Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance

The rediscovery of Lucretius's 'De Rerum Natura' threatened to supply radicals and atheists with the one weapon unbelief had lacked in the Middle Ages: good answers.

Scholars could now challenge Christian patterns of thought by employing the theory of atomistic physics, a sophisticated system that explained natural phenomena without appeal to divine participation, and argued powerfully against the immortality of the soul, the afterlive, and a creator God.

Ada Palmer explores the process of ingesting and disseminating Lucretius and the ways it transformed modern thought.

She uncovers humanist methods for reconciling Christian and pagan philosophy and shows how ideas of emergent order and natural selection joined Europe's intellectual landscape.