Epicureanism and Scientific Debates Epicurean Tradition and its Ancient Reception - New (2023) Collection of Commentaries

Thank you! Looks like it's very new. Is there a Volume 1 or other Volumes?

Thank you Matteng! This looks to me to be a major new set of articles that I don't think anyone here has referenced before. I would ask that those who have the time to help us explore what's here and post in the thread about what they are finding. I will also edit the title of the thread to make clear that its a 2 - Volume work - and the PDF download from Academia is free. Thank you again!

Here's the blurb from Cornell:

Epicureanism is not only a defence of pleasure: it is also a philosophy of science and knowledge. This edited collection explores new pathways for the study of Epicurean scientific thought, a hitherto still understudied domain, and engages systematically and critically with existing theories. It shows that the philosophy of Epicurus and his heirs, from antiquity to the classical age, founded a rigorous and coherent conception of knowledge. This first part of a two-volume set examines more specifically the contribution of Epicureanism in the fields of language, medicine, and meteorology (i.e., celestial, geological and atmospheric phenomena).

Offering a renewed image of Epicureanism, the book includes studies on the nature of human language and on the linguistic aspects of scientific discourse; on the relationship between Epicureanism and ancient medicine, from Hippocrates to Galen; on meteorological phenomena and the method of explaining them; and on the reception of Epicurus's legacy in Gassendi.

Contributors: Julie Giovacchini (CNRS, Paris), Francesca Masi (Università Ca' Foscari Venezia), Dino De Sanctis (Università degli Studi della Tuscia), Chiara Rover (Universität Hamburg/MCAS), Enrico Piergiacomi (Universität Zürich), David Leith (University of Exeter), Vincenzo Damiani (Universität Ulm), David Konstan (New York University), Voula Tsouna (UC Santa Barbara), Jürgen Hammerstaedt (Universität zu Köln), Craig Martin (Università Ca' Foscari Venezia), Frederik Bakker (Radboud Universiteit)

In my skimming this work so far, the article I have found most interesting is "The Elaboration of Prolepsis Between Epicurus and The Stoics: A Common Challenge To Innatism?" by Jean-Baptist Gourinat.

The article contains very useful background and a chart comparing uses of prolepsis by Epicurus and the Stoics. He also draws together the evidence that Epicurus and Zeno were not so much at war with each other but that much of the war with the stoics started with Chrysippus.

So far I think he tends to take a different approach than several of us here, in holding (underlined) that "In other words, preconceptions are mental images stored and engraved in the mind, but they also include a conception of what something is, they are the basis for human knowledge and recognition of universal objects, and they are naturally formed in the mind, without being taught."

But regardless of that, he draws a distinction between Diogenes Laertius and Cicero that I think most of us recognize:

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However, there is a difference between the two accounts, sinc e Diogenes Laertius gives examples of preconceptions of natural kinds (i.e., human, horse, or cow) and describes a concept formation that is the result of sense-perception and memory. Cicero by contrast does not refer to the preconceptions of natural kinds but to the preconceptions of the gods, and he does not say that we form this preconception by perception and memory, but that we have an “inborn” (insita uel potius innata) knowledge that nature has “engraved in our minds” (insculpsit in mentibus):

quote omitted... then

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Here, Cicero does not explicitly attribute to Epicurus the claim that we are born and come to life with such a preconception of the gods already implanted in our minds at the very moment of our birth. However, he uses such words as insitus and innatus that point to an innate knowledge, not depending on any sense experience. 41 He also insists that nature engraves preconceptions in our mind, not memory. And indeed it is clear that, whatever maybe the process of formation of our notions of the gods, they cannot come from repeatedly seeing gods as we see humans, horses, and cows and by memorizing the impressions we have of such natural kinds. Thus with the description given by Cicero, it seems that the preconceptions of the gods is formed quite differently from the empiricist way by which we form a preconception of a cow. It is implanted by nature and does not seem to have an empirical origin. It is not the case in Cicero that the prolepsis is built on memory nor in such a way that “the senses give the lead” (προηγουμένων τῶν αἰσθήσεων). It remains that both kinds of preconceptions are sketches or delineation of things, engraved in the mind and preliminary to enquiry and discussion.