Natural Questions

by Seneca, Harry M. Hine (Translator)

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BCE–65 CE) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, dramatist, statesman, and adviser to the emperor Nero, all during the Silver Age of Latin literature. The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca is a fresh and compelling series of new English-language translations of his works in eight accessible volumes. Edited by world-renowned classicists Elizabeth Asmis, Shadi Bartsch, and Martha C. Nussbaum, this engaging collection restores Seneca—whose works have been highly praised by modern authors from Desiderius Erasmus to Ralph Waldo Emerson—to his rightful place among the classical writers most widely studied in the humanities.

 

Written near the end of Seneca’s life, Natural Questions is a work in which Seneca expounds and comments on the natural sciences of his day—rivers and earthquakes, wind and snow, meteors and comets—offering us a valuable look at the ancient scientific mind at work. The modern reader will find fascinating insights into ancient philosophical and scientific approaches to the physical world, and also vivid evocations of the grandeur, beauty, and terror of nature.

Genres: Philosophy, Classics, Nonfiction, Ancient

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 63

About the author

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (often known simply as Seneca or Seneca the Younger); ca. 4 BC – 65 AD) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero, who later forced him to commit suicide for alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to have him assassinated.

Reviews

[Valeriu Gherghel · Rating 4 out of 5]

În enciclopedia sa, Seneca descrie meteoriții, haloul, grindina, Nilul, cutremurele din Campania, apele stătătoare, rîurile și fluviile, curcubeul, obiceiurile delfinilor, fulgerul, eclipsele etc. Rămînem cu impresia că este vorba de o „istorie naturală”, precum aceea a lui Gaius Plinius Secundus. Dar nu!

Pentru Lucius Annaeus Seneca (ca. 4 – 65), cercetarea lumii fizice este, cel mai adesea, prilej pentru învățături și îndemnuri morale. Într-un loc, citim o critică necruțătoare a hedonismului. În altă parte, o diatribă în contra lingușitorilor. Excursul despre oglindă devine treptat o denunțare a luxului și desfrîului. Iată: „Oglinzile au fost descoperite pentru ca omul să se cunoască pe sine însuși... Mai întîi, au utilizat fierul... Cînd luxul a devenit atotputernic, au fost cizelate din aur și argint oglinzi de mărimea unui corp omenesc și apoi împodobite cu pietre prețioase... Produsele diferitelor meșteșuguri sînt folosite atît de nediferențiat de ambele sexe încît cele care desemnau universul feminin fac parte acum din bagajul bărbaților. Al tuturor bărbaților, vreau să zic, inclusiv al militarilor. Se folosește astăzi oglinda numai pentru găteli? Nu, ea a devenit indispensabilă pentru orice viciu” (Naturales quaestiones, cartea I, capitolul XVII).

Tratatul lui Seneca este îndeosebi o colecţie copioasă de opinii ale altora cu privire la istoria naturală. Filosoful precizează în chip repetat: Aristotel a spus că, Posidonius a spus că, Attalus a spus că…

În acest chip, tratatul lui devine un amestec de observaţii corecte şi de opinii incredibile. În timpul ploilor diluviale, precizează filosoful, lupii vor înota alături de miei. Există ape care schimbă culoarea oilor ce se adapă din ele: cele albe devin negre, cele negre devin albe etc. Savantul Seneca este de o imensă credulitate, ca toţi anticii, de altfel.

Consemnează cu seriozitate că fulgerul face să îngheţe vinul în butii: cînd se dezgheață, cei care-l beau își pierd mințile. Fulgerul goleşte şerpii de venin. Și tot el, mai spune Seneca, topeşte sabia din teacă, dar lasă teaca neatinsă. În fine: „un crocodil este curajos cu cei lași și laș cu cei puternici”.

Discursul enciclopedic este întrerupt de lungi meditaţii asupra morţii, fricii, linguşirii, luxului, rafinării plăcerilor, decăderii moravurilor, deşertăciunii, vacuităţii etc.

[Hande Kılıçoğlu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Latince aslından çevrilmiş olan kitaptaki dip notlar ve açıklamalar oldukça tatmin ediciydi. Çevirmen Cengiz Çevik'e bu titiz çalışmasından dolayı teşekkürü bir okur olarak borç bilirim. Seneca, M.S. Roma imparatorluğunda yaşamış düşünür ve devlet adamı. Kitabında ise öğrencisine doğa olaylarını ve göksel hareketlerini kimi zaman mantığıyla, kimi zaman ise dönemin inançlarını temel alarak ve de bazı ahlaki derslerle birleştirerek anlatmaya çalışıyor. Günümüz bilim anlayışıyla oldukça çelişmekte tabii ki bu anlatım ama yine de dönemin dünyaya ve bakış açısını ve doğayı anlamlandırma çabasını anlayabilmek adına oldukça bilgilendirici bir kitap olduğunu düşünüyorum. Eğer bu ilginizi çekecek bir konuysa mutlaka okumanızı tavsiye ederim ama ilginiz yoksa okumakta oldukça zorlanabilirsiniz.

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seneca is my favorite Roman author, but this a preference that has been based purely on his letters and life story -- a Stoic philosopher who was one of the wealthiest men of his day, a tutor and later advisor to the Emperor Nero, who eventually demanded his suicide after Seneca's involvement in an assassination attempt. Natural Questions is the first volume in a new Complete Seneca coming from University of Chicago Press.

You don't read ancient science writers for the science. Plate techtonics does not figure into the discussion of earthquakes. Meteors are balls of fire generated in the clouds. But Seneca is aware of the limitations of the scientific theories he alternately refutes and supports. "The will come a day," he writes, "when our descendants will be astonished that we did not know such obvious facts."

Seneca is the most urbane of commentators, and his stoicism informs his natural history. There are many digressions. "Allow me to put our inquiry to one side for a short while and castigate luxury," is his lead in to a condemnation of the rich who will only eat a fish if they have seen it die at their table. And he is ruthless on those effeminate men who frequent the gladitorial schools.

HIs passion is learning. "If I had not been allowed access to these questions, it would not have been worth being born...Take away this valuable blessing, and life is not worth the sweat and the panic."

[Annika Unterberger]

Seneca schrieb die Naturales Quaestiones 62/63 n. Chr., um seinen Zeitgenossen die (Natur)Philosophie näher zu bringen; sie stellen also eine Zusammenfassung des Wissenschaftsstandes von vor 2000 Jahren dar.

In 7 Büchern befasst sich Seneca mit den verschiedensten Naturphänomenen: von Blitz und Donner, über Wasser, bis hin zu Kometen ist so ziemlich alles dabei. Dabei stützt er sich mehr auf Argumente als auf Experimente und will der Wahrheit so nah wie möglich kommen, indem er das gesamte Material, das andere Autoren vor ihm zu einem Themengebiet gesammelt haben, darlegt und sich dann für die laut ihm logischste Erklärung entscheidet. Mit unserem heutigen Wissen ist natürlich klar, dass Seneca mit den meisten seiner recht abenteuerlichen Theorien falsch liegt, was jedoch verständlich ist, da die Wissenschaft in den letzten 2000 Jahren nicht stehen geblieben ist, sondern sich weiterentwickelt hat. Dennoch ist es interessant über den Beginn der Naturwissenschaften zu lesen.

Seneca gehört zur sogenannten silbernen Latinität, was neben seinen Lebensdaten daran zu erkennen ist, dass seine Sätze relativ kurz und sehr bildhaft sind, er also viel mit Metaphern, Vergleichen und Sentenzen arbeitet. Seine Wortwahl besitzt eine große Fülle und er verwendet keine feste naturwissenschaftliche Terminologie, sondern vielmehr verschiedene Wörter für die Abwechslung. Weiters ist sein Stil beinahe rhetorisch, da seine Ausdrucksweise recht einfach und direkt ist, er aber auch einige rhetorische Raffinessen einbaut. Es finden sich neben rein didaktischen Stellen, die sich der lebhaften Umgangssprache annähern, auch mit allen Stilmitteln der Rhetorik ausgeschmückte philosophisch-moralische Stellen. Generell sind die Naturales Quaestiones locker zu lesen.

Ich habe die Naturales Quaestiones als Recherche für ein Referat über die antiken Vorstellungen zum Vulkanismus gemeinsam mit dem Lehrgedicht Aetna gelesen. Seneca behandelt den Vulkanismus allerdings nur als Begleiterscheinung zu den Erdbeben. Dabei ist seine Hauptquelle Poseidonios, der wie auch Seneca den Mikro- & Makrokosmos als gegeben ansieht. (Diese Theorie besagt, dass sich der Mensch als Mikrokosmos und die Erde als Makrokosmos spiegeln; da der Mensch mit „Luft“ gefüllte Adern hat, muss die Erde auch von Hohlräumen durchzogen sein.) Demnach sind unterirdische Winde für Erdbeben verantwortlich. Wenn sich diese entzünden und an die Oberfläche gelangen, brechen Vulkane aus. Laut Seneca kann das Feuer entweder durch Zusammenstöße der Luft bzw. unterirdischer Wolken, aber auch durch unterirdische Blitze entstehen.

[Illiterate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stoic natural philosophy. Seneca’s ethical digressions tie the good to cosmic harmony.

[Raymond · Rating 2 out of 5]

The start of my official foray into reading more ancient Stoics and philosophy, Natural Questions (Volume 1 in The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca) was hard to understand on a number of levels. Part technical manual, part moral musings, it was all too easy for me to get bogged down in these amalgamated, sometimes unfinished or lost collections on such topics as cosmology, thunder and lightning, and water. That said, there were a couple of things worth noting that demonstrate why the teachings of the well-known Roman philosophers remain so important to this day.

To just get to the point on this one: what’s important here isn’t the outdated science, but the philosophical and ethical reflections on the human condition in relation to it. When speaking about cosmology, Seneca reflects on the beauty and complexity of curiosity and humility, while also cautioning against the trappings of superstition. In regards to thunder and lightning, it becomes about the dynamics and dangers of fear and power. Water—a respect for its ability to flow and transform, and a regard for the limits humanity should have for nature overall. Every scientific theme is examined through a philosophical or ethical lens that’s surprisingly easy to consider, even by today’s standards.

That said, it feels like a slog to read most of the time, even with all the supplemental explanations, essays, and footnotes attached to this particular translation. Even if you’re not particularly well-versed in any of the scientific queries examined here, it’s not hard to find yourself raising an eyebrow at the way many of these things were thought to have worked back then. Additionally, Seneca weaves in and out of technical inquiry and philosophical musing with little warning or pause, making an already polarizing book even more so. Couple that with the less-than-flowery prose, and it’s not hard to find yourself struggling with this.

Not a great start on the road to reading more philosophy-themed non-fiction. There are six more volumes of Seneca’s translated work that I plan to read, and this did not inspire me for what comes next. That said, there are things here worth reading, and the fact that that remains the case nearly 2,000 years later is not something that should be entirely disregarded.

[Ahmet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harika bir çeviri, dipnotlar da yerinde ve yeterli, çeviri için Cengiz Çevik beyi kutlarım.
Romanın yetiştirdiği önemli düşünür ve siyasetçi Seneca'nın MS 50-55 civarında yazdığı yedi kitabın birleştirilmiş orjinalinden çevirilmiş hali,
MS 50 yılı için bilimsel bir ansiklopedi denebilecek bir olgu, kendisi Roma'da doğa bilimlerine karşın gençlerin ilgisizliğinden yeni kuşağın bilim yapmamasından şikayetçi bir düşünür,
O yıllarda kendisinden önceki düşünürleri ve felsefecilerin yazdıklarını referans alarak kendi deneyleri ve düşünceleriyle doğa olaylarına (Yıldırım, rüzgar, gökkuşağı, yıldız kayması, kuyruklu yıldızlar, bulutlar, dolu ve fırtınalar) açıklamalar getirmesi rasyonel zemine oturtmaya çalışması muazzam bir çalışma. Şu anki bilimsel bilgimizle okuduğumuzda saçma gelebilecek şeyleri kendisinin o dönemde oturup sentezleyip yazıya dökmesi bence harika bir başarı, çok etkileyici
O dönemin yazılarında rastladığım şiirsellik, çocuksu dünya görüşü beni etkiliyor ve okuma zevki katıyor, muhtemelen bunun bir sebebi de evrendeki olayları ve işleyiş mekanizmalarının çoğunu bilmemelerinden kaynaklanması.
Seneca Doğa araştırmaları ve Ahlak mektupları kitaplarıyla kendisinden sonra gelecek olan felsefeci ve edebi yazarları çokça etkilemiş bir düşünür,
Antik Yunan yazıları okumayı sevenler okuyabilir, genel okuyucuya pek hitap etmiyor

[Karlheinz Kobras · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes, the Romans were not only warriors. They have written books about history (Tacitus), war descriptions (Caesar), biographies (Nepos) philosophy (Marcus Aurelius) even about architecture (Vitruvius) and cookbooks (Apuleius)

This is a book about science. Seneca covered five questions about nature and tried to answer them to his best knowlegde.

[C. Çevik · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think English peak of NQ. Thanks Prof. Hine for all labores.

[NDH · Rating 5 out of 5]

As always, I want to thank the armies of nameless copyists & scribes, monks and abbots, collectors and translators who preserved Seneca’s writings and passed them on to us today. I am profoundly and eternally grateful to you all.
What can one say about Seneca? “There’s nothing new under the sun” comes to mind. Earth, air, fire, water…solid, gas, plasma, liquid. “Some things never change.” Seneca’s explanations of earthquakes sounds a lot like plate tectonics to me. A few nuances of meaning, some linguistic tweaks here and there, and Seneca the scientist sounds not very different from modern scientists. His observations make sense, and his speculations are not always far from our own theories. He knew that the earth was round, although he didn’t have the mathematics to describe the elliptical orbits of the planets nor could he discern whether the universe revolved around the earth or the earth and planets around the sun. Furthermore, he doesn’t know much about the electromagnetic spectrum, but, hey, either do most of the rest of us. Same for quantum physics which is about as easy for the mind to grasp as the pronouncements of the Delphic Sybil.

What I wonder is, to what extent were his writings preserved by chance, and to what extent by divine decree? Hmmm. We’ll never know, but I’m sure Seneca would ask the same question.

Also, I very much enjoyed Seneca’s considerations regarding divination…comets, lightning and animal entrails etc. We use the term “superstition”, but I tend to think that we today are pretty much as superstitious as people have always been.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

One thing about which I’m curious is the extent to which Seneca’s thought (cosmology/philosophy/theology) would seem very familiar, very similar, to that of the pre-contact natives of the Americas. He asks, “whether the world is an animal, or a body, such as trees and plants…?” and says, “It is plain that the earth contains…the life-giving breath that is vigorous and sustains everything…a lot of soul.” And in the Introduction, the Translator states, “In fact in Stoicism the earth is a living creature, and the whole world is a living creature with a soul.”
I start to think of rocks and trees and buffalo and beavers each having its “pneuma”…

My final comments are directed to the translator (and responsible-for-the-final-product editor) Harry Hine. I am in no way competent to say much about this topic, but I do appreciate that the translations “eschew terminology that would imply a Judeo-Christian moral framework (e.g. “sin”).” That seems important, while at the same time it is very obvious that on many points, Christianity and Stoicism overlap.
In the Department of Quibbles, however, I am a wee bit unsettled by comments in the section “Seneca and His World” (pp. vii-xxvi), apparently written by Hines’ associates rather than by himself. Specifically (p xiv): “Cicero denied, however, that our common humanity entailed any duty to distribute material goods beyond our own borders, thus displaying the unfortunate capacity of Stoic doctrine to support the status quo…it is scarcely an exaggeration to blame the Stoics for the fact that we have well worked-out doctrines of international law in the area of war and peace, but no well-established understanding of our material duties to one another.”
That’s a bit like complaining that the Stoics should be “blamed” for not being Marxist, or for being insufficiently sympathetic to the suffering of that troubled soul Hostius Quadra. So, Yes, I do consider blaming the Stoics an exaggeration, or worse.
Similarly (p. xiii), “About the institution of slavery, there is silence, and worse than silence: Seneca argues that true freedom is internal, so the external sort does not really matter.”
I can think of a few others over the centuries who were similarly silent about slavery, and who similarly argued that true freedom is internal, so I find it at a minimum presumptuous (arrogant?) to assert that silence is “worse.” The writers’ Virtue Signaling in these two instances really detracts from an otherwise useful Introduction.
To be clear, I am interested in what the Stoics think as evidenced by what they wrote; I am NOT interested in what Mr. Hine nor his Associates might themselves think about what the Stoics think, or don’t think, or never wrote.
But let us not quibble.
Sit tibi terra levis.

[Gianfranco Nerdi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Trattato interessante, ma ovviamente viziato dal fatto che in alcuni punti rigetta le spiegazioni atomistiche di Democrito, e dal fatto che forse in un punto o due non si decide completamente ad abbandonare il "Dio" stoico a favore di quello platonico (il che per me non è realmente un difetto, perché non credo in alcun tipo di Dio, quindi amen). Poi certo, uno non legge un'opera del genere per la "scienza" che vi è contenuta, non nel 21esimo secolo perlomeno, ma per il suo valore per così dire "storico". Ad ogni modo non sento che mi abbia particolarmente arricchito o dato qualcosa quindi 2 stelle.

[Yavuz · Rating 5 out of 5]

'' İnsan, insanlığının da üzerine çıkmadıkça, ne değersiz bir şey ! Tutkularımızla dövüştükçe olağanüstü bir iş yapmış olmaz mıyız? Sanki üstün gelmişiz, canavarları yenmişiz gibi... ''

[Birch · Rating 5 out of 5]

:D

[John Boardley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Worth if for the introduction alone — one of the best summaries of Seneca’s thought I’ve ever read.

[GezginHerodot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Çeviri bakımından çok da sıkıntılı olmayan bir kitap Roma dönemini Antik Yunan dönemiyle birlikte ele alan harika bir çalışma.

[Valentine Ssebuyungo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Talks about life and science, great read

[caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

loooove the floods

[Pardis TD · Rating 5 out of 5]

This could be considered the official introduction to existentialist philosophy.

[anna]

seneca hater numero uno di starbucks