Perhaps, though that seems a perspective biased by living, while the other 99.999% of reality would consider all life to be a fleeting anomalous spark that arcs brilliantly before returning to the collective abyss.
Some people around then were well ahead of their time.
The Epicureans theorizing around all mass as made up of indivisible parts realized that if deterministic movements governed those parts that free will could not exist and thus ended up with their idea of the ‘Swerve’ and how indivisible parts of matter could have multiple probabilistic outcomes - much closer to 500 BCE than the 20th century experimental evidence both proving mass was made up of indivisible parts and that those parts have multiple probabilistic outcomes.
Maybe ideas you dismiss just haven’t had the proper supporting experiments dreamt up yet.
The Epicureans started with the idea that people were just bits of mass doing the things bits of mass do. Only by making a materialist assumption were they able to reach an interesting, novel, and possibly correct conclusion.
The thing that was the biggest contributor to the Epicureans being right about so much was their commitment to avoiding false negatives and insistence on not discounting explanations for things when they weren’t certain.
What is why it was weird they were so committed to the idea of the soul’s dependence on the body, particularly when their belief in eternal recurrence effectively provided the conditions for that not to be the case.
You can start from a materialist beginning and yet arrive at a non-materialist conclusion.
You aren’t trapped in the decaying body, you are the decaying body. HA HA HA HA
You aren’t the decaying body, you’re the reason it’s decaying… 🥹
You are actively trying to destroy it as your body is continually trying to preserve itself … you are your own worst enemy.
You are both the reason it isn’t already rotten, and the reason it inevitably will be, no matter how hard you try.
Neat the power of good and evil, yin and yang, the dead and the living … a constant balance between forces
Where life may have momentary strength and periodically wins in the short term … death has stamina and plays the long game
Perhaps, though that seems a perspective biased by living, while the other 99.999% of reality would consider all life to be a fleeting anomalous spark that arcs brilliantly before returning to the collective abyss.
Materialism is cringe
Ewww, dualism is so fifth century BC.
Some people around then were well ahead of their time.
The Epicureans theorizing around all mass as made up of indivisible parts realized that if deterministic movements governed those parts that free will could not exist and thus ended up with their idea of the ‘Swerve’ and how indivisible parts of matter could have multiple probabilistic outcomes - much closer to 500 BCE than the 20th century experimental evidence both proving mass was made up of indivisible parts and that those parts have multiple probabilistic outcomes.
Maybe ideas you dismiss just haven’t had the proper supporting experiments dreamt up yet.
The Epicureans started with the idea that people were just bits of mass doing the things bits of mass do. Only by making a materialist assumption were they able to reach an interesting, novel, and possibly correct conclusion.
The thing that was the biggest contributor to the Epicureans being right about so much was their commitment to avoiding false negatives and insistence on not discounting explanations for things when they weren’t certain.
What is why it was weird they were so committed to the idea of the soul’s dependence on the body, particularly when their belief in eternal recurrence effectively provided the conditions for that not to be the case.
You can start from a materialist beginning and yet arrive at a non-materialist conclusion.