Cicero, Plutarch, and others — that the atom of Epi - curus was endowed with a so-called clinamen of his invention.    From Wordnik.com.  [Dictionary of the History of Ideas] Reference

To reach the highest degree of amazing extravagance, the Epicureans have had the assurance to explain and account for what we call the soul of man and his free-will, by the clinamen, which is so unaccountable and inexplicable itself.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Existence of God] Reference

The Epicureans, not being able to shut their eyes against this glaring difficulty, that strikes at the very foundation of their whole system, have, for a last shift, invented what Lucretius calls clinamen -- by which is meant a motion somewhat declining or bending from the straight line, and which gives atoms the occasion to meet and encounter.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Existence of God] Reference

Lucretius invoked the swerve (clinamen) not only to explain the creation of things but also to account for the freedom of the will.    From Wordnik.com.  [The First Quantum Cosmologist] Reference

In addition, the swerve (clinamen, παρέγκλισις) would be uncaused and unpredictable, and this was the innovation that he thought would allow for free will.    From Wordnik.com.  [Dictionary of the History of Ideas] Reference

But as Hogle has demonstrated, Shelley's Lucretianism allows him to imagine a moment of clinamen during which these random vectors might start to be attracted towards one another to form worlds, even ecotopias.    From Wordnik.com.  [_Queen Mab_ as Topological Repertoire] Reference

This clinamen was designed to temper the basic determinism of physics by an element of inde - terminism; and as a suggestion in physics it was a remarkable adumbration of indeterminacies in the physics of our day.    From Wordnik.com.  [Dictionary of the History of Ideas] Reference

First, it must be the general tendency of atoms to move in straight lines given that the atoms here do not feature the clinamen, or swerve (contrary to the Epicurean tradition, though perhaps as Epicurus himself would say).    From Wordnik.com.  [Pierre Gassendi] Reference

What can they find in the clinamen that, with any colour, can account for the liberty of man?.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Existence of God] Reference

Is it not manifest that the clinamen can no more account for it than the straight line itself?.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Existence of God] Reference

However, the will of man, according to the principle of the clinamen, has no more freedom than that stone.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Existence of God] Reference

The clinamen, supposing it to be true, would be as necessary as the perpendicular line, by which a stone falls from the top of a tower into the street.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Existence of God] Reference

If motion in a straight line be essential to bodies, nothing can bend, nor consequently join them, in all eternity; the clinamen destroys the very essence of matter, and those philosophers contradict themselves without blushing.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Existence of God] Reference

Epicurus, oddly in contrast here with his modern hedonistic followers, advocates free will and modifies the strict determinism of the atomists, whose physics he accepts, by ascribing to the atoms a clinamen, a faculty of random deviation in their movements.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 6: Fathers of the Church-Gregory XI] Reference

The clinamen, as we have already shown, is manifestly impossible: but, contrary to evident truth, supposing it to be possible, in such a case it must be affirmed that the clinamen is no less necessary, immutable, and essential to atoms than the straight line.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Existence of God] Reference

Both the straight line and the clinamen are airy suppositions and mere dreams; but these two dreams destroy each other, and this is the upshot of the uncurbed licentiousness some men allow themselves of supposing as eternal truths whatever their imagination suggests them to support a fable; while they refuse to acknowledge the artful and powerful hand that formed and placed all the parts of the universe.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Existence of God] Reference

(clinamen) of the atoms, which he and Lucretius thought would make intelligible new qualities and free will.    From Wordnik.com.  [Dictionary of the History of Ideas] Reference

˜swerve™ (clinamen) ˜at no fixed place or time™.    From Wordnik.com.  [Lucretius] Reference

(clinamen).    From Wordnik.com.  [INDETERMINACY IN PHYSICS] Reference

She had correctly spelled “tmesis,” “izzat,” “kanone,” “aubade,” “psittacism,” “recrementitious,” “clinamen,” “hukilau,” “Shedu,” “towhee,” “synusia,” “cucullate,” “terrene,” “Bildungsroman,” “chiragra,” “Galilean” and “gobemouche.”.    From Wordnik.com.  [Ugly Vegetable Contest] Reference