Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  Puzzling about a matter of translation. Lucretius, the great Latin poet, wrote ON THE NATURE OF THINGS some time around 58 BC, giving us a book-length rendering of the views of the Greek atomists.  The matter of translation I have in mind is Lucretius' decision to refer to "atoms" as "primordia." That word in turn gets translated into English as "first beginnings." This is odd. "Atom," as even a flunk-out of languages like Christopher Faille knows, means "indivisible." Isn't there some word in Latin that would be a better translation for that then "first beginnings"? Oh, I don't know (he looks up the etymology of the English word "indivisible")  -- indivisibilus?  Well, "primordia" has only four syllables and "indivisibilis" has six. That may have made it easier to use in verse -- easier to rhyme, and to work into the meter as necessary.  A further investigation of that would take wa...

"He who says that all things happen of necessity can hardly find fault with one who denies that all happens by necessity; for on his own theory this very argument is voiced by necessity." That was Epicurus. He and the Epicureans in general believed in an atomistic picture of the world they had picked up from Democritus, but they also believed that atoms sometimes "swerve," that is, change course randomly.  I don't know what is the Greek for "swerve" but later Latin authors used the term "clinamen."  The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (above) revived use of "clinamen" as a philosophical term of art inthe late 20th century.  But of course, he HAD to do that....