Clinamen

In the Physical épicurienne, the clinamen is a variation, a deviation (literally a variation ) spontaneous of the Atome S compared to their vertical fall in the vacuum, which allows the atoms of entrechoquer. This deviation is spatially and temporally unspecified and random, it makes it possible to explain the existence of the bodies and human freedom within a framework materialist. Although this theory is not found that in the rerum will natura of the Latin epicurean Lucrèce it is allotted to Épicure itself, its work having been mainly lost since Roman antiquity.

Report/ratio with the quantum indetermination

In its Of rerum will natura ( Nature of the things , II, 216-219), Lucrèce describes a concept very close to the quantum indetermination but which, far from leading to an ocean of uncertainty, has libertarian accents and of great certainty:

“Here still, in this matter, which I want to make known you. The atoms go down in straight line in the vacuum, pulled by their gravity. But it arrives to them, one could not say where nor when, to deviate a little the vertical, if little that hardly one can speak about variation. Without this variation they would not cease falling through the immense vacuum, like drops of rain; it would not take place with meetings there, with shocks, and never nature could not anything have created. “This is why, I repeat it, it is necessary that the atoms deviate a little the vertical, but hardly and the least possible. Let us not seem to lend oblique movements to them which reality would contradict

“That one nothing deviates in something of its line, which would be able to realize it? But if all the movements are connected in nature, so always of a first is born a second following a rigorous order, so by their clinamen the atoms do not cause a movement which breaks the laws of the fate, and which prevents that the causes do not follow one another ad infinitum, from which would thus come this freedom granted on ground to the living beings; from which would I come, say, this free faculty torn off with the destiny, which makes us go everywhere where the will carries out us?

“With the atoms also we must recognize this property: they also have a cause of movement other than the shocks and gravity - a cause from which comes the innate capacity from the will, since we see that nothing can be born from nothing: however such is the effect of a light deviation of the atoms, in nongiven places and times. ”

Report/ratio in the 'Pataphysique

These variations which appear chance mishaps, epiphenomenes, bring the clinamen closer to the “ science of the private individual, no matter what one says that there is science only of the general ”, that is the 'Pataphysique.

In the Gestures and opinions of the Doctor Faustroll, pataphysician , novel with keys, bible of the Pataphysiciens, Alfred Jarry precisely speaks about the ejaculation of “the unforeseen animal Clinamen ” (delivers VI, chapter XXXIV heading precisely “Clinamen”). O. Votka, pataphysician, write that Épicure seized which in the center of very thought as of any reality (which is never for whoever that a thought of reality), there is an infinitesimal aberrance, an essential inflection, which however directs and disorientates all. The clinamen is thus quite other thing that a chance or that a chance like one often says it. It is a ridiculous concept which Épicure put at the principle…

And the oulipien Paul Braffort comments on: This text opens a polemic (…) on the possible relation of the clinamen with the relations of uncertainty of the Quantum physics. But for Perec the clinamen intervenes especially like “directions for use complementary” to the implementation of the constraints oulipiennes .

See too

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