Thankful Day #16

Thankful Day #16: I am thankful for Lucretius (99-55 BCE). He wrote a long poem called "On The Nature of Things" which was virtually lost until its rediscovery in a remote monastery library by book hunter Poggio Bracciolini in 1417. The poem helped to launch the Renaissance and the modern world with its "radical" ideas (at the time) that the universe is made of "atoms," is controlled by natural laws (not the gods), and that death is nothing to fear. [Read More About It: The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt (2011)]