Recent Reading
On the Nature of Things is a fascinating read. The poem offers on the one hand profound insight into and excellent analysis of the world and human condition, and the other flawed reasoning and rampant speculation. Granted, discovering magnetism and ruling out underground winds as a source for earthquakes and volcanism took humanity a few centuries to research properly. I read a “vigorous prose translation” that predates the all-cataloging eye of the ISBN. Many a florid turn of phrase to machete through, but some gems:
But that which is immortal wills not to have its parts transposed nor any addition to be made nor one tittle to ebb away; for whenever a thing changes and quits its proper limits, this change is at once the death of that which was before. Therefore the mind, whether it is sick or whether is is altered by medicine, alike, as I have shown, gives forth mortal symptoms. So invariably is truth found to make head against false reason and to cut off all retreat from the assailant and by a two-edged refutation to put falsehood to route.1
O hapless race of men, when that they charged the gods with such acts and coupled with them bitter wrath! What groanings did they then beget for themselves, what wounds for us, what tears for our children’s children! No act is it of piety to be often seen with veiled head to turn to a stone and approach every altar and fall prostrate on the ground and spread out the palms before the statues of the gods and sprinkle the altars with much blood of beasts and nail up vow after vow, but rather to be able to look on all things with a mind at peace.2
And, for something completely different, the entertaining classic Lord of Light.3
1 Lucretius. On the Nature of Things. Trans. Munroe, H. A. J. New York: Washington Square, 1965. 73.
2 Lucretius 151.
3 I can see why folks love Endnote. Or hyperlink stuff.