[Lucretius] - A New Kind of Science: The NKS Forum

A New Kind of Science: The NKS Forum

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Lucretius
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Posted by: Jason Cawley

As a note this week, I thought I'd discuss two ancient ideas that have always struck me as among the more impressive achieved without the benefit of instruments, or much of the conceptual foundation of modern science, that can be found already in Lucretius by around 100 AD. The NKS book mentions one of these on page 860 in the note "History of Programs and Nature". It is also mentioned again in the note on "Atomism" on page 876.

Lucretius did not come up with the idea of atoms. That is attributed to Leucippus, and was developed further by Democritus, before being adopted as doctrine by Epicurus and his whole school.

But it is in Lucretius that we find the most striking evidence presented in favor of the idea. It may well have been noticed long before him, sometime in the history of the Epicureans, and he may simply be passing it on. The evidence is from an observation rather than an argument, of what may be called "motes in sunbeams".

These are actually visible blood cells on the surface of the human eye. The argument that they are on the surface of the eye is attributed to Leonardo during the renaissance, but it is always hard to tell whether such attributions are apocryphal. One can see them as translucent spots whenever looking in the direction of any bright light. It helps if you deliberately "unfocus" your eyes. It is an extraordinary thing to have noticed, and the reasoning applied to it is likewise beyond expectations.

"...behold whenever
The sun's light and the rays, let in, pour down
Across dark halls of houses: thou wilt see
The many mites in many a manner mixed
Amid a void in the very light of the rays,
And battling on, as in eternal strife,
And in battalions contending without halt,
In meetings, partings, harried up and down."

So clearly, this is what he is talking about, he has seen it and any of us can verify for ourselves what his evidence is. What does he see in it?

"From this thou mayest conjecture of what sort
The ceaseless tossing of primordial seeds
Amid the mightier void...

"...such tumblings are a sign
That motions also of the primal stuff
Secret and viewless lurk beneath, behind.
For thou wilt mark here many a speck, impelled
By viewless blows, to change its little course,
And beaten backwards to return again,
Hither and thither in all directions round."

Centuries upon centuries before "Brownian motion", the basic phenomenon was noticed and described. It is also impressive that Lucretius was well aware he was looking at something that must be much larger than actual atoms, that only appears at a higher level of aggregation.

"... motion ascends from the primevals on,
And stage by stage emerges to our sense,
Until those objects also move which we
Can mark in sunbeams, though it not appears
What blows do urge them."

Well, I call that pretty impressive as a thing to notice without instruments.

There is one further idea in Lucretius that is more directly related to NKS thinking, and is the subject of the two notes about him in the book. It concerns the analogy of human language to natural complexity. The question is how a finite number of types of atoms could create all the various phenomena we see, simply by arrangement. Lucretius appeals to his own writing to illustrate the "how" that might be involved in that.

"...here in these our verses,
Elements many, common to many words,
Thou seest, though yet 'tis needful to confess
The words and verses differ, each from each,
Compounded out of different elements"

"Not since few only, as common letters, run
Through all the words, or no two words are made,
One and the other, from all like elements,
But since they all, as general rule, are not
The same as all. Thus, too, in other things,
Whilst many germs common to many things
There are, yet they, combined among themselves,
Can form new wholes to others quite unlike."

It is interesting to see alphabetical language here given as the paradigm of complex variety from simple underlying components.
Lucretius went on to deduce that the number of basic types or elements must be finite. (Having any size, the number of arrangements possible before getting too large to see is bounded).

No doubt one can also find less sensible things in Lucretius, if one tries. I still find in fascinating that anyone managed to notice such things so long ago. For what it is worth.

Posted by: Gunnar Tomasson

Re. the following:

It is interesting to see alphabetical language here given as the paradigm of complex variety from simple underlying components.

Lucretius went on to deduce that the number of basic types or elements must be finite. (Having any size, the number of arrangements possible before getting too large to see is bounded).

Comment:

Very interesting, Jason!

The concept of "alphabetical language" as such "paradigm" is stated expressly as follows in a most curious manuscript of the Edda of the great sage and author Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241) in 13th century Iceland:

"Munnrinn ok tungan er leikvöllr orđanna. Á ţeim velli eru reistir stafir ţeir, er mál allt gera, ok hendir málit ýmsa svá til at jafna sem hörpu strengir eđa eru lćster lyklar í simphonie."

In my translation:

"The mouth and the tongue comprise the playfield of the words. On that field are raised the letters from which all speech is made, and some equate such speech to the strings of a harp or keys locked in a symphony."

I came across this passage many years ago in a facsimile copy of the manuscript (the so-called Uppsala Bók Edda) at the National Library in Reykjavík and copied it down. I have not seen it in print either before or after.

And what might it mean?

It strikes me as a medieval version of the view of "realistic mathematics/speech" outlined in my note on "Einstein's Unfinished Revolution", with the "symphony" analogy serving to underscore the ALL IS ONE theme of antiquity.

Gunnar

Posted by: Phillip Craig

In the vein of interesting ancient knowledge, here is a quote from a book I just came across(a book first published in the 60's).

"Based on the law of universal impermanence, while at the same time upholding the determinist doctrine of the concatenation of causes and effects, these caution the student against the idea that absolute determinism is within his reach; the sphere of probabilities is alone accessible to him.

Even supposing that they are all known to him at a given moment and that he could calculate, at that moment, the effects which are naturally produced by these causes, at the moment that follows that one these causes will have already undergone modifications as a result of their contact with other causes and forces. Not only will they never be identical with what they were before but, in reality, other causes of a different kind will have followed them."

The book goes on to explain how the same thing is happening in the senses and mind of the observer, and calls the situation a "double current of fugitive phenomena."

This material was supposedly known to certain Tibetan monks around the 5th century and is reported to be based on knowledge that was ancient even at that time. The above quote sounds a lot like the Uncertainty Principle.

The same material describes reality as a rapid succession of flashes of energy happening at infinitesimally small intervals, so that human observers see things as apparently solid. And... the universe is not objects in motion, it IS motion. Maybe I have an overactive imagination, but this material sounds eerily like modern physics and some ideas in NKS.

Posted by: Ray Girvan

Jason Cawley ... an observation ... of what may be called "motes in sunbeams" ...

"...behold whenever
The sun's light and the rays, let in, pour down
Across dark halls of houses: thou wilt see
The many mites in many a manner mixed
Amid a void in the very light of the rays..."

These are actually visible blood cells on the surface of the human eye.

Sounds to me more like an observation of dust motes in sunbeams, to which Brownian motion would be far more applicable.

Posted by: Gershom Zajicek M.D.

is an ancient book of the Kabbalah, written probably in the second century B.C. It describes the creation of the world with twenty two Hebrew letters. Its translation is published in:
http://www.fortunecity.com/roswell/...0/231kaplan.htm

Section 2:2

Twenty-two Foundation letters:
He engraved them, He carved them,
He permuted them, He weighed them,
He transformed them,
And with them, He depicted all that was formed
and all that would be formed.

P.S. In the site the book is called Sefer ha Yetzirah. The correct name is Sefer Yetzirah

Posted by: Jason Cawley

Do the experiment, make the observation. That is, look at any bright light and unfocus your eyes. Then go read the Lucretius passage, the whole thing if you have any doubts, not just the snippet I quoted. I have no doubt that is what he is talking about, and not bits of dust. Moreover, it makes the whole atomic theory and its origins much more obvious and intuitive. They had data, not just a general idea of an abstract possibility of emergent continuity.

As for other traditions that also noticed combinatoric complexity, I don't doubt it. Any culture with writing, particularly alphabetic writing rather than pictographic writing, would have made the observation naturally.

Posted by: Ray Girvan

Do the experiment, make the observation. That is, look at any bright light and unfocus your eyes. Then go read the Lucretius passage, the whole thing if you have any doubts, not just the snippet I quoted.

I've done both - I'm a serious fan of Lucretius and have the book - and I can't see anything in this beyond an observation of aerial dust. If you're talking about 'floaters' - which are indeed cells, or mucus, in the eye - they don't match Lucretius' description: they're neither small and numerous ("many mites .., in battallions") nor associated particularly with shafts of bright light. I agree with you absolutely as to what Lucretius means: a postulation of what we now call Brownian motion is a superb piece of science and deduction. However, I think you're reading something very personal into his straightforward observation.

Posted by: Jason Cawley

Floaters usually refers to much larger (and rarer) internal eye objects (typically line like) than what I am talking about. A floater will sometimes disturb vision e.g. looking through a microscope, noticably and involuntarily. Far below that level in scale and much more nearly translucent, circular - shadows of blood cells, not larger debris. Thousands of them, in "battalions" indeed, tumbling and as he says, occasionally reversing course etc.

One does not notice them unless you are looking for them, or gazing unfocused off into space at a white background, in bright light - they do not disrupt vision (as -larger- floaters can). (Nothing to do with flashes from afteraffects of light either - you needn't be looking at the light directly, but total light needs to be high enough). I think it quite possible it was his meaning - but it can be read of mere dust in the air I suppose. Not nearly so convincing a point, taken that way, however.

Posted by: Ray Girvan

Still, it is an interesting effect (I just tracked it down as "Scheerer's phenomenon"). According to this account at Bill Beaty's Weird Science site, it's actually down to cells in the retinal capillaries. I think the required viewing conditions - solid bright background such as the open sky - don't really sound like Lucretius' description of light pouring down across dark halls of houses.

Posted by: Jason Cawley

Dark halls of houses is a fair point, I agree that fits dust better.

I wonder what people made of the phenomenon before its real cause was known. I think these white blood cell shadows are probably the smallest objects directly observable without instruments, and their appearance and behavior are strikingly different from typical external macroscopic objects. Another place to look for historical comment might be Da Vinci on perspective. If anyone else finds more on its history, I'd be interested.

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