, cared, for and supervised by supernatural persons, the Epicureans appeared to the theologians to be assigning everything to chance. The latter were appalled by Lucretius's view of religion as cruel and oppressive and by the Epicurean insistence that death is the end of all experience.” WorldKindLittlesPersonsEndsNightChanceAnimalViewsQualityProduceTheoryMereCriticsAbsurdLatterAtomsArrangementsTheologianNoisyInsistenceOntologyColourfulEpicurean Author:Catherine Wilson
“For seventeenth-century astronomers, the Epicurean doctrine of multiple worlds separated by void space was seen to fit with the new Copernican system in which every star was a sun, and the universe was a vast place with no centre.” WorldUniverseStarsSpaceSunCenturyFitDoctrineVoidMultipleCentreAstronomersEpicurean Author:Catherine Wilson
“Aristotle saw nature as intelligent and purposive, whereas for the Epicureans, and the 17th century 'mechanical' philosophers, there is no intentionality in nature except where there are animal minds and bodies.” MindBodyAnimalSawsCenturyIntelligentPhilosopherMind And BodyIntentionality17th CenturyEpicurean Author:Catherine Wilson
“Order can arise from chaos without anyone or anything directing the process when unstable combinations of atoms perish and others persist. In the 17th century, Descartes applied this insight to cosmology, and long before Darwin presented his more rigorous ideas about variation and selection, people began to speculate more openly about the origins of life and the species in Epicurean terms.” PeopleLongIdeasOrderProcessTermCenturySpeciesChaosInsightAriseCombinationAtomsPersistSelectionVariationCosmologyUnstableOrigin Of Life17th CenturyEpicurean Author:Catherine Wilson
“Leibniz accepted the argument that there must be indestructible simple entities if there is to be a complex world, but Epicurean morals and politics and anti-theology dismayed him. His 'monadology' which said that the true atoms of nature were unextended 'living mirrors,' was an imaginative and beautiful system, and even in many ways more modern than Epicurean atomism, than Epicurean atomism, but there was a reactionary aspect to it.” IfsWorldWaySaidBeautifulSimpleMoralModernAspectArgumentMirrorsComplexesAcceptedTheologyAtomsEntityImaginativeReactionariesIndestructibleDismayedEpicurean Author:Catherine Wilson