11/10/2022 0 Comments 4 elementsThe theory misses its target, since Plato didn't have a clue about the modern chemical elements, and atoms do not have such geometrical structures. It is noteworthy that Plato's theory has a very modern flavor, with mathematically defined, transmutable atoms. Be that as it may, the intuitive impression that the Sun is the source of the heat we feel, which is true, would seem to falsify Aristotle's systematic theory. Of course, the Greeks were a little confused about light, thinking that it originated in the eye rather than in the illuminating object. Even if one wanted to argue, lamely, that the Sun does not really supply the warmth that it appears to, we still have the difficulty that the Sun, planets, and stars all supply the light by which we perceive them. but Aristotle has defined the basis of those features out of the element. The original meaning of aithér was "fiery, blazing, flashing, glittering," etc. The problem is that, if the opposites that define the other elements are confined, with those elements, to the Earth, and aether itself is superior and beyond the opposites, then this leaves us with the awkward question how the Sun, which is therefore not hot, can heat the Earth. But he had no interest in matching it with Plato's fifth solid, even though it didn't fit in with his scheme of opposites for the other four.Īristotle's theory of aether came in for criticism from some later commentators, such as John Philoponus in the 6th Century AD. Our word "quintessence" comes from a Latin expression for this - the "fifth essence." Aristotle thought that the heavens were made of this element. Aristotle added a fifth element, αἰθήρ, aithér ( aether in Latin, "ether" in English). But Plato himself didn't really know what else to do with the dodecahedron. Kepler imagined that nesting the solids inside each other would produce the ratios that he had independently posited in his Third Law of planetary motion. #4 elements seriesThat remark led the great astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) into an absurd series of speculations about how the orbits of the planets, whose nature for the first time he had accurately understood, corresponded to the Platonic solids. The fifth Platonic Solid, the dodecahedron, Plato obscurely remarks, ".the god used for arranging the constellations on the whole heaven" ( Timaeus 55). Aristotle's view was ultimately the accepted one all through the Middle Ages. Aristotle lost Plato's mathematical interest, discarded the geometrical treatment, and saw the elements as combinations of two sets of opposite qualities, hot & cold, wet & dry. These are, of course, not the true shapes of atoms but it turns out that they are some of the true shapes of packed atoms and molecules, namely crystals: The mineral salt (halite, NaCl) occurs in cubic crystals fluorite (calcium floride, CaF 2) in octahedrons and pyrite ("Fool's Gold," iron sulfide, FeS 2) in dodecahedrons etc. Their surfaces consist entirely of regular triangles (3, the tetrahedron 8, the octahedron and 20, the icosahedron), squares (6, the cube), and pentagons (12, the dodecahedron). Plato later conceived of them as consisting of atoms with the geometrical shapes of four of the five regular geometrical solids that had been discovered by the Pythagoreans but described by Plato (in the Timaeus). This allowed him to agree with Parmenides that Being never really changed. Then Empedocles of Acragas, Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ὁ Ἀκραγαντῖνος, proposed that they all existed together in fixed quantities from the beginning, mixed and unmixed by Love, Φιλότης, and Strife, Νεῖκος. The four classical elements, each originally conceived as the unique ἀρχή, arché (plural ἀρχαί, archaí), "beginning," "principle," or "original stuff," were independently proposed by early Presocratic philosophers: water, ὕδωρ, by Thales of Miletus, Θαλῆς ὁ Μιλήσιος air, ἀήρ, by Anaximenes of Miletus, Ἀναξιμένης ὁ Μιλήσιος earth, γῆ, by Xenophanes of Colophon, Ξενοφάνης ὁ Κολοφώνιος and fire, πῦρ, by Heraclitus of Ephesus, Ἡράκλειτος ὁ Ἐφεσίος. THE GREEK, INDIAN, & CHINESE ELEMENTS - SEVEN ELEMENT THEORY THE GREEK ELEMENTS
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