Lucretius Book 5: From Primeval Ooze to Poetry

An Eclectic Humanist

In Book 5 of On the Nature of Things, Lucretius presents a naturalistic account of the origins of life and, quite frankly, the origins of species in a well articulated explanation of evolution by natural selection. While he of course lacks the observational mechanisms that we now possess, or that Darwin possessed, he was pretty solid in the broad strokes, and it is probably worth noting that Darwin was familiar with this poem. He also offers accounts of both technology and civilization (both of which involve the question of language) that, like his account of life itself, owe nothing to the imagined divine. In these accounts, which knowingly contrast with both Classical and Old Testament mythologies, our drive and ability to know are neither gifted from nor opposed by those perennially threatening fictions from on high, but rather are emergent properties of us, therefore of life, therefore of matter, therefore of the Cosmos, itself. His narrative of technology is particularly interesting as this is poetically interwoven with his narratives of both evolution and civilization in a way that strikes me, at least, as anticipating contemporary notions of the feedback loops by which complex systems often develop. Of course, to stand scrutiny, a naturalistic description of humanity must also account for such matters as laws and the arts, which Lucretius does by proposing an early version of the social contract on the one hand, and on the other, his description of the arts as mechanisms by which we come to both know and appreciate ourselves and the world in which we live. Bound up in this book, from beginning to end, is an account of a naturally emergent human dignity, and a beautiful and compelling picture of true piety as being directed toward the Cosmos itself, and toward our own wondrous nature.