"Lucretius (borrowing from Democritus and others), says [more than 2,000 years ago] the universe is made of an infinite number of atoms. (...) All things, including the species to which you belong, have evolved over vast stretches of time. The evolution is random, though in the case of living organisms, it involves a principle of natural selection, (...) there is no life after death, and that there is no purpose to creation beyond pleasure. (...) Lucretius argued for a mechanistic universe governed by chance. He also argued for a plurality of worlds (and these planets, like the Earth, need not be spherical) and a non-hierarchical universe. (...)" - Amira

"[It] dropped like an atomic bomb on the fixedly Christian culture of Western Europe. But this poem’s radical and transformative ideas survived (...) One reason is that it was art. (...) In the spirit of commonplace books, readers of that era focused on individual passages rather than larger (and disturbing) meanings. Readers preferred to see the poem as a primer on Latin and Greek grammar, philology, natural history, and Roman culture. (...) “Certainly almost every one of the key principles was an offense to right-thinking Christians,” said Greenblatt. “But the poetry was compellingly, stunningly beautiful.” Its “immensely seductive form, the soul of tolerance — helped to make aesthetics the concept that bridged the gap between the Renaissance and the early modern age." - Amira