Minimal Parts in Epicurean Atomism Author(s): Gregory Vlastos Source: Isis, Vol. 56, No. 2 (Summer, 1965), pp. 121-147 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/227909 Accessed: 29-09-2016 02:48 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms The History of Science Society, The University of Chicago Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Isis This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Thu, 29 Sep 2016 02:48:41 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Minimal Parts in Epicurean * Atomism By Gregory Vlastos ** I W HAT ARE WE to understand by the " minimum in the atom," 1 its " partless " 2 parts? I know of only two plausible answers. In Section I of this paper I shall explain the difficulties in each which have led me to search for a new solution, the one I present in Section II. 'They Are Physically Indivisible Elements ' Suppose I were to ask, 'What is the capital of a nation?' and were told, 'A city in that nation.' That would be true enough, but not the truth about a capital which explains what it is. Neither would the indivisibility of the minima explain what they are. For if it did, why should Epicurus * This is a partial outcome of research in the Clarendon Press, 1926), pp. 204 ff.; Bailey, Titi history of Greek science which was supported Lucreti Cari De rerum natura (Oxford: by a grant of the National Science Foundation. Clarendon Press, 1947), Vol. II, pp. 700ff., Earlier versions of the paper were circulated 882 ff.; I. E. Drabkin, "Notes on Lucretius II, privately among scholars working in the same 479-82," Classical Philology, 1937, 32: pp. field, and I have profited greatly from criti- 258ff.; and the papers of Hans von Arnim, cisms they have given me. I am particularly S. Luria, and Jurgen Mau to be cited below. indebted to the following: Professors S. Boch- 2 Epicurus, loc. cit., with von Arnim's emen- ner, C. Boyer, P. De Lacy, D. J. Furley, J. Mau, dation (dcitept for diLtyij of the codd.), which J. Murdoch, F. Sparshott; Mr. Bon de Sousa has also been adopted by Luria and, more Pernes; and the unidentified referee whose recently, by Graziano Arrighetti (Epicurus, critical comments I was privileged to see. Opere [Turin: Einaudi, 1960]; from Olof ** Princeton University. Gigon's translation, "Unteilbare," I gather 1 Epicurus, Epistle to Herodotus, I, 59, rb that ev he too adopts this reading [Epikur: Von Trj a&r6To eXXaxrro, Ta eXadXtLra (Diogenes der Uberwindung der Furcht, Zurich: Artemis- Laertius, Vitae philosophorum, ed. H. S. Long, Verlag, 1949, p. 19]); von Arnim's and Luria's II, pp. 522, 5 and 10 [Oxford: Clarendon works will be cited shortly. Though my argu- Press, 1964]; hereafter I shall refer to this work ment in this paper does not depend on the by the abbreviation "DL [Long] "). Readers correctness of this emendation (the same ex- who are not already abreast of the scholarly pression could be recovered from Lucr., I, 601, literature on this subject would find the fol- sine partibus and 625, nullis . partibus, in lowing references most useful: H. A. J. Munro, both cases paired with minima natura, which Titi Lucreti Cari De rerum natura (4th ed. corresponds perfectly with ra eXdciXara Kai- Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, 1886) on Lucretius, [dfMepi] in Epicurus), I am convinced that it I, 599 ff. and II, 478 ff. (for a fuller statement is right, since dcijuwy in this context makes of his views see Journal of Classical and Sacred (a) poor sense, but not (b) so poor that it must Philology, 1854, 1: pp. 28 ff. and pp. 252 ff.); be retained as the lectio difficilior. On behalf Cyril Bailey, The Greek Atomists and Epicurus of (a) I would argue that the notion of (to which I shall refer hereafter by the abbre- unmixed parts of atoms is quite irrelevant viation "GAE ") (Oxford: Clarendon Press, (contrast, e.g., aKipara Kai 7rpwTra rwu/ara in 1928), pp. 285 ff.; Bailey, Epicurus (Oxford: P'lato, Tiniaeus, 57c, where " unmixed " makes ISIS, 1965, VOL. 56, 2, No. 184. 121 This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Thu, 29 Sep 2016 02:48:41 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 122 GREGORY VLASTOS have invented them? In the physical system he had inherited from its founders, Leucippus and Democritus, the primary elements which were defined as indivisibles, and even so named, were the atoms.4 Why then should he want to lodge a new set of indivisibles inside each of the old ones? Did he feel the need for a second line of defense against the horrors 5 of infinite divisibility? Why so? Was there a fear that some exceptional cosmic stress might crack the atoms? A set of more minute indivisibles would have been a childish defense against this. For if the atoms could collapse in an emergency, why should not the minima too in a superemergency? Not, surely, because they are by definition the smallest things that could exist. It is not Epicurus' way to settle factual questions by definition.6 And the very problem we are now considering is fictitious. For Epicurus the atom is unalterability itself,7 the bedrock on which the invariance of the laws governing natural change can safely rest.8 This is the first thing he estab- lishes in the Letter to Herodotus, when he has once laid down (39) the general principle of nature's lawfulness that being cannot perish into not- being (for, if it could, no law of nature would hold),9 and that whatever is in being consists exclusively of bodies and of void: And of bodies some are compounds, others [the elements] from which com- pounds are made. And the latter must be uncuttable (atoma) and unchange- able, if all things are not to perish into not-being, but have power to endure through [any] dissolutions of the compounds, so full [i.e. solid] in nature that at no point in no way can they be dissolved.10 perfect sense, since it refers to the mustprimary be uncuttable (dr6ouovs) by nature" corpuscles which may be "mixed" in(literally various 'must be natures of uncuttable proportions to account for different bodies varieties '), ibid., line 7. of material stuffs; so too in a7ridvrwv 5e TvJ 5 Epicurus adopts the Eleatic argument that oXq/LarTwv ov8ei . d/aCu'y ros aXXots, Theo- the infinite divisibility of matter entails its phrastus, De sensu, 67: atoms of a given shape annihilability, i.e. the metaphysical impossi- never occur " unmixed " with atoms of differ- bility of the conversion of being into not- ent shapes). (a) is tacitly acknowledged being:by DL (Long), II, pp. 521, 4-9; and cf. most of those who keep dci,Lyi, since the trans- my remarks on this argument in my review lations they offer read (at best) as though theirof H. Frankel, Wege und Formen der friih- text were a/uepi after all: so Bailey, who trans- griechischen Philosophie in Gnomon, 1959, 31: lates "indivisible," Ettore Bignone (Epicuro pp. 193 ff., at pp. 198-199. His objection to [Bari, 1920]) "individue," and Robin-Ernout the infinite divisibility of matter would be rein- (A. Ernout and L. Robin, eds., Lucrece, De la forced by his parallel arguments that the nature, I [Paris, 1925], LXXIII) " irreductibles." physical instantiation of convergent infinite Otto Apelt (Diogenes Laertius, II [Berlin, 1955]) sequences entailed absurdities: DL (Long), II, translates "jeder Zusammensetzung ledige" 521, 3-4, 10-18; cf. the citation from this pas- and George K. Strodach, The Philosophy of sage in Section II and notes 92 and 96-99. Lucretius (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Uni- 6Though the atoms are defined as indi- versity Press; 1963), p. 124, " uncompounded "; visibles, their existence is not settled by but for this Epicurus would surely have definition. written doavOera. 7 The atoms are "the unalterables" (DL 3 I use single quotes in imaginary quotations, [Long], II, pp. 522, 13); cf. the conjunction double quotes for real ones. "uncuttable and unchangeable" in the fol- 4 The word airo,tos retains its literal, descrip- lowing citation in the text above - the phrase tive force in Epicurus' use of it: see the whichcita- introduces the atoms in this Epistle. tion from DL (Long), II, pp. 514, 1-6, a little 8 Cf. Lucr., I, 592-598 and 790-797. later in the text above, and note the strong 9 If it could, the natural order would col- descriptive use of the word in such a phrase lapse because its elements would vanish. as " the first bodies (literally, 'the principles') 10 DL (Long), II, pp. 514, 1-6. This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Thu, 29 Sep 2016 02:48:41 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms MINIMAL PARTS IN EPICUREAN ATOMISM 123 This being the case, an auxiliary set of physical uncuttables would have been a pure redundancy. It is very difficult to see why so useless a notion should have even occurred to Epicurus and, if it did, why he should have made a place for it in his tightly constructed system.