Epicurus was a very smart guy. I am only two short chapters into Epicurean physics, based largely on a few extant paragraphs from Epicurus and Lucretius. In a few short minutes, I have been presented with two seemingly intractable paradoxes.
Epicurus, one in a long line of Greek philosophers with the same beliefs, held that matter could not be created or destroyed. Matter did not come from nothing, and could not be destroyed into nothing. Anything that is, is tangible and has a size and weight. In this light, I wonder what a thought it. For, clearly it changes the person who receives it; it adds something to a person. Yet, it is created ex nihilo; from nothing. Likewise, it returns to nothing. Furthermore, a thought is weightless and has no size - how then, can it be added to a person and produce an observable change? If something with no size or weight is added, then nothing is added - but anecdotally, this cannot be so! I have tried approaching thoughts as a particular combination of electrons and synaptic connections, but even then, the paradox remains. For a thought may be transmitted to a person with no physical communication, by body language or even intuition. How then, can the addition of nothing produce a different sum?
The second paradox involves voids and bodies. Epicurus held that bodies were made of matter, and voids the lack thereof. Modern science jibes with him - there are atoms, and the inconceivable empty space between atoms. This empty space, then, is a void. So, what happens when a body moves? It enters the void, but the void is not displaced. The void must then be coexistent with the body. How can this be so? How can nothing dissolve into nothing, or be created from nothing? Where does the empty space go, and how can it coexist with a body? Furthermore, what can modern quantum mechanics say on this subject, when seemingly empty spaces can give rise to pairs of particles?
Epicurus, one in a long line of Greek philosophers with the same beliefs, held that matter could not be created or destroyed. Matter did not come from nothing, and could not be destroyed into nothing. Anything that is, is tangible and has a size and weight. In this light, I wonder what a thought it. For, clearly it changes the person who receives it; it adds something to a person. Yet, it is created ex nihilo; from nothing. Likewise, it returns to nothing. Furthermore, a thought is weightless and has no size - how then, can it be added to a person and produce an observable change? If something with no size or weight is added, then nothing is added - but anecdotally, this cannot be so! I have tried approaching thoughts as a particular combination of electrons and synaptic connections, but even then, the paradox remains. For a thought may be transmitted to a person with no physical communication, by body language or even intuition. How then, can the addition of nothing produce a different sum?
The second paradox involves voids and bodies. Epicurus held that bodies were made of matter, and voids the lack thereof. Modern science jibes with him - there are atoms, and the inconceivable empty space between atoms. This empty space, then, is a void. So, what happens when a body moves? It enters the void, but the void is not displaced. The void must then be coexistent with the body. How can this be so? How can nothing dissolve into nothing, or be created from nothing? Where does the empty space go, and how can it coexist with a body? Furthermore, what can modern quantum mechanics say on this subject, when seemingly empty spaces can give rise to pairs of particles?
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