The classical elements typically refer to earth, water, air, fire, and (later) aether which were proposed to explain the nature and complexity of all matter in terms of simpler Substance theory.
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 personification. 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 India, Ancient Egypt, and ancient Greece into air, earth, fire, and water was more philosophical, during the Middle Ages medieval used practical, experimental observation to classify materials.
Modern science does not support the classical elements to classify types of substances. Atomic theory classifies atoms into more than a hundred such as oxygen, iron, and mercury, which may form chemical compounds and mixtures. The modern categories roughly corresponding to the classical elements are the states of matter produced under different temperatures and pressures. Solid, liquid, gas, and plasma share many attributes with the corresponding classical elements of earth, water, air, and fire, but these states describe the similar behavior of different types of atoms at similar energy levels, not the characteristic behavior of certain atoms or substances.
Hellenistic philosophy
| Aristotelian elements and qualities |
Empedoclean elements
fire
air
water
earth
|
The ancient Greek concept of four basic elements, these being earth (γῆ ), water (ὕδωρ ), air (ἀήρ ), and fire (πῦρ ), dates from pre-Socratic times and persisted throughout the Middle Ages and into the Early modern period, deeply influencing thought and culture.
Pre-Socratic elements
Primordal element
and
Aristotle illustrated with a burning log. The log releases all four elements as it is destroyed.]]The classical elements were first proposed independently by several early Pre-Socratic philosophers. Greek philosophers had debated which substance was the
arche ("first principle"), or primordial element from which everything else was made.
Thales () believed that water was this principle.
Anaximander () argued that the primordial substance was not any of the known substances, but could be transformed into them, and they into each other. Anaximenes () favored air, and
Heraclitus (
fl. ) championed fire.
Fire, earth, air, and water
The
Magna Graecia philosopher
Empedocles () was the first to propose the four classical elements as a set: fire, earth, air, and water. He called them the four "roots" (ῥιζώματα, ). 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.
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 Aristotelianism of the party, says:
Humorism (Hippocrates)
According to
Galen, these elements were used by
Hippocrates () in describing the
human body with an association with the
Humorism: yellow
bile (fire),
Melancholia (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.
Plato
Plato (428/423 – 348/347 BC) seems to have been the first to use the term "element (στοιχεῖον, )" 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.
Aristotle
In
On the Heavens (350 BC), Aristotle defines "element" in general:
In his On Generation and Corruption,
-
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".
Aether
Aristotle added a fifth element, aether (αἰθήρ ), 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
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
. Earth was associated with the cube, air with the octahedron, water with the icosahedron, and fire with the tetrahedron. Of the fifth Platonic solid, the dodecahedron, Plato obscurely remarked, "...the god used it for arranging the constellations on the whole heaven".
Aristotle added a fifth element, aither (aether in Latin, "ether" in English) and postulated that the heavens were made of this element, but he had no interest in matching it with Plato's fifth solid.
[Wildberg (1988): Wildberg discusses the correspondence of the Platonic solids with elements in Timaeus but notes that this correspondence appears to have been forgotten in Epinomis, which he calls "a long step towards Aristotle's theory", and he points out that Aristotle's ether is above the other four elements rather than on an equal footing with them, making the correspondence less apposite.]
Neo-Platonism
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:
Hermeticism
A text written in Egypt in Hellenistic or
Roman Egypt 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:
Ancient Indian philosophy
Hinduism
The system of five elements are found in
Vedas, especially
Ayurveda, the
Pancha Bhoota, or "five great elements", of
Hinduism are:
-
bhūmi or Prithvi (earth),
-
āpas or jala (water),
-
Agni or agni (fire),
-
Vayu, vyāna, or vāta (air or wind)
-
Akasha, 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
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 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. (1995). 086171072X, Wisdom Publications in association with the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. 086171072X
The Gautama 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 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 Buddhism medical literature speaks of the (five elements) or "elemental properties":
Ancient African philosophy
Angola
In traditional
Kongo religion, the five elements are incorporated into the
Kongo cosmogram. This sacred symbol also depicts the physical world (
Nseke), the spiritual world of the ancestors (
Mpémba), the
Kalunga line that runs between the two worlds, the circular void that originally formed the two worlds (
mbûngi), and
Sun path. Each element correlates to a period in the life cycle, which the Bakongo people also equate to the four cardinal directions. According to their cosmology, all living things go through this cycle.
-
Aether represents mbûngi, the circular void that begot the universe.
-
Air (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.
-
Earth (North) represents tukula, the period of maturity that takes place during fall.
-
Water (West) represents luvemba, the period of death that takes place during winter
Mali
In traditional
Bambara people spirituality, the Supreme God created four additional essences of himself during creation. Together, these five essences of the deity correlate with the five classical elements.
-
Koni is the thought and void ( aether).
-
Bemba (also called Pemba) is the god of the sky and air.
-
Nyale (also called Koroni Koundyé) is the goddess of fire.
-
Faro is the androgynous god of water.
-
Ndomadyiri is the god and master of the earth.
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. 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:
Sulfur, 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).
Chinese
Chinese traditional concepts adopt a set of elements called the 五行 (
wuxing, literally "five phases"). These five are Metal or Gold (金
Jīn), Wood (木
Mù), Water (水
Shuǐ), Fire (火
Huǒ), and Earth or Soil (土
Tǔ).
[Theobald, Ulrich (2011) "Yin-Yang and Five Agents Theory, Correlative Thinking" in ChinaKnowledge.de - An Encyclopaedia on Chinese History, Literature and Art] These can be linked to Taiji, Yinyang,
Four Symbols,
Bagua, Hexagram and
I Ching.
-
Gold (West) represents the lesser yin symbol, autumn, the white color, and White Tiger mascot, Taotie creature (Earth).
-
Wood (East) represents the lesser yang symbol, spring, the green color, and Azure Dragon mascot, Feilian creature (Wind).
-
Water (North) represents the great yin symbol, winter, the black color, and Black Turtle-Snake mascot.
-
Fire (South) represents the great yang symbol, summer, the red color, and Vermilion Bird mascot.
-
Soil (Center) represents the Qi symbol, intermediate season, the yellow color, and Yellow Dragon mascot, Hundun creature (Void).
Japanese
traditions use a set of elements called the 五大 (
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 (五行,
wu xing) are also prominent in Japanese culture, especially to the influential Neo-Confucianists during the medieval
Edo period.
-
Earth (土 Tsuchi) represented rocks and stability.
-
Water (水 Mizu) represented fluidity and adaptability.
-
Fire (火 Hi) represented life and energy.
-
Wind (風 Kaze) represented movement and expansion.
-
Void (空 Sora) 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).
Medicine Wheel
The medicine wheel symbol is a modern invention attributed to Native American peoples dating to approximately 1972, with the following 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.
-
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 Salvia apiana medicine.
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.
Some modern scientists see a parallel between the classical elements and the four 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 classical elements in connection with
natal chart and
horoscopes. The twelve 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".
See also
Notes
Bibliography
External links
