This book stars two often forgotten heros of Western culture: the Roman poet LUCRETIUS who argued that the world was made up of atoms and that the fear of death was foolish and POGGIO BRACCIOLINI, whose rediscovery of LUCRETIUS's great poem launched all kinds of radical intellectual inquiry into the modern world.
The ancient poem, was called, ON THE NATURE OF THINGS. It had been lost to history for more than one thousand years. It was a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functions without the aid of gods, that religious fear is damaging to human life, that pleasure and virtue are not opposed but intertwined, and that matter is made up of very small particles in eternal motion, randomly colliding and swerving in new directions.
The poem's vision would shape the thoughts of GALILEO and FREUD, DARWIN and EINSTEIN and in the hands of THOMAS JEFFERSON, leave its mark on the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
It is an excellent book!!!!
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