It is critically important to note that there is very little new of importance in Epicurus - except the specific mechanism of the atomic swerve - that was not already there in Aristotle's treatment of moral responsibility in the Nichomachean Ethics and the Metaphysics.Īristotle had already argued against the atomists' necessity ( Leucippus) and causal determinism ( Democritus). It is better to follow the myth about the gods than to be a slave of the "fate" of the physicists: for the former suggests a hope of forgiveness, in return for honor, but the latter has an ineluctable necessity. He said, in his Letter to Menoeceus, §134, Like the other physiologoi (φυσιολόγοι) and physicists (φύσικοι), Democritus had replaced the gods as explanations of phenomena with his deterministic laws of nature in order to give humans more control over their fate and thus moral responsibility.įor similar reasons, Epicurus added an element of chance to provide still more control and moral responsibility than physical determinism alone can provide. Just as Democritus' intuition of atoms in a void was confirmed by modern physics, so Epicurus' swerve (the "clinamen") has been confirmed by quantum physics. So Epicurus' intuition of a fundamental randomness was correct. We call the real physical determinism we have in the world " adequate determinism" to distinguish it from predeterminism, with its causal chain going back to the origin of the universe. The paths of such large objects are only statistically determined, albeit with negligible randomness.
"Deterministic" paths are only the case for very large objects, where the statistical laws of atomic physics average to become nearly certain dynamical laws for billiard balls and planets.
Everything in the material universe is made of atoms in unstoppable perpetual motion. Parenthetically, we now know that atoms do not occasionally swerve, they are moving unpredictably whenever they are in close contact with other atoms or interacting with radiation. Epicurus wanted to break the causal chain of physical determinism and deny claims that the future is logically necessary. One generation after Aristotle, Epicurus argued that as atoms move through the void, there are occasions when they might "swerve" from their otherwise determined paths, thus initiating new causal chains - with a causa sui or uncaused cause.
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Henry Quastler Adolphe Quételet Lord Rayleigh Jürgen Renn Juan Roederer Jerome Rothstein David Ruelle Tilman Sauerīiosemiotics Free Will Mental Causation James Symposium
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