Classical element

Classical elements typically refer to water, earth, fire, air, and (later) aether, which were proposed to explain the nature and complexity of all matter in terms of simpler substances. Ancient cultures in Greece, Tibet, and

India

had similar lists, sometimes referring in local languages to "air" as "wind" and the fifth element as "void".

These different cultures and even individual philosophers had widely varying explanations concerning their attributes and how they related to observable phenomena as well as cosmology. Sometimes these theories overlapped with

mythology

and were personified in deities. Some of these interpretations included atomism (the idea of very small, indivisible portions of matter), but other interpretations considered the elements to be divisible into infinitely small pieces without changing their nature.

While the classification of the material world in ancient Indian,

Hellenistic Egypt

, and

ancient Greece

into Air, Earth, Fire and Water was more philosophical, during the Islamic Golden Age medieval middle eastern scientists used practical, experimental observation to classify materials.'' Science and Islam'',

Jim Al-Khalili

.

BBC

, 2009 In Europe, the Ancient Greek concept, devised by

Empedocles

, evolved into the system of

Aristotle

, which evolved slightly into the medieval system, which for the first time in Europe became subject to experimental verification in the 1600s, during the

Scientific Revolution

.

Modern science does not support the classical elements as the material basis of the physical world. Atomic theory classifies atoms into more than a hundred chemical elements such as

oxygen

,

iron

, and

mercury

. These elements form chemical compounds and mixtures, and under different temperatures and pressures, these substances can adopt different states of matter. The most commonly observed states of

solid

,

liquid

,

gas

, and plasma share many attributes with the classical elements of earth, water, air, and fire, respectively, but these states are due to similar behavior of different types of atoms at similar energy levels, and not due to containing a certain type of atom or a certain type of substance.

Ancient Greece

The ancient Greek concept of four basic elements, these being earth (γῆ ''gê''), water (ὕδωρ ''hýdōr''), air (ἀήρ ''aḗr''), and fire (πῦρ ''pŷr''), dates from pre-Socratic times and persisted throughout the Middle Ages and into the

Renaissance

, deeply influencing

Europe

an thought and culture.

The

Sicilian

philosopher

Empedocles

(ca. 450 BC) proved (at least to his 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. Prior to Empedocles, Greek philosophers had debated which substance was the ''

arche

'' ("first principle"), or primordial element from which everything else was made;

Heraclitus

championed fire,

Thales

supported water, and Anaximenes plumped for air.

Anaximander

argued that the primordial substance was not any of the known substances, but could be transformed into them, and they into each other. Empedocles was the first to propose four elements, fire, earth, air, and water. He called them the four “roots” (ῥιζώματα, rhizōmata).

Plato seems to have been the first to use the term “element (στοιχεῖον, ''stoicheîon'')” in reference to air, fire, earth, and water. 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.

In ''On the Heavens'', Aristotle defines "element" in general:

In his ''On Generation and Corruption'', 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 inscribed in the other, with the corners of one being the classical elements, and the corners of the other being the properties. The opposite corner is the opposite of these properties, "hot – cold" and "dry – wet".

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

star

s cannot be made out of any of the four elements but must be made of a different, unchangeable, heavenly substance. 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. These five elements have been associated since Plato's ''Timaeus'' with the five platonic solids.

A text written in Egypt in Hellenistic or

Roman

times called the ''Kore Kosmou'' (“Virgin of the World”) ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus (associated with the Egyptian god

Thoth

), names the four elements fire, water, air, and earth. As described in this book:

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.

According to Galen, these elements were used by

Hippocrates

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 his/her own personal natural balanced state.

The Neoplatonic philosopher Proclus rejected Aristotle's theory relating the elements to the sensible qualities hot, cold, wet, and dry. He maintained that each of the elements has three properties. Fire is sharp, subtle, and mobile while its opposite, earth, is blunt, dense, and immobile; they are joined by the intermediate elements, air and water, in the following fashion:

India

Hinduism

The system of five elements are found in

Vedas

, especially

Ayurveda

, the '' pancha mahabhuta'', or “five great elements”, of

Hinduism

are:
#''bhūmi'' or '' pṛthvī'' (earth),
#'' 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).
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.

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.

Buddhism

In the Pali literature, the '' mahabhuta'' ("great elements") or ''catudhatu'' ("four elements") are earth, water, fire and air. In early Buddhism, the four elements are a basis for understanding suffering and for liberating oneself from suffering. The earliest Buddhist texts explain that the four primary material elements are solidity, fluidity, temperature, and mobility, characterized as earth, water, fire, and air, respectively.

The

Buddha

's teaching regarding the four elements is to be understood as the base of all observation of real sensations rather than as a philosophy. The four properties are cohesion (water), solidity or inertia (earth), expansion or vibration (air) and heat or energy content (fire). He promulgated a categorization of mind and matter as composed of eight types of " kalapas" of which the four elements are primary and a secondary group of four are color, smell, taste, and nutriment which are derivative from the four primaries.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu (1997) renders an extract of

Shakyamuni Buddha

’s from Pali into English thus:

Tibetan Buddhist medical literature speaks of the Panch Mahābhūta (five elements).

Post-classical history

Alchemy

The elemental system used in medieval alchemy was developed primarily by the anonymous authors of the Arabic works attributed to Jābir ibn Hayyān (died ). This system consisted of the four classical elements of air, earth, fire, and water, in addition to a new theory called the sulphur-mercury theory of metals, which was based on two elements:

sulphur

, characterizing the principle of combustibility, "the stone which burns"; and

mercury

, characterizing the principle of metallic properties. They were seen by early alchemists as idealized expressions of irreducible components of the

universe

and are of larger consideration within philosophical alchemy.

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).

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).Rafati, Vahid.
Lawh-i-Hikmat: The Two Agents and the Two Patients
'. `Andalib, vol. 5, no. 19, pp. 29–38.

Japan

Japan

ese traditions use a set of elements called the (''godai'', literally "five great"). These five are earth, water, fire, wind/air, and void. These came from Indian Vastu shastra philosophy and Buddhist beliefs; in addition, the classical Chinese elements (, ''wu xing'') are also prominent in Japanese culture, especially to the influential Neo-Confucianists during the medieval Edo period.

* Earth represented things that were solid.
* Water represented things that were liquid.
* Fire represented things that destroy.
* Wind represented things that moved.
* Void or Sky/Heaven represented things not of our everyday life.

Modern history

Chemical element

The Physics (Aristotle), 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 History of the periodic table#Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier, list of elements would no longer refer to classical elements. Some modern scientists see a parallel between the classical elements and the four state of matter, states of matter:

solid

,

liquid

,

gas

and weakly ionized plasma.

Modern science recognizes classes of elementary particles which have no substructure (or rather, particles that are not made of other particles) and composite particles having substructure (particles made of other particles).

Western astrology

Western astrology uses the four astrology and the classical elements, classical elements in connection with natal chart, astrological charts and horoscopes. The twelve Astrological signs, signs of the zodiac are divided into the four elements: Fire signs are Aries, Leo and Sagittarius, Earth signs are Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn, Air signs are Gemini, Libra and Aquarius, and Water signs are Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces.

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." 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".Russell, Bertrand, ''History of Western Philosophy'', p. 173, Routledge, 1995 .

In popular culture

See also

*Elemental, Elemental (Renaissance alchemy)
*Arche, First principle (Pre-Socratic ''arche'' and Aristotelian substratum)
*Qi, First principle (Chinese ''qì'' and Japanese ''ki'')
*Prima materia, First principle (Prima materia in Alchemy)
*Periodic table, Periodic table of the elements (Modern science)
*Phlogiston theory, Phlogiston theory (History of science)
*Sulfur-mercury theory of metals

Notes

References

* Bertrand Russell, Russell, Bertrand (1995) ''History of Western Philosophy'', Routledge, .
* Strathern, Paul (2000).
Mendeleyev's Dream – the Quest for the Elements
'. New York: Berkley Books.

External links

Section on 4 elements in Buddhism

{{DEFAULTSORT:Classical Element

Classical elements,
Natural philosophy
History of astrology
Technical factors of astrology
Concepts in Chinese philosophy
Theories in ancient Greek philosophy
Indian philosophy
Hindu cosmology
Buddhist cosmology
Taoist cosmology
Esoteric cosmology