Natural Philosophy before the Latin Translations

Abstract

Aristotle's natural philosophy and Greek science generally did not begin to enter Western Europe until the middle of the twelfth century. Before that time, only a minuscule part of Greek science and natural philosophy was available in the West. The Romans had not been sufficiently interested in such subjects to translate relevant Greek texts into Latin. But some Roman authors wrote treatises that modern scholars would regard as primarily concerned with natural philosophy. Among those in this group who have left extant treatises, the most famous are Lucretius (ca. 95–ca. 55 bc ), Seneca (ca. 4 bc – ad 65), and Pliny the Elder (ca. ad 23–79). ROMAN AUTHORS The fame of Lucretius derives from his great poem, On the Nature of Things , which presents a picture of nature based on the atomic theory of Epicurus (341–270 bc ), a Greek philosopher. Lucretius dealt with many topics, but the most important was his cosmic vision based on an assumption of an infinity of worlds, each composed of atoms moving in an infinite void space. He assumed that each world comes into being by a chance coming-together of atoms in the void; eventually each world passes away when its atoms dissociate and move into the void to form parts of other worlds. Lucretius was largely ignored by medieval Christianity, because of his attacks on religion and his denial of a created world, as we see in his statement that “our starting-point will be this principle: Nothing can ever be created by divine power out of nothing .”