Pre-Atomic Essay

Since ancient times, there have been many ideas of what everything around us was made of.  One of the oldest ideas is that of four basic “elements”.  A Greek philosopher named Empedocles said that these four elements were earth, air, fire and water.  These four elements came about from combination of four qualities, cold, hot, wet and dry.  For example, earth was cold + dry and fire was hot + dry.  The four elements combined in different proportions to make the wide variety of substances in the world.  For example, Empedocles thought bone was made up of ½ fire, ¼ water and ¼ earth.

Since everything was made up of different proportions of these four basic elements, the alchemists thought that they should be able to change things into gold by changing the ratio of these 4 elements in a substance to that of gold.  They weren't successful, but learned a lot about substances in the process.

Democritus was the first person to come up with the idea of atoms.  He saw them as the smallest particles.  They could not be cut in two.  According to him they were hard and solid and came in many different sizes and weights.  A substance’s atoms gave the substance its properties.  For example, water had smooth atoms because you can pour water and it’s smooth and soft to the touch.

Unfortunately, the idea of atoms didn't take hold because one of the most influential thinkers of all time, Aristotle, believed in the 4 elements theory.