Clinamen
Encyclopedia
Clinamen is the Latin name Lucretius
gave to the unpredictable swerve of atoms, in order to defend the atomistic
doctrine of Epicurus
.
According to Lucretius, the unpredictable swerve occurs "at no fixed place or time":
This indeterminacy, according to Lucretius, provides the "free will which living things throughout the world have."
In English it implies that one is inclined or biased towards introducing a plausible but unprovable clinamen when a specific mechanism can not be found to refute a credible argument against one's hypothesis or theory. Lucretius never gives the primary cause of the deflections. The OED gives its first recorded use in English by Jonathan Swift
in his 1706 Tale of Tub ix.166 where he ridicules an unsubstantiated argument:
The term has been taken up by Harold Bloom
to describe the inclinations of writers to "swerve" from the influence of their predecessors; it is the first of his "Ratios of Revision" as described in The Anxiety of Influence
.
In Finnegans Wake
, Joyce alludes to the term on the very first words of his work: riverrun, past Eve and Adams, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth, Castle and Environs. If "Eve and Adam's" refers to "even atoms" in the Epicurean sense, the word swerve has a special meaning.
In Difference and Repetition
, Gilles Deleuze
employs the term in his description of multiplicities, pointing to the observation at the heart of the theory of clinamen that "it is indeed essential that atoms be related to other atoms." Though atoms affected by clinamen engage each other in a relationship of reciprocal supposition, Deleuze rejects this version of multiplicity, both because the atoms are too independent, and because the multiplicity is "spatio-temporal" rather than internal.
Simone de Beauvoir
, Jacques Lacan
, Harold Bloom
, Jacques Derrida
, Jean-Luc Nancy
, Alain Badiou
as well as Michel Serres
have made extensive use of the idea of the clinamen, albeit with very different readings.
Lucretius
Titus Lucretius Carus was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is an epic philosophical poem laying out the beliefs of Epicureanism, De rerum natura, translated into English as On the Nature of Things or "On the Nature of the Universe".Virtually no details have come down concerning...
gave to the unpredictable swerve of atoms, in order to defend the atomistic
Atomism
Atomism is a natural philosophy that developed in several ancient traditions. The atomists theorized that the natural world consists of two fundamental parts: indivisible atoms and empty void.According to Aristotle, atoms are indestructible and immutable and there are an infinite variety of shapes...
doctrine of Epicurus
Epicurus
Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher and the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism.Only a few fragments and letters remain of Epicurus's 300 written works...
.
According to Lucretius, the unpredictable swerve occurs "at no fixed place or time":
When atoms move straight down through the void by their own weight, they deflect a bit in space at a quite uncertain time and in uncertain places, just enough that you could say that their motion has changed. But if they were not in the habit of swerving, they would all fall straight down through the depths of the void, like drops of rain, and no collision would occur, nor would any blow be produced among the atoms. In that case, nature would never have produced anything.
This indeterminacy, according to Lucretius, provides the "free will which living things throughout the world have."
In English it implies that one is inclined or biased towards introducing a plausible but unprovable clinamen when a specific mechanism can not be found to refute a credible argument against one's hypothesis or theory. Lucretius never gives the primary cause of the deflections. The OED gives its first recorded use in English by Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...
in his 1706 Tale of Tub ix.166 where he ridicules an unsubstantiated argument:
The Round and the Square, would by certain Clinamina, unite in the Notions of Atoms and Void.
Modern usage
The OED continues to define clinamen as an inclination or a bias.The term has been taken up by Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is known for his defense of 19th-century Romantic poets, his unique and controversial theories of poetic influence, and his prodigious literary output, particularly for a literary...
to describe the inclinations of writers to "swerve" from the influence of their predecessors; it is the first of his "Ratios of Revision" as described in The Anxiety of Influence
The Anxiety of Influence
The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry is a book by Harold Bloom, published in 1973. It was the first in a series of books that advanced a new "revisionary" or antithetical approach to literary criticism....
.
In Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish author James Joyce, significant for its experimental style and resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's...
, Joyce alludes to the term on the very first words of his work: riverrun, past Eve and Adams, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth, Castle and Environs. If "Eve and Adam's" refers to "even atoms" in the Epicurean sense, the word swerve has a special meaning.
In Difference and Repetition
Difference and Repetition
Difference and Repetition is a book by philosopher Gilles Deleuze, originally published in 1968 in France under the title Différence et Répétition...
, Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...
employs the term in his description of multiplicities, pointing to the observation at the heart of the theory of clinamen that "it is indeed essential that atoms be related to other atoms." Though atoms affected by clinamen engage each other in a relationship of reciprocal supposition, Deleuze rejects this version of multiplicity, both because the atoms are too independent, and because the multiplicity is "spatio-temporal" rather than internal.
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir , was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and...
, Jacques Lacan
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
, Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is known for his defense of 19th-century Romantic poets, his unique and controversial theories of poetic influence, and his prodigious literary output, particularly for a literary...
, Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
, Jean-Luc Nancy
Jean-Luc Nancy
Jean-Luc Nancy is a French philosopher.Nancy's first book, published in 1973, was Le titre de la lettre , a reading of the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, written in collaboration with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe...
, Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou is a French philosopher, professor at European Graduate School, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure . Along with Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Žižek, Badiou is a prominent figure in an anti-postmodern strand of continental philosophy...
as well as Michel Serres
Michel Serres
Michel Serres is a French philosopher and author, celebrated for his unusual career.-Life and career:...
have made extensive use of the idea of the clinamen, albeit with very different readings.
External links
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Lucretius.