The nature of things

Basically the 1st century BCE edition of Cosmos by the Carl Sagan of Epicurean philosophy. Epicurean philosophy bears a striking resemblance to modern physics, which is to say, boring to most people. So Lucretius wrote six books on everything from atoms to civilizations all in verse for the uninitiated. He planned to write more, but either never finished or they've been lost to the ages. Some of it is... quite nonsense compared to our scientific knowledge of today, though he repeatedly says he's probably wrong about many things and not to take his or any other person's word for it. However, much of it is quite prescient, and it would take another 1900 years and rigorous experiment until similar conclusions would be redeveloped. Some of the passages are so beautiful and so accurate that its hard to believe the book is over 2000 years old.

Okay so there have been many translations of this over the years. Make sure to get one adapted to English verse, otherwise its just going to sound like a flawed science textbook. I recommend A.E. Stallings.

The subtitle to Carl Sagan's book Demon_Haunted_World is "Science as a Candle in the Dark." Lucretius uses the same metaphor to describe the power of his Epicurean natural philosophy to dispel the shadows of fear, superstition, and the supernatural from our experience of the world. Sure, many of his ideas and theories strike us as quaint, strange, or just plain wrong, but he often puts forward ideas that we would recognize as common with our understanding. That everything is composed of atoms and void, that these atoms hook together in various ways to make different things; that the Universe is infinite and therefore has no center; that there are other worlds; even that survival of the fittest works to cull out species poorly adapted to their environment. But I think the main takeaway is that we can figure it out. Human intellect is sufficient to discover the nature of the Universe. There is no need to invoke gods. The gods, if they exist at all, are ambivalent to us and the stuff of the Universe. Being pious by fearing gods, performing rituals to them, or ascribing what we don't know to them, is unnecessary and even harmful. True piety, Lucretius says, lies rather in the power to contemplate the Universe with a quiet mind.