element

…assumption of a single fundamental element. Parmenides, however, asserted that such an assumption could not account for movement and change, and, whereas Empedocles sought to resolve this difficulty by positing four basic ingredients, Anaxagoras posited an infinite number. Unlike his predecessors, who had chosen such elements as heat or water…

…that water is the basic building block of all matter, whereas Anaximander chose to call the essential substance “the unlimited.”

Strife makes each of these elements withdraw itself from the others; Love makes them mingle together. The real world is at a stage in which neither force dominates. In the beginning, Love was dominant and all four substances were mixed together; during the formation of the cosmos, Strife entered to…

Empedocles’ cosmic elements—air (with its associated qualities, warm and moist), earth (cold and dry), fire (warm and dry), and water (cold and moist)—were related to health and corresponded (in the above order) to Hippocrates’ physical humours, which were associated with variations in temperament: blood (sanguine temperament), black…

…the first to suggest a single material substratum for the universe—namely, water, or moisture. According to Aristotle, Thales also held that “all things are full of gods” and that magnetic objects possess souls by virtue of their capacity to move iron—soul being that which in the Greek view distinguishes living…