How does Epicurus’s Garden Grow?

Abstract

Epicurus proposed a physical atomism that was a modification of that of Democritus in the light of criticisms of the latter that Epicurus read into Aristotle. One of those modifications involved an emphasis on the priority of evidence provided by the senses. Epicurus rejected scepticism with respect to that evidence that he saw the Democriteans as encouraging. However, it is not the case that the atomism constructed by Epicurus was defended empirically in a way that surpassed what Democritus had accomplished. Epicurus was intent on developing an atomic theory that responded to Zeno as well as Parmenides. He attempted to avoid Zeno’s paradoxes by assuming his atoms to be continua composed of indivisible magnitudes. The degree to which he was intent on countering conceptual puzzles connected with the problems posed by continuous magnitudes led to abstractions that were remote from anything empirically testable. Epicurus was led to a picture of atoms all falling in the infinite void at the same speed, one indivisible magnitude of space in one indivisible magnitude of time. He needed to modify this picture in a contrived way to accommodate the bulk of observable phenomena such as gravity. It is arguable that even billiard-ball collisions became a conceptual problem for Epicurus.