“The life-world of human and animal experience, with colours, tastes, solid objects, is a perceptual effect of massed atoms.” WorldHumansAnimalEffectsObjectsTasteColourAtomsHumans And Animals Author:Catherine Wilson
“The Epicureans denied that the gods had created the world and also denied that they played any role in it.” WorldRolesDeniedEpicurean 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
“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
“The moves to contractualism and utilitarianism required some extra ingredients besides mortalism, the denial that God is in charge of the world, and the doctrine that physical and psychological pain are the greatest evils.” WorldPainMovingEvilDoctrinePsychologicalDenialExtrasIngredientsUtilitarianismPsychological Pain Author:Catherine Wilson