If things could be created out of nothing, any kind of things could be produced from any source. In the first place, men could spring from the sea, squamous fish from the ground, and birds could be hatched from the sky; cattle and other farm animals, and every kind of wild beast, would bear young of unpredictable species, and would make their home in cultivated and barren parts without discrimination. Moreover, the same fruits would not invariably grow on the same trees, but would change: any tree could bear any fruit. Seeing that there would be no elements with the capacity to generate each kind of thing, how could creatures constantly have a fixed mother? But, as it is, because all are formed from fixed seeds, each is born and issues out into the shores of light only from a source where the right ultimate particles exist. And this explains why all things cannot be produced from all things: any given thing possesses a distinct creative capacity. (Lucretius On Nature of Things, Book I. 155-191)
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Uh... lol?
Just worth noting that creationism was being rejected for good reason back in the classical era.
Next up I'll quote the Frenchman who invented both evolution and biparental particulate heredity...
But it also resembles a lot of anti-evolution and anti-big-bang arguments.
rehana - yeah, I was about to suggest the same thing. This quote doesn't fully lend itself to either side. I can see an evolutionist using it but it seems to also be useful (if used in a certain context) to argue for creationism.
so, I would say it is a fairly pointless quote without some sort of description of what you got out of it. John - can you elaborate a bit?
z.
I wonder if the word "nothing" is meaningful at all. After all, nothing cannot exist by definition, and therefore does not exist. Even in physics, is there such a thing as a perfect vacuum (no matter, no space, no time)? Virtual particles form spontaneously, so nothingness would seem to be rather unstable.
I wonder if the word "nothing" is meaningful at all.
Let's define "nothing" (slightly more interesting than "defining nothing"):
Greater than God
Worse than the devil
The rich need it
The poor have it
If you eat it, you will die
Obviously silly, but many people who think infinity is mind boggling think the concept of "nothing" is simple. (Perhaps there are fewer kinds of "nothing" than there are kinds of infinity.)
The philosopher Carnap was right in his criticisms of Heidegger: the term "nothing" is simply the operation of negation applied to the existential quantifier, e.g. "there is no more beer in the fridge." It's only hopelessly confused metaphysicians who hypostatize a routine grammatical remark into a mysterious substance, "nothingness," "the nothing," etc.
Lucretius' comment might seem to make common cause with the fixity of kinds, but it could work nicely against the Aristotelian demand for a "first cause" or for "creation ex nihilo." But what's especially nice about it is the style of thinking it displays: that metaphysical doctrines can be confirmed or refuted by appeals to experience.
Lucretius is here giving a relatively faithful, so far as we know, account of the doctrines of Epicurus, shortly after or contemporaneous with Aristotle. Why I like it is this: he realises that for there to be order in biological development, there has to be an internal natural propensity to generate progeny. In effect, Epicurus is the first materialist about living kinds, and in response to Aristotle's finalism.
Moreover, I read this as a statement about induction - if we allow that anything is possible, nothing will be expected. Epicurus had what I call a generative conception of species - that progeny resemble parents because the parents have a generative power to produce things like themselves. It's a naturalism, in other words, of what was roughly regarded as needing something divine.
it also resembles a lot of anti-evolution and anti-big-bang arguments
That may be because the anti-evo crowd misuses and abuses every scrap of data and commentary they get their benighted hands on.
The Lucretius quote sounds like an early, elegant attempt to highlight the need for theories to have predictive value and paves the way for notions of falsifiability. Anyhow, that's my take on it.
DM: I wonder if the word "nothing" is meaningful at all. After all, nothing cannot exist by definition, and therefore does not exist. Even in physics, is there such a thing as a perfect vacuum (no matter, no space, no time)? Virtual particles form spontaneously, so nothingness would seem to be rather unstable.
I believe only death itself can bring 'nothing' into proper perspective.