Lucretius, Sheep and Atoms

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 7 January 2019

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

2000 years ago Lucretius composed a long poem that theorised about atoms and the natural world. Written in the first century BCE, during a chaotic and frightening time when the Roman Republic was collapsing, Lucretius encouraged people to feel free through contemplating the physics of the Universe. He said that despite living through a time of bloody civil wars and dictatorship people should not believe they were sheep who had to follow those in power. Naomi discovers that the poem is an epic, beautiful and persuasive piece of work. It begins with a discussion of atoms. Lucretius, like Epicurus, followed the Greek tradition in believing that the universe is composed of tiny, indivisible particles. De Rerum Natura asks us to consider that all that really exists in the universe are these atoms and the void between them. Atoms are indestructible, the number of atoms in the universe is infinite and so is the void in which the atoms move. What Lucretius is saying here was revolutionary then – and still has the power to surprise. He’s saying that there are no supernatural forces controlling our lives, no fate pulling the strings, if there are gods they’re made of atoms just like everything else. There is nothing else. Naomi discusses the life of Lucretius and his poem with classicist Dr Emma Woolerton of Durham University. And she talks to particle physicist Professor Jonathan Butterworth of UCL about which of his theories still holds water today. Picture: Gathered sheep, Credit: Chris Strickland, Getty Images

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service.
0:04.7	Join me as I serve up personal conversations
0:07.1	with my sensational guests.
0:08.9	Do a leap, interviews, Tim Cook.
0:11.2	Technology doesn't want to be good or bad.
0:15.0	It's in the hands of the Creator.
0:16.7	It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room.
0:20.6	If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes, you're
0:24.7	doing the wrong thing.
0:25.9	Julie, at your service.
0:27.8	Listen to all episodes on BBC Sales.
0:31.6	You're listening to Discovery on the BBC World Service and I'm Naomi Alderman.
0:36.0	Do you ever think about the forces that control your life?
0:42.0	The physics of the universe we live in and what they mean
0:47.0	about whether you're in charge of your own destiny or whether we're just sheep
0:52.2	who go where we're put.
0:54.0	Across history there have been some theories of the physical world
0:59.0	that have suggested that there's no such thing as free will, that atoms bump into other atoms in accordance with the laws of physics like
1:07.3	billiard balls on green bays. That we're trapped by forces much larger than ourselves and there's nothing we can do to change anything.
1:18.0	And then there are people who want us to think differently, who theorise about physics in the natural world to encourage us to feel more free, who would like us to use physics to face even our own mortality calmly.
1:37.0	This is the story of Lucretius, author of the 2,000 year old poem de Rerum Natura on the nature of things, whose theories of the physical world still hold water today and who can make us think differently about the meanings of our own lives.
1:54.4	We don't know a lot about the life of Lucretius.
	...

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