Atomistas empedocles biography summary

Empedocles attempted to find an escape from the logical conclusions of the Eleatic philosophers. Born in the early fifth century b. For a short time he was a politician, and then he turned his attention to educating people on the topics of medicine and religion. When he embarked on his own study of philosophy, he held two very important views.

Biography of democritus

First, he abandoned the accepted belief that all philosophers had held since Thales: that all matter was derived from a single underlying substance. Instead he theorized that the world, as it is known, is due to the mixing and separation of four elements: earth, air, fire, and water, which Empedocles called "roots. The first caused the elements to blend together and created the physical world, whereas Strife forced the elements apart and caused destruction.

Empedocles compared the blending of the elements to what a painter does when he mixes his basic colors: by combining his colors, he produces new tints. So in the universe, which Empedocles, like Parmenides, imagined as a sphere, the elements are mixed together by the attractive force of Love in their proper ratios to form concrete objects; human bones, for instance, were two parts water, four parts fire, and two parts earth.

This blending of the elements results in genesis and growth in the world of the senses, whereas the separation of the elements results in death, destruction, and decay. Strife is on the outside of the sphere but in due time it penetrates it, driving Love towards the center of the sphere.

Greek view of matter

Gradually the four elements separate from each other. Death and decay occurs. Then the opposite process begins: Love, which has been driven into the center of the sphere, begins to expand, driving out Strife. This never-ending cycle is like the flux and reflux of blood from the heart, or the action of breathing air into the lungs and then expelling it.

All the objects that can be seen are unstable compounds.