On the nature of things

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1. rramadassAug 2026
   You are reading things which were not said nor implied in my comment.

   I merely echoed the phrase used by the OP article (should have used quotes to make it clearer).

   When you have had great Greek (Classical and Hellenistic) schools of philosophy and later practiced/extended by the Romans which could justifiably be called "cornerstone of Western culture", to point to a single book like The Bible and attempt to place it on the same pedestal is silly. In fact the opposite may be true viz. when western civilization broke away from the shackles of biblical thinking is when the "Scientific Revolution" happened leading to the science/technology driven world that we live in today.

   Of course the bible had a lot of influence on western culture but one could argue whether it was not more detrimental than beneficial.

   There is more to be learnt from Lucretius' De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) than from The Bible.

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2. randcrawAug 2025
   I'm reading "The Swerve", Stephen Greenblatt's marvelous book on the discovery of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura (The Nature of Things"), a Roman-era scroll on Epicurus' philosophy, by Poggio Bracciolini in 1417. The work was copied by hand repeatedly since 50 BCE by monks and other scripturae, despite its essential refutation of both faith and religion.

   In his day, Poggio, like Petrarch, was famous for the elegant beauty of his penmanship. Like the best of his craft, Poggio wrote not for speed but for beauty and timeless legibility.

   While I have no plans to write in latin, this has convinced me that I want to learn how to write (and print) with style. (My cursive has always been horrific.) Since reading-to-learn is best done by taking notes by hand of whatever you want to remember, I'm hoping this pursuit will not only improve my retention but also my attention to detail since it will give me time to think out more fully what I think is important and how best to say it.

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3. kashyapcJan 2023
   First, to understand what Epicurus said, I strongly recommend "On the Nature of things" by Lucretius. It's a beautiful (and poetic) work on the core ideas of Epicurus.

   Second, a small nit-pick on the subtitle of the article: while Epicurus was a "rival" to the Stoics in a broad sense, Seneca (the Stoic writer) incessantly quotes Epicurus in his first 20 letters. Seneca even explicitly says he's "lifting from another's garden", where the "garden" is the reference to Epicurus (his school in Athens used to be located in a garden).

   Lastly, there's the big caricature that the "Epicurean life" == unalloyed pleasure (which often implies "base pleasures"). However, as the introduction to On the Nature of Things says, "nobody was less of an epicure than Epicurus himself". Epicurus valued friendship and contemplative virtues a lot more.

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4. mustardgreenFeb 2022
   I would put On The Nature of Things on my list of life changing books as well. Its sublime
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5. kmtrowbrJan 2022
   The human mind is designed to solve problems, and so this is its mode. It perceives death as a problem & in doing so, sets itself an unsolvable problem. Also, consider that human language can describe things and situations which are nonsensical. Yet we have a very hard time imagining "not existing." There is no experience associated with nonexistence. Time will not "zip forward." If we are "reconstituted," as imagined here, we will have no memory of any prior existence. Or if, in the infinite permutations, we do remember, how odd and what a perverse reality that would be. This all may have already happened many times. These are the boundaries of our experience. You can have any attitude you like towards this, but why not a positive attitude which will lead you to enjoying this existence as much as possible, and also helping others to do the same?

   Lucretius laid out The Nature of Things very well in 79 A.D.: https://philosophybreak.com/articles/why-death-is-nothing-to...

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6. surreptitious00Dec 2018
   I recently read, The Swerve about On the Nature of Things by Lucretius. It was very well written has made reading On the Nature of things that much more enjoyable. Getting that context and backstory was -ironically- a godsend. While I agree with his point about coming into conversation late and missing some of the meaning, with some books you just have to accept that that ship has sailed and look for the help of somebody who studied the work. To me this is why historical writers are so important, we put a lot of trust in them.
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