Lucretius and Science

A scientist reads an ancient poet and discovers a challenge to modern habits of thought. In Lucretius and Science, Terada Torahiko examines De Rerum Natura not as a collection of obsolete answers but as a living example of intellectual courage and imaginative inquiry.

Moving through the poem’s six books, he considers atoms and empty space, perception and sensation, free will, the origins of living things, celestial motions, earthquakes, and disease. Along the way he brings ancient ideas into conversation with relativity, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, and the practical work of experiment. His central question is what enables a scientist to take a first step beyond established knowledge.

Terada (1878–1935), a Japanese physicist and essayist, writes with curiosity, humor, and a keen awareness of the limits of his own interpretation. First published in 1929, this essay offers a distinctive encounter between classical philosophy and a moment of dramatic change in modern physics.