Clinamen (; plural ''clinamina'', derived from ''clīnāre'', to incline) is the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

name

Lucretius Titus Lucretius Carus ( , ; – ) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the philosophical poem ''De rerum natura'', a didactic work about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism, and which usually is translated into E ...

gave to the unpredictable swerve of atoms, in order to defend the atomistic doctrine of

Epicurus Epicurus (; grc-gre, Ἐπίκουρος ; 341–270 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher and sage who founded Epicureanism, a highly influential school of philosophy. He was born on the Greek island of Samos to Athenian parents. Influence ...

. In modern English it has come more generally to mean an inclination or a bias.

Epicureanism

According to Lucretius, the unpredictable swerve occurs "at no fixed place or time":

When atoms move straight down through the void by their own weight, they deflect a bit in space at a quite uncertain time and in uncertain places, just enough that you could say that their motion has changed. But if they were not in the habit of swerving, they would all fall straight down through the depths of the void, like drops of rain, and no collision would occur, nor would any blow be produced among the atoms. In that case, nature would never have produced anything.

This swerving, according to Lucretius, provides the " free will which living things throughout the world have". Lucretius never gives the primary cause of the deflections.

Modern usage

In modern English clinamen is defined as an inclination or a bias. It implies that one is inclined or biased towards introducing a plausible but unprovable ''clinamen'' when a specific mechanism cannot be found to refute a credible argument against one's hypothesis or theory. The

OED The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a co ...

gives its first recorded use in English by

Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dubli ...

in his 1704 ''

Tale of a Tub ''A Tale of a Tub'' was the first major work written by Jonathan Swift, composed between 1694 and 1697 and published in 1704. It is arguably his most difficult satire, and perhaps his best. The ''Tale'' is a prose parody divided into sections ...

'' ix.166, satirizing the atomistic theory of

Epicurus modestly hoped that one time or other, a certain fortuitous concourse of all men's opinions—after perpetual justlings, the sharp with the smooth, the light and the heavy, the round and the square—would, by certain clinamina, unite in the notions of atoms and void, as these did in the originals of all things.

The term was taken up by

Harold Bloom Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking worl ...

to describe the inclinations of writers to "swerve" from the influence of their predecessors; it is the first of his "Ratios of Revision" as described in ''

The Anxiety of Influence ''The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry'' is a 1973 book by Harold Bloom. It was the first in a series of books that advanced a new "revisionary" or antithetical approach to literary criticism. Bloom's central thesis is that poets are hin ...

''. In ''

Difference and Repetition ''Difference and Repetition'' (french: Différence et répétition, link=no) is a 1968 book by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Originally published in France, it was translated into English by Paul Patton in 1994. ''Difference and Repetition ...

'',

Gilles Deleuze Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( , ; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volu ...

employs the term in his description of "multiplicities". In addition, other French writers such as

Simone de Beauvoir Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (, ; ; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, and even th ...

Jacques Lacan Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, , ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and pu ...

Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida; See also . 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in numerous texts, and which was developed th ...

Jean-Luc Nancy Jean-Luc Nancy ( , ; 26 July 1940 – 23 August 2021) was a French philosopher. Nancy's first book, published in 1973, was ''Le titre de la lettre'' (''The Title of the Letter'', 1992), a reading of the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Laca ...

Alain Badiou Alain Badiou (; ; born 17 January 1937) is a French philosopher, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure, École normale supérieure (ENS) and founder of the faculty of Philosophy of the Université de Paris VIII with Gil ...

Louis Althusser Louis Pierre Althusser (, ; ; 16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École normale supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy. Althusser ...

, and

Michel Serres Michel Serres (; 1 September 1930 – 1 June 2019) was a French philosopher, theorist and writer. His works explore themes of science, time and death, and later incorporated prose. Life and career The son of a bargeman, Serres entered France's ...

Hanjo Berressem in Abbas, N. (2005)
''Mapping Michel Serres'', page 53
University of Michigan Press have made extensive use of the word 'clinamen' in their writings, albeit with very different meanings. Lucretius' concept is central to the book '' The Swerve: How the World Became Modern'', written by

Stephen Greenblatt Stephen Jay Greenblatt (born November 7, 1943) is an American Shakespearean, literary historian, and author. He has served as the John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University since 2000. Greenblatt is the general edit ...

. "Clinamen" is defined by

Alfred Jarry Alfred Jarry (; 8 September 1873 – 1 November 1907) was a French symbolist writer who is best known for his play '' Ubu Roi'' (1896). He also coined the term and philosophical concept of 'pataphysics. Jarry was born in Laval, Mayenne, Franc ...

in Chapter 33 of his ''

Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician ''Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician'' (original title in French: ''Gestes et opinions du docteur Faustroll pataphysicien : Roman néo-scientifique suivi de Spéculations'') is a novel by French Symbolist author Alfred Jarry wh ...

''. The notion later figured in the imaginary science of the Jarry-inspired College of

Pataphysics Pataphysics (french: 'pataphysique) is a "philosophy" of science invented by French writer Alfred Jarry (1873–1907) intended to be a parody of science. Difficult to be simply defined or pinned down, it has been described as the "science of ima ...

, notably in the pataphysical calendar and the experimental literature of

OuLiPo Oulipo (, short for french: Ouvroir de littérature potentielle; roughly translated: ''"workshop of potential literature"'', stylized ''OuLiPo'') is a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians who seek to create works ...

. The clinamen figures as a motif in the artistic practice of

Rodney Graham William Rodney Graham (January 16, 1949 – October 22, 2022) was a Canadian visual artist and musician. He was closely associated with the Vancouver School. Early life Graham was born in Abbotsford, British Columbia, on January 16, 1949. ...

– who has said it informs his work in general. Clinamen is also a term used in

systems theory Systems theory is the interdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or human-made. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, defined by its structu ...

applied to

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary ...

.Cf. E. Tiezzi, N. Marchettini, ″Epistemological Aspects of Systems Theory Related to Biological Evolution″, in: Francisco Parra-Luna (Ed.), ''Systems Science and Cybernetics'', Volume I, Encyclopaedia of Life Support Systems, EOLSS Publishers Co., Ltd., Oxford, UK, 2009, p. 264-286.

References

External links

* Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
''Lucretius.''
{{Epicureanism Epicureanism Concepts in metaphysics Atomism