The Success of Epicureanism as a Social Enterprise

The school would not have survived and prospered for hundreds of years had it not been willing to engage in polemics against other schools. Epicurus uses this letter to set out his physical theory, an atomic theory which harks back to the atomism of the pre-Socratic Democritus. He insists that claims about what is unclear to the senses need to be checked against sensation. All our knowledge ultimately derives from sensation and must be measured against it.