One thing I found interesting about this chapter was the idea of how similar Galileo was to Lucretius. There was one similarity I found the most interesting though, this being “Like Lucretius, he (Galileo) believed that everything in the universe could be understood through the same disciplined use of observation and reason” (Page 254). I found this interesting because while reading this whole book and talking about Lucretius’s ideas, and reading about On the Nature of Things, we have learned he views the world based on observations he has made, while Galileo was more of an experimentational guy. While he did create the telescope so that he could observe the world, he still tested many different theories which is why the quote about everything in the universe being understood by observation was interesting to me. Another thing that I found interesting while reading was the last two sentences of the book, “There are sentiments that Lucretius had most hoped to instill in his readers. ‘I am’ Jefferson wrote to a correspondent who wanted to know his philosophy of life, ‘an Epicurean’”(Page 263). I found this interesting because Thomas Jefferson is one of the most well known founding fathers of our nation, and he wrote on the declaration of independence “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, and I had no idea that this was based off of the Epicurean beliefs. Epicurean beliefs had a lot of involvement with living a simplistic life, while Jefferson did not live a very simple life considering he was the third president of our United States.
One text to world connection I made while reading this chapter was how so many inventors, founding fathers, and even scientists had gone through life using the ideas from Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things. On page 262 it talks about people like Darwin, Einstein, and Jefferson who all learned more about the world through observation (some tests). It leads us to understand why the world is the way it is today. We are taught in school that observation is the most key aspect of life, and having good observational skills is one of the best skills you can have.
One question I still have after reading this book, is after reading a section on page 262, it states “The ancient poem could now be safely left unread, that the drama of its loss and recovery could fade into oblivion, that Poggio Bracciolini could be forgotten about entirely…”. My question is that was Poggio really being seen as “rescuing” the manuscripts or were they stolen by him?
