Bicycles, Centaurs, and Man-faced Ox-creatures: Ontological Instability in Lucretius
The publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859 led to considerable psychological insecurity for many people over the place of humanity in the ‘scale’ of nature, and over our relationship to other creatures and to God. This chapter focuses on some links between ancient and modern expressions of such worries. It argues that the Epicurean theory of the origin of species may come closer to modern evolutionary theories than we have realized, and may quite naturally share many of the problems that modern evolutionary theories face.
Keywords: humanity, nature, creatures, origin of species, Epicurean theory, evolutionary theory
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .