Lucretius Beliefs

“Now then-I have shown that things can never be created From nothing, and that no created thing Can never be called back to nothingness. You may, perhaps, begin to doubt my lessons Since atoms are too small to seem but listen,- You must admit that there are other bodies Existing but invisible” (Alder 4). These are words from Lucretius’ poem that was found during the Italian Renaissance. According to the historian Jacob Burckhardt, the Italian Renaissance can be described as the “prototype of the modern world” (Kagan,Ozment, Turner 318). The Italian Renaissance took place between the years of 1375 and 1527 A.D. During this time period many great humanists, such as Francesco Petrarch and Erasmus, contributed to the revival of ancient learning,
The writings of Lucretius has influenced people like Galileo Galilei, Sigmund Freud, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, and even Thomas Jefferson when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Lucretius influenced Galileo’s thoughts and beliefs in the 1600’s. Galileo was in trouble for his theories about how the earth orbited. He was under extreme pressure from the Inquisition because he had agreed to not continue his claims that the earth does revolve around the sun. There is evidence from Galileo’s book, The Assayer, that he had many of the same beliefs that Lucretius possessed. Galileo was on board with the idea that there is no essential difference between “the nature of the sun and plants and the nature of the earth and its inhabitants” (Greenblatt 254). Lucretius had more influence on Galileo than believed. Galileo also believed that everything in the universe could be understood if you used observation and reasoning. Lucretius clearly influenced Galileo but his influences did not stop there (Greenblatt). Lucretius made his way through history and influenced a more modern theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein. Einstein wrote his knowledge about atoms that he learned through experimental and mathematical science. He did not follow the ancient philosophical speculation that most modern physicists believed in. While he did not follow ancient speculation, he was very educated on the ideas from that period. Modern anatomists believed that the ancient poem written by Lucretius could be left unread and packed away for eternity. They concluded that “The drama of its loss and recovery could fade into oblivion, that Poggio Bracciolini could be forgotten almost entirely” (Greenblatt 262). This was not the case with Einstein. His autonomist theories were proof that Lucretius had wiggled his way into the “mainstream of modern thought” (Greenblatt