Essentially Epicurus suggested that, in addition to the basic tendency of atoms to move along straight lines, there is a random component to their motion that occasionally kicks them from side to side. It’s vaguely reminiscent of modern quantum mechanics, although we shouldn’t get carried away. (Epicurus didn’t know anything about blackbody radiation, atomic spectra, the photoelectric effect, or any of the other experimental results motivating quantum mechanics.) Part of Epicurus’s reason for introducing the swerve was to leave room for free will—basically, to escape the implications of
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