Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

One constant throughout the early history of philosophy and the later history of natural science has been a simple procedural one: when faced with a complex whole, resolve it into its constituent parts, its “elements”. The natural philosophers of Ionia sought to determine the “elements” ( stoicheia ) of which all bodies are composed or from which these bodies originally derived. Empedocles ( c .495– c .435 bc ) suggested that the elements are fire, air, earth, and water, each with its own natural place and characteristic set of qualities; this fourfold division was widely accepted by later philosophers. Euclid ( fl. c .300 bc ) titled his pioneering work on geometry, The Elements ; he had shown how all of the multiplicity of propositions regarding plane figures could be derived from a small set of simple definitions and axioms. Medieval theories of method spoke of analysis and synthesis, or of resolution and composition, and recommended the breaking down into elements and subsequent reconstituting of the original complexes as the primary mode of understanding. Boyle built his new chemistry in the 1660s around the distinction between elements and compounds, each having distinctive chemical properties. Chemical elements are simple and unmixed, incapable of resolution into other bodies. It proved much more difficult than Boyle had expected to determine which was element and which ... log in or subscribe to read full text