Talk:Classical element

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[edit] Angels and Demons

Why was the section on Angels and Demons removed from the article text? We have plenty of instances of the use of the classical elements in pop culture (Captain Planet, etc). What's wrong with including instances where the elements are used prominently in literature? --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 19:48, August 8, 2005 (UTC)

  • Because everyone and their uncle makes reference to the four elements. I've removed the pop culture list as well. --Carnildo 21:48, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
    • I personally find the inclusion of those trivia items to be fairly encyclopedic, as they show how the classical elements are referenced in modern literature and pop culture. There is precedent for these kind of lists in articles such as Seven deadly sins#In modern popular culture. Would you be ok with a list of references with some kind of notability? --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 21:50, August 8, 2005 (UTC)
These lists, once started, tend to grow without bound. See Railgun as an example of what can happen when everyone comes by and adds their favorite example. I expect the situation here to be even worse. --Carnildo 22:22, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
Still, there are plenty of lists on other Wikipedia articles, and unless you support removing them all as a point of policy, then the classical element article certainly deserves such a section, as the references are quite significant and important. Railgun seems to be an extreme case where there is much fancruft, and not a lot of policing of the list. If we set down guidelines for notability for this list, I think it can be pretty tame. If we merge the literature and pop culture list we had before, there are only 5 items. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 22:34, August 8, 2005 (UTC)
How about this for criteria for adding to the list:
  1. The use of the four elements must form the core of the work or one of its major themes.
  2. The work is widely known.
  3. The work is known for its use of the four elements even beyond those who have had contact with this work.
--Carnildo 23:49, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. By that reasoning, I think that Angels and Demons, Captain Planet, and The fifth Element can stay. I've never heard of WITCH, but if it's actually significant, that can stay too. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 03:52, August 9, 2005 (UTC)
I agree with DropDeadGorgias. If the list does eventually grow to be too long, it can always be moved to a separate article. ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 04:05, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Sorry, I did not see this. I have created an page for Elements in popculture using research and knowledge off the top of my head. I have copied some work from this page there. If there is a problem, I will rewrite them. I hope it is okay. Thank you.

HVulpes

[edit] Merge: Yea or Nay

Merge Just fold Primordial's terminology into the Greek element subsection of Classical Elements, provide a redirect, and have done. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 172.136.124.170 (talk • contribs) .

Merge if there is anything noteworthy in this article at all.--Niels Ø 01:20, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

MERGE "Primordial" , meaning "having existed from the beginning; in an earliest or original stage or state", is not really a correct term for the "Classical" elements postulated by the Greeks. Terry King 23:18, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

No, don't merge. Even while the current article is not developed very well, they are different subjects of study and they should be separated. I personally like how short and clean the primordial elements article is right now, but I can understand why the merging is suggested: it is poor and classical elements is way more complete while including everything treated so far in the first one. But my point is primordial should be classified as stub and get a complete different point of view from the Greek, although should be using Greek as one of basic studies, while Greek is the classical because it is the basis of our current Occidental society. They're just different subjects and should be threaten separately.

Mixing the four elements article with one on primordial elements is another example of the countless stupid suggestions made by Wikipedia users and "editors" who just have to meddle with other people's work. No, the two topics do NOT belong together.

Were you aware when you wrote this that primordial elements has undergone significant revisions since the discussion started? BTW, caue's signature from 12 March 2006 goes with the previous comment ("Even while the current article...") and not the one on "stupid suggestions."

--caue 21:26, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

[copied from primordial's talk page] merge--"primordial" is confusing (it makes me think of soup) and I have never heard this distinction before. If you take a good look at the Greeks, they had everything Caue thinks is primordial: stories and speculation, little empirical proof, matter theory. Read up on Empedocles (you have to go past wikipedia though).Maestlin 08:19, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

NAY It's dumb! The primordial elements are the elements that make up THESE elements! So THIS article should be a stub, and the OTHER article should be a full article! Then it would make sense to merge it... but since is is the opposite way, merging an article about parent elements into an article about their children elements... dumb.... besides, there's only one more element added to the list, the premordial elements are as follow: fire, water, earth, air, the classical elements are these: fire, water, earth, air, aether.... I think I got my point through.... ~VNinja~ 23:35, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tarot Suits and the Elements

hi, i'm not that familiar with wikipedia, but i saw an error in this section, currently it reads:

"The tarot suits: cups, wands, swords and pentacles may be taken as corresponding to water, air, fire, and earth respectively. ", and "respectively" would indicate that cups=water, wands=air, swords=fire and pentacles=earth right? this is incorrect, it's supposed to be swords=air and wands=fire. see for reference: http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/learn/meanings/suits.shtml and http://www.learntarot.com/less3.htm (both mentioned as links on the wikipedia-page about Tarot, and considered very useful resources by myself as well), also i really never encountered any text about tarot that switches these elements around :) i mean you can switch Strength and Justice all you want.. but the suits are the suits ;-)

so i set out to correct this error, check back a few days later and see it reverted :(

the revert reads: "06:48, 20 February 2006 Carnildo (Revert unsourced change)", revert unsourced change, what does that mean? am i supposed to give a source to explain which tarot-suit corresponds to which element? really? apologies if i made a mistake here, i thought it was just a tiny mistake and tried to correct it, didn't think of the need for a source. but as it reads here i would not agree with it.

as i'm not that familiar with wikipedia and editing/correcting pages, i'm not sure if i should go and change the paragraph back - again, and if i would perhaps it would be a good idea to include a link to the aeclectic.net as IMO it has the clearest explanation about the suits?

wooow correction, i just read on aeclectic.net, "FIRE (though some decks have it as Air). If FIRE then:" and "AIR. AIR though some decks have it as Fire. If AIR then:" .. guess i didn't read it correct either. heh, that's new to me. if you don't mind i'll just give up now, encyclopedia-editing is probably not for me ;)

I reverted it because a common and hard-to-detect form of vandalism of Wikipedia articles is for someone to make a minor, unexplained change, such as changing Mount Rainier's elevation from 14,410 feet to 14,310 feet. When I see such a change and I can't immediately verify it one way or the other, I decide to err towards conservativism and undo the change. Providing a source where the change can be verified, either in the edit summary or in a endnote or footnote after the change, will solve this. --Carnildo 07:34, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

The way it reads right now:

The tarot suits of cups, swords, wands and pentacles may be taken as corresponding to water, air, fire, and earth respectively. These correspond in the modern deck of playing cards to hearts, spades, clubs, and diamonds. Cups and water, pentacles and earth are correct. Swords are fire and wands are air however. This is certainly true in horoscopes.

...is completely nonsensical, and I had no idea what the third and fourth sentences were talking about until I looked here on the discussion page, where I was going to comment asking someone who knows something about tarot to please make it make sense. Now I can see what's wrong with it, but I don't know much about tarot, so I'm not sure which way is right. I do know that those two sentences belong here, though, not in the article itself, since they're commenting on the article, so I'm off to remove them. Nalgas 20:22, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Classical Elements in Greece

Regarding "(Latin derivatives are pyro, terra, aero, and aqua)." Aqua and terra are indeed proper Latin for 'water' and 'earth', respectively. But aero is not really proper Latin; the Latin for 'air' is simply aer, although there is a rare oblique case form aero. Further, pyro is not Latin by any means. Pyro is apparently derived from the Greek πυρ/pyr ('fire') (see e.g. "Woodhouse's English-Greek Dictionary"), although again it is not properly Greek in form. The Latin for fire is ignis, which can be easily verified in any Latin dictionary.

I suspect that pyro, terra, aero, and aqua may be terminology that is in current vogue for referring to the classical elements, but I don't know this and certainly have seen no sources to cite. What is certainly true is that the forms given are not all Latin derivatives. I'm removing the word "Latin" and asking for citations on this parenthetical comment.Derek Balsam 17:46, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I finally removed this section about pyro, terra, aero, aqua since no one can document that these pseudo-Latinate/pseudo-Greek words are actually used. Also, the derivation given for "aether" as being from the Greek for "eternal" is simply incorrect. See Aether (classical element) for a correct derivation. αιθήρ/aithēr is from αιθω/aithō "to shine". Derek Balsam 03:36, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I always thought that the English prefixes for the elements were pryo, hydro, aero, and geo, all derived from Greek in some way. The wikipedia pages for those prefixes (excepting aero) all claim the same thing, but this may be one of those "common understanding" things that really isn't true at all. I won't try to verify, source, or refute it; that's better left for people with actual knowledge about the subject. 129.61.46.16 18:50, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Judaism

I seem to recall the concept of 4 elements also being used in Jewish mysticism in the Talmud.Loodog 02:32, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Ah, it was the Kaballah.Loodog 04:33, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Similairities

As far as I can see, there are really only two sets of documented elements - Chinese and Western/Hindu/Buddhist/Japanese/etc. So should we only have two pages - Classical Elements and Chinese Classical Elements. Then, in Classical Elements, we could have stuff like "Elements in Hinduism" etc.

[edit] Buddhism?

Certainly some Buddhists may recognise them. But they don't come anywhere near to being the "basis" of Buddhism. Our teachings don't even touch upon the 4 elements.

I would like to see a citation here or a re-wording.

" In early Buddhism, the Four Elements are a basis for understanding suffering and for liberating oneself from suffering." Is not accurate. The Four Noble Truths are the basis for our understanding of suffering and its extinction.

Lostsocks 19:35, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

This article should link to the stub on Prismaticism. I would do that myself but I don't know how to do that.

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