four element theory
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Classical elements typically refer to earth, water, air, fire, and (later)
aether Aether, æther or ether may refer to: Metaphysics and mythology * Aether (classical element), the material supposed to fill the region of the universe above the terrestrial sphere * Aether (mythology), the personification of the "upper sky", sp ...
which were proposed to explain the nature and complexity of all matter in terms of simpler
substance Substance may refer to: * Matter, anything that has mass and takes up space Chemistry * Chemical substance, a material with a definite chemical composition * Drug substance ** Substance abuse, drug-related healthcare and social policy diagnosis ...
s. Ancient cultures in Greece, Tibet, and India had similar lists which sometimes referred, 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 Middle Ages medieval scientists used practical, experimental observation to classify materials. In Europe, the Ancient Greek concept, devised by Empedocles, evolved into the system of Aristotle and Hippocrates, who introduced systematic classification into the area, 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 The history of science covers the development of science from ancient history, ancient times to the present. It encompasses all three major branches of science: natural science, natural, social science, social, and formal science, formal. Sc ...
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 Mercury commonly refers to: * Mercury (planet), the nearest planet to the Sun * Mercury (element), a metallic chemical element with the symbol Hg * Mercury (mythology), a Roman god Mercury or The Mercury may also refer to: Companies * Merc ...
. These elements form chemical compounds and
mixtures In chemistry, a mixture is a material made up of two or more different chemical substances which are not chemically bonded. A mixture is the physical combination of two or more substances in which the identities are retained and are mixed in the ...
, and under different temperatures and pressures, these substances can adopt different states of matter. The most commonly observed states of solid,
liquid A liquid is a nearly incompressible fluid that conforms to the shape of its container but retains a (nearly) constant volume independent of pressure. As such, it is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, gas, a ...
, gas, and
plasma Plasma or plasm may refer to: Science * Plasma (physics), one of the four fundamental states of matter * Plasma (mineral), a green translucent silica mineral * Quark–gluon plasma, a state of matter in quantum chromodynamics Biology * Blood pla ...
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 substance.


Hellenistic philosophy

The ancient Greek concept of four basic elements, these being earth ( ), water ( ), air ( ), and fire ( ), dates from pre-Socratic times and persisted throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, deeply influencing European thought and culture.


Pre-Socratic elements

The Sicilian Greek philosopher Empedocles () 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 Anaximander (; grc-gre, Ἀναξίμανδρος ''Anaximandros''; ) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus,"Anaximander" in ''Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 1, p. 403. a city of Ionia (in moder ...
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" (, ).


Plato

Plato seems to have been the first to use the term "element (, )" in reference to air, fire, earth, and water. The ancient Greek word for element, (from , "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.


Humorism

According to Galen, these elements were used by Hippocrates in describing the
human body The human body is the structure of a Human, human being. It is composed of many different types of Cell (biology), cells that together create Tissue (biology), tissues and subsequently organ systems. They ensure homeostasis and the life, viabi ...
with an association with the four humours: yellow
bile Bile (from Latin ''bilis''), or gall, is a dark-green-to-yellowish-brown fluid produced by the liver of most vertebrates that aids the digestion of lipids in the small intestine. In humans, bile is produced continuously by the liver (liver 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.


Aristotle

In ''
On the Heavens ''On the Heavens'' (Greek: ''Περὶ οὐρανοῦ''; Latin: ''De Caelo'' or ''De Caelo et Mundo'') is Aristotle's chief cosmological treatise: written in 350 BC, it contains his astronomical theory and his ideas on the concrete workings o ...
'', 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, ). * Water is both cold and wet. * Earth is both cold and dry. A classic diagram has one square
inscribed {{unreferenced, date=August 2012 An inscribed triangle of a circle In geometry, an inscribed planar shape or solid is one that is enclosed by and "fits snugly" inside another geometric shape or solid. To say that "figure F is inscribed in figur ...
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 Aether, æther or ether may refer to: Metaphysics and mythology * Aether (classical element), the material supposed to fill the region of the universe above the terrestrial sphere * Aether (mythology), the personification of the "upper sky", sp ...
( ), 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 A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked ...
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 Anaxagoras (; grc-gre, Ἀναξαγόρας, ''Anaxagóras'', "lord of the assembly";  500 –  428 BC) was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Born in Clazomenae at a time when Asia Minor was under the control of the Persian Empire, ...
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.


Neo-Platonism

The Neoplatonic philosopher
Proclus Proclus Lycius (; 8 February 412 – 17 April 485), called Proclus the Successor ( grc-gre, Πρόκλος ὁ Διάδοχος, ''Próklos ho Diádokhos''), was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, one of the last major classical philosophers ...
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:


Hermeticism

A text written in Egypt in
Hellenistic In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...
or Roman times called the ''
Kore Kosmou The ''Hermetica'' are texts attributed to the legendary Hellenistic figure Hermes Trismegistus, a syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. These texts may vary widely in content and purpose, but are usually subd ...
'' ("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:


Ancient Indian philosophy


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 Akasha or Akash (Sanskrit ' ) means space or sky or æther in traditional Indian cosmology, depending on the religion. The term has also been adopted in Western occultism and spiritualism in the late 19th century. In many modern Indo-Aryan lan ...
'', ''vyom'', or '' śūnya'' (space or zero) or (
aether Aether, æther or ether may refer to: Metaphysics and mythology * Aether (classical element), the material supposed to fill the region of the universe above the terrestrial sphere * Aether (mythology), the personification of the "upper sky", sp ...
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 Kalapa or rupa-kalapa (from Sanskrit ''rūpa'' "form, phenomenon" and ''kalāpa'' "bundle") is a term in Theravada Buddhist phenomenology for the smallest units of physical matter, said to be about 1/46,656th the size of a particle of dust from a w ...
" of which the four elements are primary and a secondary group of four are colour, 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 (five elements). It was also extensively used in Traditional Tibetan Medicine.


Post-classical history


Alchemy

The elemental system used in medieval alchemy was developed primarily by the anonymous authors of the Arabic works attributed to Pseudo
Apollonius of Tyana Apollonius of Tyana ( grc, Ἀπολλώνιος ὁ Τυανεύς; c. 3 BC – c. 97 AD) was a Greek Neopythagorean philosopher from the town of Tyana in the Roman province of Cappadocia in Anatolia. He is the subject of ''L ...
. 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 Abū Mūsā Jābir ibn Ḥayyān (Arabic: , variously called al-Ṣūfī, al-Azdī, al-Kūfī, or al-Ṭūsī), died 806−816, is the purported author of an enormous number and variety of works in Arabic, often called the Jabirian corpus. The ...
, which was based on two elements:
sulphur Sulfur (or sulphur in British English) is a chemical element with the symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula ...
, characterizing the principle of combustibility, "the stone which burns"; and
mercury Mercury commonly refers to: * Mercury (planet), the nearest planet to the Sun * Mercury (element), a metallic chemical element with the symbol Hg * Mercury (mythology), a Roman god Mercury or The Mercury may also refer to: Companies * Merc ...
, 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 Paracelsus (; ; 1493 – 24 September 1541), born Theophrastus von Hohenheim (full name Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim), was a Swiss physician, alchemist, lay theologian, and philosopher of the German Renaissance. He w ...
. 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 Ibn Sina ( fa, ابن سینا; 980 – June 1037 CE), commonly known in the West as Avicenna (), was a Persian polymath who is regarded as one of the most significant physicians, astronomers, philosophers, and writers of the Islamic G ...
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).


Japan

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
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 Aristotelian tradition and medieval alchemy eventually gave rise to modern
chemistry Chemistry is the science, scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the Chemical element, elements that make up matter to the chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions ...
, scientific theories and new taxonomies. By the time of Antoine Lavoisier, for example, a
list of elements This is a list of the 118 chemical elements which have been identified as of 2022. A chemical element, often simply called an element, is a type of atom which has the same number of protons in its atomic nucleus (i.e., the same atomic number, or ...
would no longer refer to classical elements. Some modern scientists see a parallel between the classical elements and the four states of matter: solid,
liquid A liquid is a nearly incompressible fluid that conforms to the shape of its container but retains a (nearly) constant volume independent of pressure. As such, it is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, gas, a ...
, gas and weakly ionized
plasma Plasma or plasm may refer to: Science * Plasma (physics), one of the four fundamental states of matter * Plasma (mineral), a green translucent silica mineral * Quark–gluon plasma, a state of matter in quantum chromodynamics Biology * Blood pla ...
. 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 classical elements in connection with
astrological chart A horoscope (or other commonly used names for the horoscope in English include natal chart, astrological chart, astro-chart, celestial map, sky-map, star-chart, cosmogram, vitasphere, radical chart, radix, chart wheel or simply chart) is an ast ...
s and horoscopes. The twelve
signs Signs may refer to: * ''Signs'' (2002 film), a 2002 film by M. Night Shyamalan * ''Signs'' (TV series) (Polish: ''Znaki'') is a 2018 Polish-language television series * ''Signs'' (journal), a journal of women's studies *Signs (band), an American ...
of the zodiac are divided into the four elements:
Fire signs In Western astrology, astrological signs are the twelve 30-degree sectors that make up ecliptic, Earth's 360-degree orbit around the Sun. The signs enumerate from the first day of spring, known as the First Point of Aries, which is the Equinox ( ...
are Aries, Leo and Sagittarius,
Earth signs In Western astrology, astrological signs are the twelve 30-degree sectors that make up Earth's 360-degree orbit around the Sun. The signs enumerate from the first day of spring, known as the First Point of Aries, which is the vernal equinox. ...
are Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn,
Air signs In Western astrology, astrological signs are the twelve 30-degree sectors that make up ecliptic, Earth's 360-degree orbit around the Sun. The signs enumerate from the first day of spring, known as the First Point of Aries, which is the Equinox ( ...
are Gemini, Libra and Aquarius, and
Water signs In Western astrology, astrological signs are the twelve 30-degree sectors that make up ecliptic, Earth's 360-degree orbit around the Sun. The signs enumerate from the first day of spring, known as the First Point of Aries, which is the Equinox ( ...
are Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces.


Criticism

The Dutch historian of science
Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis (28 October 1892, in Tilburg – 18 May 1965, in De Bilt) was a Dutch historian of science. Career Dijksterhuis studied mathematics at the University of Groningen from 1911 to 1918. His Ph.d. thesis was entitled "A Contrib ...
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".


See also

* Elemental (Renaissance alchemy) * First principle (Pre-Socratic ''arche'' and Aristotelian substratum) * First principle (Chinese ''qì'' and Japanese ''ki'') * First principle (Prima materia in Alchemy) * Periodic table of the elements (Modern science) * Phlogiston theory (History of science) *
Sulfur-mercury theory of metals Abū Mūsā Jābir ibn Ḥayyān (Arabic: , variously called al-Ṣūfī, al-Azdī, al-Kūfī, or al-Ṭūsī), died 806−816, is the purported author of an enormous number and variety of works in Arabic, often called the Jabirian corpus. The ...


Notes


References


Bibliography

* * * * * * *


External links


Section on 4 elements in Buddhism
{{DEFAULTSORT:Classical Element 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