Читать книгу 2,637 Years of Physics from Thales of Miletos to the Modern Era - Sheldon Cohen - Страница 10

suggested that rather than one basic element there were four: air, fire, earth, and water. These basic four elements, mixed and partially combined and separated, thus resulting in the various familiar forms of matter.

In the future, philosophers who adopted the primary building block theory suggested that the four basic elements of air, fire, earth, and water were each made of different atoms. This somewhat brought the atomos concept back into thought. Even with only four basic building blocks, the various combinations of these could result in a great variety of different forms of matter. If the proportions of the building blocks remained the same, there were twenty-four different combinations. Now consider the infinite number of combinations that would occur if you varied the amounts of each of the four basic elements.

For the first time, a combination of actual basic substances could unite to explain the great variety of forms and events which make up our experience.

In addition to the four basic elements of our earthly experience, there was a fifth: the aether that permeated the heavens as far as the eye could see. The aether, considered an invisible, elastic medium distributed through all space beyond the earth’s atmosphere remained a building block of physics for twenty-four centuries. More later.