The Four Elements Theory – Earth, Fire, Water, Air
There has been a lot of misconception about who actually first acknowledged that there were four basic elements in nature. This is why this post was born.
Back in ancient Greece, an intelligent man came to an understanding that there were four substances that could explain all the other existing substances. Although he is not as famous as other philosophers such as Socrates (469 – 399 B.C), Plato (428-424 B.C) and Aristotle (384-322 B.C). His name was Empedocles and he lived even before Socrates, from 495 to 430 B.C. He was the discoverer of the 4 elements, the four basic elements of nature – earth, fire, air, water.
Empedocles was a Pre-Socratic philosopher, as he lived before Socrates. Empedocle’s theories would greatly influence not only all the coming philosophers after him but also be a reference for many centuries to come.
Who was Empedocles of Akragas? – the man behind the four elements theory
Empedocles lived in 400 B.C. He was a philosopher, a poet and a doctor. He lived in Akragas, a Greek city in Sicily, situated in today’s Italy. It is said that he was rich and from a noble family. But not much else can we know about his life. As Greece at the time was not really just Greece, as it was a set of city-states and islands all around the Mediterranean.
A piece of the Strasbourg Empedocles papyrus in the Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire, Strasbourg
Empedocles was a firm believer in Orphic mysteries – also called Orphism, which was a religious cult of ancient Greece, prominent in the 6th century B.C. and was also into physics and science. Empedocles was a great deal important (even though not many of us can say we heard about him).
He was featured in a very trendy book with other illuminated people, the Nuremberg Chronicle – a book of great importance and significance at the time and even today, as it is one of the most densely illustrated and technically advanced works of the early beginning years of book printing.
The book was created by the Nuremberg doctor, humanist and bibliophile Hartmann Schedel, and it is an illustrated encyclopedia that comprises the world’s historical accounts.
It was written in 1493 by Hartmann Schedel in Latin and then translated into German by Georg Alt. The entire book can be read here, from the The Library of Congress in Washington.
Empedocles as portrayed in the Nuremberg Chronicle
Being one of the best documented early printed books, called incunabulum – meaning basically that it was something of paper, either a pamphlet, book or broadside (a large sheet of paper printed only on one side, used to announce things in the streets), that was printed in Europe before the 16th century. However, don’t confuse incunable or incunabulum with manuscripts, as the later ones were written by hand, while the incunabula were not, they were printed with metal.
This Nuremberg Chronicle is like an illustrated world history, and the content inside is divided into seven ages:
- First age: from creation to the Deluge
- Second age: up to the birth of Abraham
- Third age: up to King David
- Fourth age: up to the Babylonian captivity
- Fifth age: up to the birth of Jesus Christ
- Sixth age: up to the present time (the largest part)
- Seventh age: outlook on the end of the world and the Last Judgment
This book contains illustrations, 1,809 woodcut illustrations and the colors were added by hand, by Wilhelm Pleydenwurff and Michael Wolgemut. And it has 326 total pages.
The four elements theory
While interested in physics and science, he understood that there were ultimately 4 elements in nature or four substances in nature that comprise everything around us, and they were fire, air, water, earth. He also associated the elements with four gods, Zeus, Hera, Nestis and Aidoneus.
This theory was used and become a standard dogma up until the Renaissance, although it still survived later on in other fields of knowledge like astrology, psychology and different neo-pagan beliefs.
Because of the advances in science, we now know that we have at least 118 elements in nature, depicted in the periodic table, which was first depicted by Mendeleev in 1869. Although we can say air is just air, we scientifically know that it is comprised with nitrogen, oxygen and argon and other.
The Interconnected Nature of Human History
As we are all collective, Empedocles’ four elements theory was extended to other fields of knowledge, other notions, other concepts, as other people had come into contact with it and found other truths about it, altering and carving it accordingly. As a moving vortex, knowledge is constantly evolving, but part of the same vortex, just in constant movement and evolution from the first steps to the more complex and matured ones.
To give an example of the interconnected nature of everything, Empedocles received some knowledge from Parmenides, on the principle “that nothing can arise out of nothing,” nor that anything can just disappear into nothing. And this was back in ancient Greek times. Then this concept was taken and changed to “Matter is neither created nor destroyed” – back in the 18th century by the French chemist, Antoine Lavoisier.
However, for Parmenides it meant that all motion and change must be illusory, while Empedocles saw it in a different way, that there is a real process in nature, “the mixture and separation of things mixed”. Empedocles was an early atomist, as he back then was able (with the help of this notion) to explain the natural changes in nature as a result of the combinations, separations and re-groupings of the indestructible entities. He then could also explain that these four elements – water, air, fire, earth -, interact continuously under the influence of two cosmic powers on the other: Love and Strife. These two forces functioned as forces of attraction and repulsion, as opposite forces.
A little background story of the ancient times
Ancient Greece had a lot of different understandings of the world. Trying to make sense of the world, people developed different religions, cults, and philosophical ideas about human existence, creation, and life. There were known beliefs such as Stoicism, and Epicureanism, but there were also superstitious magic beliefs, Pythagoreanism, and Orphism, which was a secret religion mostly followed by the elite.
Orphism – an important part of ancient Greece
The ones that followed this religion were called Orphics, and they would conduct yearly festivals on the Eleusinian plains west of Athens in celebration. The main focus of the religion was centred around the death and suffering of the god Dionysus at the hands of the Titans. Back then, the Egyptian world had great influence on Greece, with the interconnection of people through commerce. The Egyptian Cult of the Dead influenced the Cult of Adonis and Dionysus, which mirror the Egyptian myth of Osiris.
The most central ritual of Orphism was the sacrificing of animals, a symbolic dismembering and eating of Dionysus. People who followed Orphism also believed in the soul, which was free from the physical body.
They also conducted purification rituals to forgive the guilty. Orphics believed they would spend eternity with Orpheus and other heroes. The Orphics would have to maintain a spiritual purity, so they would have to live an ascetic life, notable for having to be vegetarians. In fact, Empedocles himself was, of course, vegetarian because of this. The Orphics needed to live a prepared life for the human soul to be ready for life in eternity.
Empedocles’ Legacy in History
Painting of Empedocles allegedly dropping out of Mount Etna, in Sicily, by Salvator Rosa (1615-1673)
Empedocles’s death was built up into a myth by ancient writers, as the painting of Salvator Rosa shows. Although Empedocles is not as well known as other philosophers for discovering the four elements of nature, he has greatly contributed to our world with his ideas and discoveries. His ideas have been recorded by Aristotle, Diogenes, Pliny and Horace. Aristotle had called Empedocles the father of rhetoric.
