Classical element
The classical elements typically refer to earth, water, fire, air, and aether which were proposed to explain the nature and complexity of all matter in terms of simpler substances. Ancient cultures in Greece, Angola, Tibet, India, and Mali had similar lists which sometimes referred, in local languages, to "air" as "wind", and to "aether" as "space".
File:AMA Symbol of Meetei Sanamahism.jpg|thumb|The concept of five classical elements in the traditional Meitei religion
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, but other interpretations considered the elements to be divisible into infinitely small pieces without changing their nature.
While the classification of the material world among the ancient Indians, Hellenistic Egyptians, and ancient Greeks into air, earth, fire, and water was more philosophical; scientists of the Middle Ages used practical, experimental observation to classify materials. 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 17th century, at the start of the Scientific Revolution.
Modern science does not support the classical elements to classify types of substances. Atomic theory classifies atoms into more than a hundred chemical elements 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 behaviour of different types of atoms at similar energy levels, not the characteristic behaviour 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, water, air, and fire, dates from pre-Socratic times and persisted throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern period, deeply influencing European thought and culture.
Pre-Socratic elements
Primordial element
The classical elements were first proposed independently by several early Pre-Socratic philosophers. Greek philosophers had debated which substance was the arche, 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 favoured air, and Heraclitus championed fire.Fire, earth, air, and water
The Greek 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". Empedocles also proved 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 Aristotelian 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 four humours: yellow bile, black bile, blood, and phlegm. Medical care was primarily about helping the patient stay in or return to their own personal natural balanced state.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, meant "smallest division, 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, 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.
- Water is both cold and wet.
- Earth is both cold and dry.
Aether
added a fifth element, aether, 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. 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. 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 for arranging the constellations on the whole heaven". Aristotle added a fifth element, aither and postulated that the heavens were made of this element, but he had no interest in matching it with Plato's fifth solid.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:| Fire | Sharp | Subtle | Mobile |
| Air | Blunt | Subtle | Mobile |
| Water | Blunt | Dense | Mobile |
| Earth | Blunt | Dense | Immobile |
Hermeticism
A text written in Egypt in Hellenistic or Roman times called the Kore Kosmou ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus, names the four elements fire, water, air, and earth. As described in this book:Manichaeism
The Five Elements occupy a central place in Manichaean cosmogony. They are portrayed as the five sons of the “First Man” : Ether, Wind, Light, Water, and Fire. These elements also constitute the armor of the First Man.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,
- āpas or jala,
- agní or tejas,
- vāyu, vyāna, or vāta
- ākāśa, vyom, or śūnya or .
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 — hearing, touch, sight, taste, and smell. The next higher element, water, has no odour 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" 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 or catudhatu 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, characterised 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, solidity or inertia, expansion or vibration and heat or energy content. He promulgated a categorisation 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 renders an extract of Shakyamuni Buddha's from Pali into English thus:
Tibetan Buddhist medical literature speaks of the or "elemental properties": earth, water, fire, wind, and space. The concept was extensively used in traditional Tibetan medicine. Tibetan Buddhist theology, tantra traditions, and "astrological texts" also spoke of them making up the "environment, bodies," and at the smallest or "subtlest" level of existence, parts of thought and the mind. 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, water, fire, wind, and" the expanse of space. These natures exist as all "qualities" that are in the physical world and take forms in it.