7.1.4 The Four Elements
In most ancient civilizations, the nature and complexity of matter was explained in terms of the four elements: earth, water, air and fire, in addition to aether or quintessence. However, the different cultures, and even individual philosophers, had widely varying explanations concerning their attributes and how they are related to the observable phenomena, and often these theories overlapped with mythology where the four elements were personified in deities.
In some esoteric contexts of Hinduism, there are four states-of-matter that describe the physical objects, while the fifth element describes that which was beyond the material world. Similar lists also existed in ancient China, Korea and Japan. The system of five elements is found in Vedas, suggesting that all of creation, including the human body, is made up of these five essential elements and that upon death, the human body dissolves back into these five elements of nature, thereby balancing its cycle.
The teachings of Buddha regarding the four elements as the base of real sensations, rather than as a philosophy. Therefore, the four properties are cohesion, which corresponds to water, solidity or inertia, corresponding to earth, expansion or vibration, which is air, and heat or energy content which is fire. He also promulgated a categorization of mind and matter as composed of eight types of “kalapas” of which the four elements are primary and a secondary group of four are color, smell, taste, and nutriment, which are derivative from the four primaries.
The ancient Greek belief in the five elements dates from pre-Socratic times, where philosophers had debated which substance was the primordial element from which everything else was made; Heraclitus elected fire, Thales favored water, Anaximenes supported air, while Anaximander argued that the primordial substance was not any of the known substances, but could be transformed into them, and they into each other. As we shall see further below, Ibn al-Arabi affirms that water is actually the source, but we need to understand first what is meant by “water”, as well as the elements.
In his treatise On Generation and Corruption, Aristotle related each of the four elements to two of the four sensible qualities, whereby:
•Fire is both hot and dry. •Air is both hot and moist. •Water is both cold and moist. •Earth is both cold and dry.Aristotle added the fifth element of aether, as the quintessence, meaning: the fifth essence, that is incorruptible, unlike the other four earthly elements.