![]() ![]() The birth of the world was chaotic, according to Lucretius, with the four elements in imbalance and its component atoms forming a disordered cloud. This work provides a detailed description of Epicurean philosophy, which encompasses theories of atoms. Though this is a work of science and philosophy, it is also a poem. It was written in the early 50s BC, in Latin. Lucretius shows that the world must be mortal by demonstrating how all of its component elements are mutable and weak (“soft,” as established in Book I) evidence that the world will collapse, since something that is made of mortal components cannot itself be immortal. On the Nature of Things is a philosophical work by the Roman author Titus Lucretius Carus (whom we call Lucretius). ![]() The main elements that make up our world are earth, water, air, and fire. The gods, therefore, did not have a hand in the world’s creation. Lucretius also reminds us that the combination of chance and time created the world: particles traveling at random were bound to create these circumstances eventually. ![]() Though this is inevitable, he does express the hope that “reasoning rather than reality convince you that the whole world may give way and collapse with a horrendous crash” (Book V, lines 108-109 page 139). Lucretius introduces his detailed cosmology by announcing that the ‘world,’ by which he means the sky, the sea, and the land, will collapse one day. ![]()
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