Abstract
The importance and the frequency of the analogy between letters and atoms in ancient atomism are well known. The search for and the discovery of this analogy appear as an attempt to explain the coexistence of change and permanence in nature. But atomism was not the only corpuscular theory proposed with a view to solving this problem. Moreover, the comparison of nature or the world with letters and their combinations is also used elsewhere. It appears, for example, in connection with the theory of the four elements. But it seems to be in use here much later and with an exclusively illustrative or didactic function. The pseudo-Aristotelian De mundo compares the harmonious mixing of the elements in nature with the blending of colours in painting, of sounds in music, or of vowels and consonants in discourse1:
But [...] art as well, imitating nature, does so. For painting, mixing the natures of the colours white, black, yellow and red, furnishes images which resemble the preceding ones. Music, mixing in the same way sharp and low-pitched, long and short sounds, realizes a single harmony between different voices. And grammar, making a mixture of vocalic and consonantic letters, builds its whole art upon them.
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Notes
Aristoteles Latinus, De mundo, (5), 396 b 16–23, ed. W.L. Lorimer, Rome, Libr. dello Stato, 1951, p. 66. My translation.
Cf. F. Desbordes, Idées romaines sur l’écriture, Lille, Presses Univ. de Lille, 1990, p. 127.
Ibid., p. 129.
On the linguistic concept of “double articulation”, cf. A. Martinet, La, Linguistique synchronique, Paris, P.U.F., 1974, chapter I.
Cf., in this volume, R. Harré e.a., “Apparatus as Models of Nature”, pp. 1–16.
Aristotle, On Generation and Corruption, 315 a 34 and 315 b 6–14, in Complete Works, revised Oxford translation, ed. by J. Barnes, Princeton, Princeton Univ. Press, 1985, vol. I, p. 514.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 985 b 16–17.
M. Serres, La naissance de la physique dans le texte de Lucrèce. Fleuves et turbulences, Paris, Ed. de Minuit, 1977, p. 175. My translation.
R. Cadiou, “Atomes et éléments graphiques”, Bulletin de VAssociation G. Budé, oct. 1958, pp. 54–64.
As in the case of difference in tropè or thesis. The example of I and H appears in Philo of Alexandria, De aeternitate mundi, 22. But the manuscripts of the Aristotelian text mention also Z and N, N and H, or Z and H. For the difference in rhusmos or schema, the case of A and N is sometimes replaced by A and H.
Cadiou (o.c.) suggests a runic or ogamic type.
Cf. G. de Santillana, Le Origini del pensiero scientifico, Firenze, Sansoni, 1966, pp. 153, 157.
E. Benveniste, Problèmes de linguistique générale, Paris, Gallimard, 1966, p. 333.
Ibid., p. 330.
H. Wismann, “Réalité et matière dans Tatomisme démocritéen”, in F. Romano (ed.), Democrito e l’atomismo antico (= Siculorum Gymnasium, n.s., XXXIII-1, 1980, p. 69: “Le terme de rhusmos (plus couramment rhuthmos) évoque d’abord le mouvement de l’eau, la succession régulière des ondes (voir le verbe rheiri)”. All other quotations come from the pp. 70–71. See also another article by H. Wismann, “Atomos Idea”, Neue Hefte für Philosophie, XV-XVI (1979), pp. 34–52.
For an overview of the etymology and the significations of these words, cf. F. Desbordes, o.c., chapter VII.
Translation from the Complete Works, vol. II, p. 2331. Cf. the comment in the edition of the Poetics by R. Dupont-Roc & J. Lallot, Paris, Seuil, 1980, p. 318.
Cf. H. Maldiney, Aîtres de la langue et demeures de la pensée, Lausanne, L’Age d’Homme, 1975, pp. 338–341.
On the rhetorical and poetic effects of enargeia in general, cf. P. Galand-Hallyn, Les Yeux de l’éloquence, Orléans, Paradigme, 1995.
Lucretius systematically uses elementa to designate the letters. The De rerum natura has only one occurrence of littera (II, 292).
I quote the translation by M. Ferguson Smith, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard Univ. Press; London, Heinemann, 1975.
For a series of other examples, cf. P. Friedländer, “Pattern of Sound and Atomistic Theory in Lucretius”, American Journal of Philology, 1941, pp. 16–33.
As we saw, the stoikheion is the minimal unity of spoken as well as written language.
M. Bollack, La Raison de Lucrèce, Paris, Minuit, 1978, p. 246 (my translation). Cf. also the indications given by R. Galvagno, “Modello seiendfico e testo poetico: atomi e lettere in Lucrezio e Marchetti”, in Il segno barocco. Testo e metafora di una civiltà, ed. G. Nocera, Rome, Bulzoni, 1983, pp. 245–261. My analysis of the metaphor of writing in Lucretius does not of course aim at being complete. For a thorough study of different aspects of the question, cf. A. Deremetz, Le Miroir des Muses, Lille, Septentrion, 1995, pp. 242–288.
Cf. H. Blumenberg, Die Lesbarkeit der Welt, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1981, p. 40: “Die Buchstabenmetapher veranschaulicht zwar die reduktive Verfahrensweise der atomistischen Theorie, aber sie leistet nichts zu ihrer Begründung.”
Cf. De rerum natura, II, 700 sqq., and V, 837 sqq.
Cicero, De natura deorum, II, 93, transi. H. Rackham, London, Heinemann; Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard Univ. Press, 1961, p. 213.
Two examples: Kepler, who in his De Stella nova reports a conversation with his wife on the subject (Gesammelte Werke, vol. I, ed. M. Caspar, Munich, Beck, 1938, pp. 238–286); and Chateaubriand, who inserts in the “notes et éclaircissements” of his Génie du christianisme a long development which should refute atomistic theories.
I, 227–228: “... whence does Venus restore living creatures to the light of life each after its kind...”.
II, 172–174: “... and in a word all else which divine pleasure, the guide of life, persuades men to approach, herself leading them and coaxing them, through the ways of Venus, to beget their generation, that the human race may not come to an end.”
“Etymological”, of course, in the ancient sense, not as practiced in modern linguistics.
De rerum natura, IV, 836–841; V, 1041–1043.
De rerum natura, 1, 150: “nullam rem e nilo gigni divinitus umquam”; see also Epicurus’ Letter to Herodotus. And cf. the modern version by B. Russell (A History of Western Philosophy, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1963, p. 67): the question of the teleology of Creation is senseless, “since, to make it significant, we should have to suppose the Creator created by some super-Creator, whose purpose he served. The conception of purpose, therefore, is only applicable within reality, not to reality as a whole.”
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Hallyn, F. (2000). Atoms and Letters. In: Hallyn, F. (eds) Metaphor and Analogy in the Sciences. Origins, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9442-4_4
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