Limit and Variation in the Epicurean Philosophy

EPICURUS RETAINED the traditional demand of Greek philosophers for fixed standards of knowledge and value, but he abolished the traditional means of supplying these standards. He rejected all transcendence and held that the objects known to us by immediate experience undergo continuous motion and change. A central problem of his philosophy, therefore, was to discover fixed points in this world of change. His solution to this problem, I believe, lay in his notion of limit. Here I follow Lucretius, who tells us that the great prize which Epicurus brought back to us from his triumphant exploration of the universe was the knowledge