Images and Truth

The new edition of the papiri of the second book of Peri phuseōs allows for a detailed reconstruction of the mechanisms of vision. Some of the characteristic features of im-ages according to Epicurus are presented here for the first time; others receive a clear-er definition, however indirectly – as in the case of ἐπιβολή. As for the congruence be-tween the representation and the object from which it originates (i.e. the truth of the image), we can infer from book II that it depends not only on an error made by the subject of its mental elaboration, but also on the physical characteristics of its atomic flux. The correspondence-based conception of truth appears as a prelude to a more complex and coherence-based one.