the swerve
“clinamen”
idea · 4 works · 4 mentions · 7 anchored passages
swerve · atoms swerve naturally · clinamen · fictitious swerves · mere changed trend · swerve of the atoms · swervement of the elements
in the texts
On Fate
The Epicurean doctrine that atoms undergo a small random deviation (clinamen) from their determined path, invoked to preserve voluntary motion against necessity.
Nor, indeed, does anyone seem to me to confirm more strongly—not only fate, but even necessity and the compelling force of all things—and to have abolished the voluntary motions of the mind, than this man, who confesses that he could not otherwise withstand fate, unless he had taken refuge in these fictitious swerves.
On Moral Ends
Epicurus's proposed deviation of atoms from a straight downward path, invoked to explain how atoms collide and form compounds.
For the swerve itself is imagined arbitrarily — he says the atom swerves without a cause, than which nothing is more disgraceful in a natural philosopher than to say that anything comes to be without a cause — and that natural motion of all weights toward the lower region in a straight line, which he himself had laid down, he took away from the atoms without cause, and yet did not attain the end f …
For if all the atoms swerve, none will ever cling together;
On the Nature of the Gods
Epicurus's doctrine that falling atoms swerve slightly from a straight path, invented to preserve free will against strict determinism.
Thus Epicurus, when he saw that, if the atoms were borne downward by their own weight, nothing would be in our power, since their motion would be fixed and necessary, found a way to escape necessity — a thing which had plainly escaped Democritus:
For though he changed some things, such as what I said a little while ago about the swerve of the atoms, yet he says most things the same:
De Rerum Natura
The clinamen: the doctrine that falling atoms swerve slightly and unpredictably from a straight line, breaking strict causal determinism, enabling collisions/creation and grounding free will.
From that slight swervement of the elements
The atoms must a little swerve at times-
In scarce determined places, from their course