Episode 071 - Back To The Beginning - The Beginning of Our Corner of the Universe

Welcome to Episode Seventy-One of Lucretius Today. I am your host Cassius, and together with my panelists from the EpicureanFriends.com forum, we'll walk you through the six books of Lucretius' poem, and discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. We encourage you to study Epicurus for yourself, and we suggest the best place to start is the book, "Epicurus and His Philosophy" by Canadian professor Norman DeWitt. For anyone who is not familiar with our podcast, please check back to Episode One for a discussion of our goals and our ground rules. If you have any question about that, please be sure to contact us at EpicureanFriends.com for more information.<br /><br />In this Episode 71 we will read approximately Latin line 416-508 of Book V, and we will talk about the formation of our world from the fundamental elements. Now let's join Martin reading today's text.<br /><br /><br />Browne 1743<br /><br />But now I shall explicate in order by what chance the violent agitation of matter produced the heavens, and the earth, and the deeps of the sea, and the courses of the sun and moon. For surely the principles of things could never fall into so regular a disposition by counsel or design, nor could they by agreement resolve what motions they should take among themselves. But the seeds of things, being from eternity beaten upon by outward blows, or used to be driven by the force of their own weight, met every way, tried all motions that might at last, by their uniting, end in the production of things; and then having attempted for an infinite time all sorts of union, and moved every way about, those seeds at length met and united, and became the principles of the great productions that followed, of the Earth, the Sea, the Heavens, and the whole animal creation.<br /><br />But as yet there was no chariot of the sun to be seen, driving with his large stock of light through the sky; no sea, no heavens, no air, nothing like any beings of this world of ours to be seen; but a strange confusion, a mass of rude and