Talk:Classical element

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[edit] Salt, Sulfur, and Mercury

Forgive me if this is irrelevant, but I seem to remember salt, sulfur, and mercury as forming their own sort of elemental trinity in some circles. I can't for the life of me find any information on this, though, certainly not on Wikipedia. If it helps, I believe it had something to do with either medieval science/alchemy, or with theology. Am I in the right, or am I off picking strawberries here? --PheonixSong 13:37, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

"Now, as to the philosophy of the three prime elements, it must be seen how these flourish in the element of air. Mercury, Sulphur, and Salt are so prepared as the element of air that they constitute the air, and make up that element. Originally the sky is nothing but white Sulphur coagulated with the spirit of Salt and clarified by Mercury, and the hardness of this element is in this pellicle and shell thus formed from it. Then, secondly, from the three primal parts it is changed into two - one part being air and other chaos - in the following way. The Sulphur resolves itself by the spirit of Salt in the Liquor of Mercury, which of itself is a liquid distributed from heaven to earth, and is the albumen of the heaven, and the mid space. It is clear, a chaos, subtle and diaphanous. All density, dryness and all its subtle nature, are resolved, nor is it any longer the same as it was before. Such is the air. The third remnant of the three primals has passed into air, thus; If wood is burnt it passes into smoke. So this passes into air, remains in its air to the end of its elements, and becomes Sulphur, Mercury, and Salt, which are substantially consumed and turned into air, just as the wood which becomes smoke. It is, in fact, nothing but the smoke of the three primal elements of the air. So, then nothing further arises from the element of air beyond what has been mentioned."
Exppii 10:40, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

[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)

that's what I came for. doesnt Kaballa revolve around the elements and how they repeat in everything? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.184.162.132 (talk) 04:22, 17 May 2008 (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.

[edit] Flora

The concept of flora as a fifth element is something I have never heard of outside of this article. Is there any citation for this claim?24.24.81.186 01:59, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Lots of weird stuff has been added lately. I'm not sure why this article and Classical elements in popular culture have been attracting this stuff of late. I have a feeling it could be a Stephen Colbert or Youtube thing. -- Kesh 23:26, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
From what it seems, anything that remotely deals with Prismaticism is being listed as having a relation to the classical elements. For instance, in many video games and some television series, there tend to be fairly gimmicky environments (ice planet, lava planet, etc.) and that if this can be seen as being elemental in any way (an arctic setting may have some areas of liquid water in it, there may be plumes of fire in a volcanic setting) then people may erroneously regard this as a deliberate referrence to the classical elements. 74.74.84.169 22:33, 27 June 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Contradiction

In the Classical Elements of Greece section the picture describes air as hot and wet while the text describes it as cool and dry. The opposite goes for Earth.

[edit] Modern science

Where the modern science elements: Time, Space, Matter and Energy? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.11.145.80 (talk) 20:11, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Classical elements. THe key word is classical. Showers 20:44, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
In regards to this, should this article really open with a paragraph comparing ideas in modern sciences to the Classical elements? 24.24.90.148 02:05, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
I woulden't say it's a bad idea. I mean, after all, it is rather annoying how there are those who argue such things as "Water is not an element because it's made from Oxygen and Hydrogen!" Dark Sorcerer666 (talk) 15:57, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Shouldn't the title be Classical Elements, plural? It looks very stupid singular —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.184.171.66 (talk) 23:35, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New World

I think someone should do some type of research on the native cultures of the Americas. I'm sure that they have belief relating to the elements. TeePee-20.7 05:07, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I just saw this at colombian mythology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombian_mythology

It says that the muiscas thought the creators of this world danced and created the smoke, the cosmic clouds and other element, but I forgot its name. Can someone add that information to the article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.28.67.195 (talk) 03:02, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Modern interpretations

A number of additional sections have been added to this article fairly recently:

Many ancient philosophies used a set of archetypal classical elements to explain patterns in nature. These naturally-occurring fundamentals are actually more accurate in being classical states of matter than "elements" as they are defined in modern science. Most notably the four Greek classical elements earth, water, air, and fire correspond approximately with the four states of matter, solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. The fifth Greek classical element "idea" ("quintessence" in Latin; "aether" in Hindu theory; "void" in Japanese theory) corresponds approximately with the non-matter (non-material world) of cyberspace, mathematics, algorithms, and computer programs that run in analog as well as digital computers, often referred to in information theory as a state of low entropy. Regardless of whether their material embodiment is mechanical, pneumatic, hydraulic, optical, electric, or otherwise[1], a computer program can be thought of as made of the fifth state of matter even if the computer itself is made of solid matter ("earth"). In the Plato/Aristotle sense, the mind is made of idea (non-matter), whereas the brain in which the mind "runs" is part of the material world (matter).
==Neo-Paganism ===
In neo-Paganism, it is believed that all living things have a smaller piece of nature inside them. Of course the two elements not seen in other cultures represent Parts of the Human Soul. Light of course represents the purity of the human soul While Dark represents the tainted parts. In most beliefs neither can exist without the other and Good and Evil exist in all things.
But beyond that the idea is that one may only find peace at mind after understanding the elements outside ones "self". Along with that it is a belief that the "Divine Presence" in this world is female because of the fact that when a woman is pregnant all elements can be found within her.

Do these interpretations of this concept really relate that well to the notion of classical elements? Where the first mention at least has citations, is it really appropriate to introduce an article primarily discussing classical ideas with a mention of conceptions within modern science? 24.24.90.148 02:31, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tabular overview

The tabular overview shows up overlapping with the Classical Elements template. Im using Firefox though and perhaps it shows up normally on other browsers. I propose that the tabular overview be removed since having both of them doesn't really serve any purpose. Showers 22:55, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. I for one actually loved the idea and contribution of the Tabular Overview and prefer we have both. It further expanded and featured more elements (along with other philosophies and systems that are not mentioned in the article) and better organized them and their properties as where the Classical Elemental template only simply lists the overall elemental concepts of the major philosophies. Dark Sorcerer666 9:31, 1 December 2007(UTC)

All the elements in the table were all found in the article. It didn't add anything new except a way of organizing them into categories. Something that comes dangerously close to original research in my mind. If you prefer the table then we should get rid of the template instead. Having both serves no purpose. Showers 00:15, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
Very well then, I do see your point. You are correct in that the Classical Elements template does feature the elements as directly discussed in the article within their respective philosophic culture, however there were in fact others as well as whole other philosophies and concepts that were included in the Tabular Overview that were not mentioned at all with in the context of the article itself that were also worth noting; concepts such as I-Ching, the Planetary Natures as well as the featuring of the other elements of the Chakra system that were included in the Hindu/Buddhist column. If what you are saying is to be the case than it would be more logical to exchange the Classical Element template for the Tabular Overview for its broader diversity and organization. Dark Sorcerer666 5:40, 4 December 2007(UTC)
I put the table back and removed the template. Showers (talk) 18:44, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Augh. This needs a lot of cleanup - I've done some, but I strongly suspect that this table is currently oversimplifying a number of traditions, or making connections where they don't exist. Right now, all it's really pointing out is that earth, air and fire are pretty universal - this would probably be easier to point out in prose than in text.

I've removed another section, BTW - which linked the four fundamental forces with four classical elements - on the basis that it made purely subjective connections like "gravity is like ripples, so it's like water". This is the sort of pseudoscientific waffle that this article needs to avoid. Zetawoof(ζ) 05:29, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] neo paganism

when i added neo paganism 6 months ago it compared the elements to the body and the body to the earth, it however did not talk about people in this set of religions like they were a cadre of witches. Deanostrodamus the Mystical (talk) 17:06, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] bias

This article is kinda biased - it links to seperate articles for Indian/Chinese/Japanese etc elements, but no seperate article for the Greek elements. As far as I can tell this is the article for the greek elements. To make things clearer this article should be split into two groups, one specifically talking about the Greek element system and another that describes all of them on equal terms.--86.142.171.82 (talk) 21:19, 6 June 2008 (UTC)