Parenklisis and Grice on 'chance and causal indeterminism'

by JLS
for the GC

While we love the Latin language I think it's always good to go back to the Grecian language. The clinamen of the atoms, declinatio, is indeed the paranklisis -- the term that Epicurus used in his letter to Herodotus, as tr. in R. O. Doyle's site,

http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/epicurus/

"The atoms are in continual motion through all eternity. Some of them
rebound to a considerable distance from each other, while others merely
oscillate in one place when they chance to have got entangled or to
be enclosed by a mass of other atoms shaped for entangling."

I like this adjectivisation of the 'paraklisis' as being 'free', in

K. Johansen, "A history of ancient philosophy: from the beginnings to Augustine" (1998, p. 443):

"A not-determined, 'free' swerve (Greek: parenklisis, Latin: clinamen or declinatio)
in a minimal unit of time and a minimal unit of space is sufficient to start a chain
reaction."

While this below by M. Pohlenz in "Freedom in Greek life and thought: the history of an ideal" (1966, p.196) is also interesting,

"I therefore firmly maintain my view explained in detail in Stoa, II, S. 59, that Epicurus' transfer of parenklisis to the soul's atoms came later, and he then gave it a different meaning. 41. He is probably meant in Cicero De fato, 40;"

along with the extraordinary exegesis that Doyle has compiled from Epicurean scholars.

I just thought I would drop a post with the Greek term, as a reminder. The klin- root is present in both the Greek ('klins'- with the 'para-' as merely ornamental?) and the Latin (clin-, de-CLIN, with the 'de-' perhaps translating the 'para-'). The story of 'swerve' is a different animal -- and very Anglo-Saxon in nature. But it's good the Anglo-Saxons had that concept too, or something close to it.

As we now know, there's no way the psychological extension propounded by Epicurus can make 'experimental' sense (neurons are too big to be influenced by atomic considerations) but it was a good try, anyhow, coming from a philosopher in pre-microscopic times, as it were (:)).

Next: its connection with Grice's scepticism for chance and causal indeterminism, in "Actions and Events".