On the Nature of Things

About the book

Lucretius explains an Epicurean account of nature through a poem that moves from atoms and empty space to perception, mind, mortality, the development of human society, and the phenomena of earth and sky. His explanations have an ethical purpose: understanding material causes is meant to reduce dependence on terrifying accounts of divine intervention and punishment after death. Images drawn from ordinary experience help readers imagine processes too small or distant to observe directly. The poem also makes desire, illness, and the fragility of life emotionally present, preventing its argument from becoming merely a detached physical model. This metrical translation preserves the work's presentation as verse. Readers can follow the attempt to make explanation itself a form of liberation while examining the ancient assumptions on which particular explanations depend.

• Nature and explanation
• Mortality
• Freedom from fear

Why read it

For an ambitious union of poetry and explanation that treats understanding nature as a way to change how people experience fear.

Philosophical poem · metrical translation by William Ellery Leonard