Clinamen

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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