what am i doing now

for the past couple of weeks i've been slowly digesting lucretius' de rerum natura, which translates into on the nature of things. for some reason penguin publishing repackaged an english translation of the poem (6 volumes in all) as sensation and sex

geez.

anyway, there's some rather smart scientific deductions in the book, made by pure logical reasoning and basic observations. he had predicted brownian motion way before it was truly discovered (wow). 

but some of it is, to me, fallacious. maybe i'm skeptical because many of his deductions are false, but he began many arguments with rather unsound assumptions. his discussion on the mind, body and spirit and how they work is laughable. mainly because he did not have the scientific tools or knowledge to infer such complex things.

sample:

the same reasoning proves that mind and spirit are both composed of matter. we see them propelling the limbs, rousing the body from sleep, changing the expression of the face and guiding and steering the whole man - activities that all clearly involve touch, as touch in turn involves matter. how then can we deny their material nature?

but i concede that the above was at least, based on observations so he's not irrational.

another one:

my next task will be to demonstrate to you what sort of matter it is of which this mind is composed and how it was formed. first i affirm that it is of very fine texture and composed of exceptionally minute particles. if you will mark my words, you will be able to infer this from the following facts. it is evident that nothing happens as quickly as the mind represents and sketches the happening to itself. therefore the mind sets itself in motion more swiftly than any of those things whose substance is visible to our eyes. but what is so mobile must consist of exceptionally minute and spherical atoms, so that it can be set going by a slight push.

actually a lot of the deductions are coloured with fascinating, albeit untrue, poetic language. 

now for the fact that the eyes avoid bright objects and refuse to gaze at them. the sun, indeed, actually blinds them if you persist in directing them towards it. the reason is that its force is immense and the films [lucretius' idea of the surface particles which are emanated from an object] it gives off travel with great momentum through a great depth of pure air and hit the eyes hard, so as to disrupt their atomic structure. besides, a bright light that is painful often scorches the eyes, because it contains many particles of fire whose infiltration sets them smarting. 

ok, that was a bad quote for 'poetic language' =.= but, yeap. very tainted with roman mythology and beliefs. which i suppose, must have been normal and logical for its time. 

or maybe we're living in a world that's too logical, too scientific, too exact to appreciate the beauty of the unknown, that we dismiss anything unscientific as untruths.

hm, i haven't finished reading the book yet, actually. i'm at part iv, i think. his discussion on what causes us to sense is rather accurate. and the exciting part about sex (i suppose it's exciting? haha. tsk, the publishers decided to rename the poem for a reason, right.) is up ahead.