The Epicurean Canonical (2) - Atoms

There are other immediate evidences besides sensation and passion; every question, in order to be asked and understood, implies that we already possess the notion of the thing asked; do the gods exist? Is this animal that is advancing an ox, or a horse? All these questions presuppose that we already have the notion of the gods, of the ox and the horse, etc., prior to the current sensory impression that leads us to ask these questions: pre-notions internal to the soul and which nevertheless derive from previous sensations and are not at all, like common Stoic notions, the product of a more or less arbitrary dialectic. It is thanks to this origin (an origin that can be seen even in the case of the gods, for example, whose notion arose from the very real images we had during sleep) that the pre-notion is never the notion of an imaginary thing, but that of an existing thing; And this is why Diogenes Laertius (X, 33) calls it perception or right opinion: prenotation implies an evident judgment of existence; our past experience, of which it is in some way the result, is no less valuable than our present experience with which we compare it.

Prenotation allows us judgments or beliefs that go beyond present experience: that man I see over there is Plato; that animal is an ox, etc. But these beliefs will only become sound judgments if they are themselves brought back to immediate sensory evidence, and if there is confirmation (ἐπρός πρός) when I see the man or animal more closely.

But Epicurus, as we know, claims to arrive not only at evidence concerning sensible things, but also at evidence concerning invisible things (ἀρις|ἰς), such as the void, atoms, or the infinity of worlds. It is important to consider, if we wish to understand Epicurus’s canon, that he is, on the one hand, the moralist of pleasure, that end of the will which is grasped immediately without any rational construction, and, on the other hand, the renovator of atomistic physics, that is to say, of a rational construction of the universe, far removed from immediate impressions. Let us not yet ask what the relationship is between the two motives, but only by what means (or through what fissure) can knowledge by pure reason or thought be introduced? Besides the confirmation of a belief by sensory evidence, Epicurus distinguishes the case where, without being confirmed, it is not refuted. “Non-refutation is the link of consequence which connects to what appears evidently an opinion about an invisible thing; for example, Epicurus affirms that there is a void, an invisible thing, and proves it by that evident thing which is movement; for if there is no void, there must also be no movement, since the moving body has no place in which to move, if everything is full.“[1] It is also through the testimony of immediate experience that we see Lucretius prove the existence of bodies that are invisible because of their smallness: the force of winds that we cannot see, the smells and sounds that impress the senses, humidity and drying, the slow wear or slow growth of objects—all these facts imply the existence of such invisible particles[2]. What this consequence or implication consists of is what our texts do not tell us; but from the very expression ‘non-infirmation,’ it appears that Epicurus is content with a conception of things that is not contradicted by manifest experience.

This new universe, this universe of atoms, forms a rational and well-connected whole whose principles can serve as an explanation for the details of visible phenomena, such as celestial phenomena or vital phenomena.” Epicurus recommends to his disciples that they always keep before their minds this “overall view” which allows them, on occasion, “to discover the detail, when one has grasped and retains in one’s memory the overall design of things.” This necessity of an overall view is one of the themes that recurs most frequently in Lucretius’s poem: “For it is very easy to discover and see with the eye of thought how the detailed meteorological phenomena are formed when one knows well what is due to the various elements.”[3]

But doesn’t this overall view, in order to be certain, require a source of evidence distinct from those we have learned to recognize? For here it is no longer a question of grasping invisible things in their connection with manifest things, but of grasping them in themselves. “If you think that atoms cannot be grasped by any glance of the mind (injectus animi) you are greatly mistaken,” or again: “It is the mind that seeks to understand what lies in infinity, beyond the walls of the world, where the intelligence seeks to extend its vision, and thus the gaze of the mind flies freely (jactus animi).”[4] We can then understand, if not the nature, at least the role of the fourth criterion, cited by Diogenes: spiritual and reflective intuition which, seeing the universe as a whole and surpassing the simple intuition of the senses, allows us to witness the spectacle of the universal mechanism of atoms: evidence of a different kind than that of sensation, but just as immediate, and accompanied by a feeling of clarity and spiritual satisfaction that one experiences on every page of Lucretius’s work.

Thus, the canon is indeed an enumeration of evidence of a distinct and irreducible nature, but which all claim to transcend appearances and reach reality.