Classical element
Classical elements |
---|
The classical elements typically refer to
These different cultures and even individual philosophers had widely varying explanations concerning their attributes and how they related to observable phenomena as well as
While the classification of the material world in ancient India, Hellenistic Egypt, and ancient Greece into air, earth, fire, and water was more philosophical, during the Middle Ages medieval scientists used practical, experimental observation to classify materials.[3] In Europe, the ancient Greek concept, devised by Empedocles, evolved into the systematic classifications of Aristotle and Hippocrates. This evolved slightly into the medieval system, and eventually became the object of experimental verification in the 1600s, at the start of the Scientific Revolution.[4]
Hellenistic philosophy
Aristotelian elements and qualities |
Empedoclean elements |
The
Pre-Socratic elements
Water, air, or fire?
Fire, earth, air, and water
The Greek philosopher Empedocles (c. 450 BC) was the first to propose the four classical elements as a set: fire, earth, air, and water.[9] He called them the four "roots" (ῥιζώματα, rhizōmata). Empedocles also proved (at least to his own satisfaction) that air was a separate substance by observing that a bucket inverted in water did not become filled with water, a pocket of air remaining trapped inside.[10]
Fire, earth, air, and water have become the most popular set of classical elements in modern interpretations. One such version was provided by Robert Boyle in The Sceptical Chymist, which was published in 1661 in the form of a dialogue between five characters. Themistius, the Aristotelian of the party, says:[11]
If You but consider a piece of green-Wood burning in a Chimney, You will readily discern in the disbanded parts of it the four Elements, of which we teach It and other mixt bodies to be compos’d. The fire discovers it self in the flame ... the smoke by ascending to the top of the chimney, and there readily vanishing into air ... manifests to what Element it belongs and gladly returnes. The water ... boyling and hissing at the ends of the burning Wood betrayes it self ... and the ashes by their weight, their firiness, and their dryness, put it past doubt that they belong to the Element of Earth.
Humorism (Hippocrates)
According to Galen, these elements were used by Hippocrates (c. 460 – c. 370 BC) in describing the human body with an association with the four humours: yellow bile (fire), black bile (earth), blood (air), and phlegm (water). Medical care was primarily about helping the patient stay in or return to their own personal natural balanced state.[12]
Plato
Plato (428/423 – 348/347 BC) seems to have been the first to use the term "element (στοιχεῖον, stoicheîon)" in reference to air, fire, earth, and water.[13] The ancient Greek word for element, stoicheion (from stoicheo, "to line up") meant "smallest division (of a sun-dial), a syllable", as the composing unit of an alphabet it could denote a letter and the smallest unit from which a word is formed.
Aristotle
In On the Heavens (350 BC), Aristotle defines "element" in general:[14][15]
An element, we take it, is a body into which other bodies may be analysed, present in them potentially or in actuality (which of these, is still disputable), and not itself divisible into bodies different in form. That, or something like it, is what all men in every case mean by element.[16]
— Aristotle, On the Heavens, Book III, Chapter III
In his On Generation and Corruption,[17][18] Aristotle related each of the four elements to two of the four sensible 'qualities':
- Fire is both hot and dry.
- Air is both hot and wet (for air is like vapor, ἀτμὶς).
- Water is both cold and wet.
- Earth is both cold and dry.
A classic diagram has one square
Aether
Aristotle added a fifth element, aether (αἰθήρ aither), as the quintessence, reasoning that whereas fire, earth, air, and water were earthly and corruptible, since no changes had been perceived in the heavenly regions, the stars cannot be made out of any of the four elements but must be made of a different, unchangeable, heavenly substance.[19] It had previously been believed by pre-Socratics such as Empedocles and Anaxagoras that aether, the name applied to the material of heavenly bodies, was a form of fire. Aristotle himself did not use the term aether for the fifth element, and strongly criticised the pre-Socratics for associating the term with fire. He preferred a number of other terms indicating eternal movement, thus emphasising the evidence for his discovery of a new element.[20] These five elements have been associated since Plato's Timaeus with the five platonic solids.
Neo-Platonism
The
Fire | Sharp | Subtle | Mobile |
---|---|---|---|
Air | Blunt | Subtle | Mobile |
Water | Blunt | Dense | Mobile |
Earth | Blunt | Dense | Immobile |
Hermeticism
A text written in Egypt in
And Isis answer made: Of living things, my son, some are made friends with fire, and some with water, some with air, and some with earth, and some with two or three of these, and some with all. And, on the contrary, again some are made enemies of fire, and some of water, some of earth, and some of air, and some of two of them, and some of three, and some of all. For instance, son, the locust and all flies flee fire; the eagle and the hawk and all high-flying birds flee water; fish, air and earth; the snake avoids the open air. Whereas snakes and all creeping things love earth; all swimming things love water; winged things, air, of which they are the citizens; while those that fly still higher love the fire and have the habitat near it. Not that some of the animals as well do not love fire; for instance salamanders, for they even have their homes in it. It is because one or another of the elements doth form their bodies' outer envelope. Each soul, accordingly, while it is in its body is weighted and constricted by these four.[22]
Ancient Indian philosophy
Hinduism
The system of five elements are found in
- āpas or jala (water),
- agní or tejas (fire),
- vāyu, vyāna, or vāta (air or wind)
- ākāśa, vyom, or śūnya (space or zero) or (aether or void).[24]
They further suggest that all of creation, including the human body, is made of these five essential elements and that upon death, the human body dissolves into these five elements of nature, thereby balancing the cycle of nature.[25]
The five elements are associated with the five senses, and act as the gross medium for the experience of sensations. The basest element, earth, created using all the other elements, can be perceived by all five senses — (i) hearing, (ii) touch, (iii) sight, (iv) taste, and (v) smell. The next higher element, water, has no odor but can be heard, felt, seen and tasted. Next comes fire, which can be heard, felt and seen. Air can be heard and felt. "Akasha" (aether) is beyond the senses of smell, taste, sight, and touch; it being accessible to the sense of hearing alone.[26][27][28]
Buddhism
Buddhism has had a variety of thought about the five elements and their existence and relevance, some of which continue to this day.
In the
The
Just as a skilled butcher or his apprentice, having killed a cow, would sit at a crossroads cutting it up into pieces, the monk contemplates this very body — however it stands, however it is disposed — in terms of properties: 'In this body there is the earth property, the liquid property, the fire property, & the wind property.'[32]
Tibetan Buddhist medical literature speaks of the pañca mahābhūta (five elements) or "elemental properties":[33] earth, water, fire, wind, and space.[33] The concept was extensively used in traditional Tibetan medicine.[34][35][33] Tibetan Buddhist theology, tantra traditions, and "astrological texts" also spoke of them making up the "environment, [human] bodies," and at the smallest or "subtlest" level of existence, parts of thought and the mind.[33] Also at the subtlest level of existence, the elements exist as "pure natures represented by the five female buddhas", Ākāśadhātviśvarī, Buddhalocanā, Mamakī, Pāṇḍarāvasinī, and Samayatārā, and these pure natures "manifest as the physical properties of earth (solidity), water (fluidity), fire (heat and light), wind (movement and energy), and" the expanse of space.[33] These natures exist as all "qualities" that are in the physical world and take forms in it.[33]
Post-classical history
Alchemy
The elemental system used in medieval
The three metallic principles—sulphur to flammability or combustion, mercury to volatility and stability, and salt to solidity—became the tria prima of the Swiss alchemist Paracelsus. He reasoned that Aristotle's four element theory appeared in bodies as three principles. Paracelsus saw these principles as fundamental and justified them by recourse to the description of how wood burns in fire. Mercury included the cohesive principle, so that when it left in smoke the wood fell apart. Smoke described the volatility (the mercurial principle), the heat-giving flames described flammability (sulphur), and the remnant ash described solidity (salt).[38]
Central Africa
In traditional
- Water (South) represents musoni, the period of conception that takes place during spring.
- Fire (East) represent kala, the period of birth that takes place during summer.
- Air (North) represents tukula, the period of maturity that takes place during fall.
- Earth (West) represents luvemba, the period of death that takes place during winter.
- Aether represents mbûngi, the circular void that begot the universe.
Japan
- Earth represented rocks and stability.
- Water represented fluidity and adaptability.
- Fire represented life and energy.
- Wind represented movement and expansion.
- Void or Sky/Heaven represented spirit and creative energy.
Medieval Aristotelian philosophy
The Islamic philosophers al-Kindi, Avicenna and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi followed Aristotle in connecting the four elements with the four natures heat and cold (the active force), and dryness and moisture (the recipients).[41]
Native American tradition
The medicine wheel is a sacred symbol across many Indigenous American cultures that signifies Earth's boundary and all the knowledge of the universe. It depicts the four cardinal directions, the path of the sun, the four seasons and the four sacred medicines. Each element is also represented by a color that signifies that four races of humans.[42][43]
- Earth (South) represents the youth cycle, summer, the Indigenous race, and cedar medicine.
- Fire (East) represents the birth cycle, spring, the Asian race, and tobacco medicine.
- Wind/Air (North) represents the elder cycle, winter, the European race, and sweetgrass medicine.
- Water (West) represents the adulthood cycle, autumn, the African race, and sage medicine.
The medicine wheel symbol is a modern invention dating to approximately 1972, with these descriptions and associations being a later addition. The associations with the classical elements are not grounded in traditional Indigenous teachings and the symbol has not been adopted by all Indigenous American nations.[44][45][46][47][48]
Modern history
Chemical element
The Aristotelian tradition and medieval alchemy eventually gave rise to modern chemistry, scientific theories and new taxonomies. By the time of Antoine Lavoisier, for example, a list of elements would no longer refer to classical elements.[49] Some modern scientists see a parallel between the classical elements and the four states of matter: solid, liquid, gas and weakly ionized plasma.[50]
Modern science recognizes classes of
Western astrology
Western
Criticism
The Dutch historian of science Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis writes that the theory of the classical elements "was bound to exercise a really harmful influence. As is now clear, Aristotle, by adopting this theory as the basis of his interpretation of nature and by never losing faith in it, took a course which promised few opportunities and many dangers for science."[52] Bertrand Russell says that Aristotle's thinking became imbued with almost biblical authority in later centuries. So much so that "Ever since the beginning of the seventeenth century, almost every serious intellectual advance has had to begin with an attack on some Aristotelian doctrine".[53]
See also
- Arche– Basic proposition or assumption
- Elemental – Mythic entity personifying one of the classical elements
- Jabir ibn Hayyan § The sulfur-mercury theory of metals – Early Islamic alchemy
- Periodic table – Tabular arrangement of the chemical elements ordered by atomic number
- Phlogiston theory – Superseded theory of combustion
- Prima materia – First or prime matter
- Qi – Vital force in traditional Chinese philosophy
- Wuxing (Chinese philosophy) – Chinese five elements
Notes
- ^ Thera (1956), pp. 318–320: "the atomic theory prevailed in India in the time of the Buddha. Paramàõu was the ancient term for the modern atom. According to the ancient belief one rathareõu consists of 16 tajjàris, one tajjàri, 16 aõus; one aõu, 16 paramàõus. The minute particles of dust seen dancing in the sunbeam are called rathareõus. One para-màõu is, therefore, 4096th part of a rathareõu. This para-màõu was considered indivisible. With His supernormal knowledge the Buddha analysed this so-called paramàõu and declared that it consists of paramatthas—ultimate entities which cannot further be subdivided." "ñhavi in earth, àpo in water, tejo in fire, and vàyo in air. They are also called Mahàbhåtas or Great Essentials because they are invariably found in all material substances ranging from the infinitesimally small cell to the most massive object. Dependent on them are the four subsidiary material qualities of colour (vaõõa)., smell (gandha), taste (rasa), and nutritive essence (ojà). These eight coexisting forces and qualities constitute one material group called 'Suddhaññhaka Rupa kalàpa—pure-octad material group'."
References
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- ^ a b Curd (2020).
- ^ Ross (2020).
- ^ Russell (1991), p. 46.
- ^ Russell (1991), p. 61.
- ^ Russell (1991), pp. 62, 75.
- ^ Russell (1991), p. 72.
- ^ Boyle, Robert (1661). The Sceptical Chymist: or Chymico-Physical Doubts & Paradoxes, Touching the Spagyrist's Principles Commonly call'd Hypostatical; As they are wont to be Propos'd and Defended by the Generality of Alchymists. Whereunto is præmis'd Part of another Discourse relating to the same Subject. Printed by J. Cadwell for J. Crooke. pp. 21–22.
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- ^ Plato, Timaeus, 48b
- ^ Weisberg, M.; Needham, P.; Hendry, R. (2019), "Philosophy of Chemistry", in Zalta, E. N. (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University
- ^ Aristotle (1922) [350 BCE]. On the Heavens. Translated by Stocks, J. L. pp. 3.3, 302a17–19.
- ^ Aristotle, On the Heavens, translated by Stocks, J.L., III.3.302a17–19
- ^ Aristotle. Wikisource.
τὸ μὲν γὰρ πῦρ θερμὸν καὶ ξηρόν, ὁ δ' ἀὴρ θερμὸν καὶ ὑγρόν (οἷον ἀτμὶς γὰρ ὁ ἀήρ), τὸ δ' ὕδωρ ψυχρὸν καὶ ὑγρόν, ἡ δὲ γῆ ψυχρὸν καὶ ξηρόν
(in Greek) – via - ^ Lloyd (1968), pp. 166–169.
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- ^ Jagannathan, Maithily. South Indian Hindu Festivals and Traditions. Abhinav Publications. pp. 60–62.
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- ^ Tirupati Raju, Poola. Structural Depths of Indian Thought: Toward a Constructive Postmodern Ethics. SUNY Press. p. 81.
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- ^ Thera, Narada (1956). A Manual of Abhidhamma. Buddhist Missionary Society. pp. 318–320.
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Thus as fourfold the Tathagatas reveal the ultimate realities-consciousness, mental factors, matter, and Nibbana.
- Majjhima Nikaya. p. 119. Retrieved 30 January 2009 – via accesstoinsight.org.
- ^ ISBN 0-670-85886-2.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: others (link - ^ Gurmet, Padma (2004). "'Sowa – Rigpa': Himalayan art of healing". Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge. 3 (2): 212–218.
- ^ Bigalke, Boris (11 January 2013). "Behavioral and Nutritional Therapy in Patients With Coronary Artery Disease According to Traditional Tibetan Medicine Protocol". University Hospital Tuebingen.
- ^ Norris (2006), pp. 43–65.
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- ^ Strathern (2001), p. 79.
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- ^ "Encountering the '5 elements' in Japan's national parks". Travel. 22 February 2022. Archived from the original on 23 February 2022. Retrieved 7 May 2023.
- ^ Rafati, Vahid. "Lawh-i-Hikmat: The Two Agents and the Two Patients". 'Andalib. 5 (19): 29–38.
- ^ "Medicine Wheel – CPN Cultural Heritage Center". Retrieved 7 May 2023.
- ^ "The Medicine Wheel (U.S. National Park Service)". www.nps.gov. Retrieved 7 May 2023.
- ^ Shaw, Christopher (August 1995). "A Theft of Spirit?". New Age Journal. Retrieved 28 April 2021.
- ^ Thomason, Timothy C (27 October 2013). "The Medicine Wheel as a Symbol of Native American Psychology". The Jung Page. The Jung Center of Houston. Retrieved 28 April 2021.
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Empedocles (495–435 BC) proposed that the world was made of earth, water, air, and fire, which may correspond to solid, liquid, gas, and weakly ionized plasma. Surprisingly, this idea may catch the essence.
- ^ Tester (1999), pp. 59–61, 94.
- ^ Dijksterhuis (1969), p. 71.
- ^ Russell (1991), p. 173.
Bibliography
- Curd, Patricia. "Presocratic Philosophy". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2020 ed.).
- Dijksterhuis, Eduard Jan (1969). The Mechanization of the World Picture. Translated by Dikshoorn, C. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
- ISBN 978-0-521-09456-6.
- Norris, John A. (2006). "The Mineral Exhalation Theory of Metallogenesis in Pre-Modern Mineral Science". Ambix. 53: 43–65. S2CID 97109455.
- Ross, Kelley L. (2020). "The Greek Elements". Retrieved 2 March 2023.
- OCLC 221108071.
- Strathern, Paul (21 April 2001). Mendeleyev's Dream: The Quest for the Elements. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-312-26204-4.
- Tester, S. J. (1999). A History of Western Astrology. Boydell & Brewer.
External links
- Media related to Classical elements at Wikimedia Commons
- Section on 4 elements in Buddhism