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  1. Empedocles devised the theory that all substances are made of four pure, indestructible elements: air, fire, water, and earth. In one sense, it is admirable that Empedocles tried to simplify our complex world into basic elements.

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    • Pre-Socratic Philosophers
    • Empedocles’ Life & Work
    • Empedocles’ Philosophy
    • Conclusion

    The early Greek thinkers are known by the modern designation Pre-Socratic Philosophers because they lived and taught before the time of Socrates of Athens (l. 470/469-399 BCE), though some were his contemporaries. Although they would come to address many philosophical issues, their initial focus was on defining the First Cause of existence without ...

    This was the body of philosophical work Empedocles had before him when he began his own inquiries. How or why he became interested in philosophy is unknown. His only “biography” is given by the historian Diogenes Laertius (l. c. 180-240 CE) who never cites his sources, repeats legend as fact, and often confuses names of places and people. Even Empe...

    Although the subject is still debated by scholars, it seems that both of Empedocles’ works were originally a single piece. Scholar Gordon Campbell writes: Empedocles addresses On Nature to his student Pausanias(obviously not the famous 2nd century CE geographer) and, interpreting both his works as concerning the nature of the universe and one’s pla...

    Empedocles seems to have strongly suggested that people suffer because they have a wrong belief about the nature of existence, thinking that they are born, live, and then cease to exist at death or wander as ghosts in another realm. He maintains that, instead, one returns to essential essence after leaving the body and then returns in another form....

    • Joshua J. Mark
  3. Empedocles, a Greek philosopher and scientist who lived on the south coast of Sicily between 492 BCE and 432 BCE, proposed one of the first theories that attempted to describe the things around us. Empedocles argued that all matter was composed of four elements: fire, air, water, and earth.

  4. May 23, 2018 · Empedocles is best known as the oldest exponent of the four-element theory of matter—earth, air (or aether ), fire, and water—which endured until the advent of modern chemistry, although with some serious modifications by later thinkers and despite strong criticisms from the ancient atomists.

  5. Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the Atomists The Idea of Four Elements. Empedocles attempted to find an escape from the logical conclusions of the Eleatic philosophers. Born in the early fifth century b.c.e. in Sicily, Empedocles took on many roles before becoming a philosopher.

  6. Apr 29, 2024 · Empedocles proposed that there were four elements, air, earth, water, and fire and that everything else was a mixture of these. This belief was very popular in the medieval ages and introduced the science of alchemy.

  7. Originally, a Greek philosopher, Empedocles, proposed that all matter was made up of air, earth, fire, and water and that every substance was infinitely divisible (i.e. there was no smallest unit of anything). A few decades later, a second Greek philosopher, Democritus, proposed the existence of atoms, but not in the modern sense.

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