The Primary Textual Sources for Epicurean Canonics are:
- Diogenes Laertius's Biography of Epicurus
- Principal Doctrines Relevant to Canonics
- Philodemus' "On Methods of Inference"
Citations Relevant to the Possibility of Knowledge
Add Lucretius Book Four
Citations Relevant to the Multivalent Approach / Multiple Possibilities / Waiting
Epicurus, Letter to Pythocles, line 94 (translation by XXXX, add link or cite)
The wanings of the moon and its subsequent waxings ..... may be explained in all the ways in which phenomena on earth invite us to such explanations of these phases, if only one does not fall in love with the method of a single explanation (μοναχῇ τρόπος ) and groundlessly disapproves of others, without having considered what it is possible for a human being to observe and what it is not and, for this reason, desirous of observing things that cannot be observed’.
Epicurus, On Nature XI Ia11-19 (text and translation by Sedley, add link or cite)
The sun, if we walk towards the place from which it appeared to us] to rise, directing ourselves up into the mainland zone, appears to us to set where we previously passed by, sometimes even when we have moved in all only a short distance. And this time we cannot blame it on the latitudinal movements. Why after all should you declare the measurement from here, or the one from here, or the one from here, or this one a more reliable guide of the risings and settings (of the sun)?’
T3 Epicurus, On Nature XI IIa1 - 21 (text and translation by Sedley, add link or cite)
They cannot hope] to form a [mental] model ([ὁ]μοίωμα) and to reason out (συλλογίζεσθαι) anything about these matters. For it seems to me that when they spend their time contriving some of them (I means their [ὄρ]γανα, instruments) and fooling around with others, it is no wonder, in view not only of the enslavements brought upon them by their doctrines but also (as far as concerns the appearances of the sun) of the indeterminacies (ἀοριστείας) of risings and settings, that they cannot form an adequate mental model by means of their instruments which
produce no regularity. But their instruments are ...
