Swerve and History

Greenblatt's recent book about the recovery of the works of Lucretius, 'Swerve', is more valuable as a bibliographic narrative than an intellectual history. While the title is an allusion to the concept of the behavior of atoms, Greenblatt also proposes it as an image of the transition from the Medieval Era to the Renaissance.  But that usage is not merely superficial; it also obscures a main shortcoming in the book.  For, the image is an uninstructive representation of the perhaps decisive catalyst in that historical transition: Gutenberg's invention, the primary consequence of which is the Democratization of Medieval Theology.  As a result, Greenblatt under-appreciates the continued influence of that ideology through the next several centuries, and even to date.  He, thus, over-estimates the influence of Swerve on the concepts of Freedom that arise in that period, the ancestor of which is the Christian concept of their Super-Natural origin, rather than Lucretius' lesser known Naturalist alternative.  Better indications of the fate of the latter than the mere fact of being on many Renaissance and Modern reading lists, are that its rare explicit treatment is not until Marx attempts a Dialectical interpretation of Swerve in the 19th-century, as well as Einstein's famous insistence that "God" prefers no Free Will to the randomness of the likes of Swerve, e. g. dice.  So, regarding the actual influence of Swerve, Greenblatt's book may be more prelude than postscript.