Lucretius III: A History of Motion

For Lucretius, history means something surprisingly different than we ordinarily think. Instead of thinking of history in terms of time, Lucretius interprets it in terms of motion. The implications of this shift are enormous. It means time does not go on forever - the world was born and will die. These are strange and radical ways of thinking about history way ahead of their time. They prefigure, and even exceed in certain ways, the insights of thermodynamics and quantum physics. In this final volume of his trilogy on De Rerum Natura, Thomas Nail argues that Lucretius has a brilliant theory of history that was well ahead of its time and that we can benefit from today. This is especially true in the present time of crisis and pandemics due in part to global climate change. Nail shows that it's not too late to change our understanding of history and overcome our current crises. The time is ripe to reconsider the materiality and movement of history. The time is ripe to re-read one of the first and most radical theorists of history. We still have a lot to learn about history and there is no better guidebook than De Rerum Natura.