🧵 Untitled Thread
Anonymous at Sat, 30 Mar 2024 21:21:15 UTC No. 16105408
Why did people on different sides of the world (Greece and China) both think earth, water, and fire are basic elemental building blocks of matter? Water I can maybe see, but you can just look at earth and see it's made of disparate, heterogeneous matter. And fire isn't even a physical thing.
Anonymous at Sat, 30 Mar 2024 21:22:25 UTC No. 16105410
yeah it's almost like all of those different humans from different parts of the world had a very fucking lot in common, like biology. but that surely isn't it.
Anonymous at Sat, 30 Mar 2024 21:23:52 UTC No. 16105411
>solids
>liquids
>gas
>plasma
>electroconductive
Anonymous at Sat, 30 Mar 2024 21:27:28 UTC No. 16105414
>>16105408
Air, wood, water, earth, metal, and fire are all substances that are common to the Human experience circa the Iron Age. Really they should be understood less as "elements" in the modern sense and more of "kinds of substances that can't be further reduced with experimentation available at the time".
Anonymous at Sat, 30 Mar 2024 22:17:32 UTC No. 16105474
>>16105408
They were viewed not like chemical elements but more like aspects of the division of the world, and also you'd ascribe things to it that were philosophical more than literal. Like classifying behaviour rather than the actual material itself.