Clinamen
Epicurus and Lucretius designate the element of chance within the framework of determinism as clinamen ( Greek : slight deviation ) .
It is based on the idea that the world consists of the smallest particles ( atoms ) that are in a ceaseless fall through empty space. In this case they would remain separate if there were not the slightest deviations in movement , which lead to agglomerations and appearances of the sensory world.
In the words of Lucretius' De rerum natura :
- when the bodies tumble straight down through the void
- with their own weight, so jump at unsteady times
- and at a swaying place from the track they take a little
- so that you can speak of a different direction.
- If they weren't used to bending over (declinare solerent), everything would go down,
- like the drops of rain fall in the baseless emptiness,
- had it not been for the creation of a shock or a blow to the bodies
- been. Nothing would have perfected nature in this way.
(Book 2, v. 217–224, transl. Karl Büchner )
Lucretius used the term clinamen a little later, after he cited the possibility of human beings to intervene in the regular course of things as evidence that this course cannot be completely determined:
- But that the sense itself does not have
- inner compulsion in all things that he begins,
- and as a vanquished is compelled to bear and suffer,
- This is what the original body causes tiny flexion (exiguum clinamen),
- neither in a fixed place nor at a safe time.
(Vv. 289-293)
literature
- Lucretius: De rerum natura. World of Atoms , translated and edited with an afterword by Karl Büchner, Stuttgart: Reclam 1986
- Epicurus: "Letter to Herodot", in: Epicurus: "From Overcoming Fear", introduced and translated by Olof Gigon, Artemis Verlag, Zurich 1968
- Ernst A. Schmidt: "Clinamen - A Study of the Dynamic Atomism of Antiquity." University Press Winter, Heidelberg 2008
- Christian Reidenbach: Article "Deviation", in: Stephan Günzel (Hrsg.): Lexikon der Raumphilosophie . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2012, ISBN 978-3-534-21931-5 . P. 16