A ponderous, scholastic joke

October 4, 2015 6:54 PM

On the Nature of Things Humanity Was Not Meant to Know: Cosma Shalizi considers Lucretius' De Rerum Natura ('On the Nature of Things') as a "real-life Necronomicon, a book full of things humanity was not meant to know."
posted by kliuless (9 comments total)

Much more important for C. Shalizi the physicist-cum-statistician-cum-economist, I imagine, is the justification for Lucretius's atomism:

And yet it is hard to believe that anything
in nature could stand revealed as solid matter.
The lightning of heaven goes through the walls of houses,
like shouts and speech; iron glows white in fire;
red-hot rocks are shattered by savage steam;
hard gold is softened and melted down by heat;
chilly brass, defeated by heat, turns liquid;
heat seeps through silver, so does piercing cold;
by custom raising the cup, we feel them both
as water is poured in, drop by drop, above.

To wit, phase transitions.
posted by curuinor at 7:03 PM on October 4, 2015 [6 favorites]

It appears as though it was the wellspring of humanity's darkest art: social science.
posted by codacorolla at 8:42 PM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

It begins well...
posted by y2karl at 8:56 PM on October 4, 2015

It appears as though it was the wellspring of humanity's darkest art: social science.

And yet my committee won't entertain the idea of necromancy even if it gets me a bullet-proof N
posted by clockzero at 9:27 PM on October 4, 2015 [5 favorites]

Every time someone mentions DRN I flash back to having to wade through 5 books of it in Latin and filling with impotent rage every time he went off on some extravaganza about atoms that made no sense at all.

God, I really hate this poem.
posted by lesbiassparrow at 10:46 PM on October 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

If you follow the links it leads to a nice story "The Litany of Earth" by Ruthanna Emrys
posted by carping demon at 12:28 AM on October 5, 2015

Finally, I would pay good money to read the alternate history where it was the Necronomicon which humanists discovered mouldering in a monastic library and revived, where its ideas are as thoroughly normalized, pervasive and surpassed as Lucretius's are, and copies of Kitab al-Azif can be found in any bookstore as a Penguin Classic, translated by a distinguished contemporary poet.

That is a fascinating idea.
posted by Rock Steady at 8:26 AM on October 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

We've had Ada Palmer and The Litany of Earth on Metafilter previously.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 2:41 PM on October 5, 2015

God, I really hate this poem.

Aw, I loved all the delightful nonsense. Probably the most fun I ever had working out interesting ways to translate Latin. Wish that class had covered more of it, really. I should give it another go sometime.
posted by asperity at 9:30 PM on October 5, 2015