Aristotle forms

For Aristotle (384-322 bc) there was only one type of matter this could, however, exist in four basic forms earth, air, fire and water, all of which could be converted one into the other. Observations of natural phenomena only came second in ancient Greece, though. Biological processes were considered to be very important, and attempts were made to explain the behaviour of, for example, water, air, rain,... 

The four reasons why , which Aristotle attributed to all things which were subject to change, are causa materialis, the material cause causa efficiens, the efficient cause causa formalis, the formal cause, and causa finalis, the final cause. The first three causes exist for the last one, as it is the whole reason that the other three causes are implemented they are to the final cause what the means are to the end, and form the process of which the final cause is the goal. 

The broad survey of the animal and plant world provided by Aristotle about 2,400 years ago included only a tiny fraction of all extant life forms. However, his compilation formed the basis of our knowledge of living things until the Middle Ages ... 

Among the endocrine organs, the testes are unique because they are suspended in a tissue pouch outside of the body cavity. The testes can be felt and these organs are vulnerable to physical insults, either deliberate or accidental. The effects of castration were described by Aristotle over three hundred years B.C. Removal of the testes or castration as a form of punishment or tribute dates to antiquity. Domestic animals and some cases humans were castrated to make them more docile. Castrata were valued as harem keepers. In addition, seasonal changes in behavior and the dramatic anatomical and behavioral events associated with puberty were components of the natural world (Bronson and Heideman, 1994). Thus, an awareness of a relationship between the testes and human behavior predates written history. 

After Aristotle, the word synthesis is not found explicitly mentioned in the chemical literature until Dalton used it in his classical book. In the year 1808, Dalton (1766-1844) published his book A New System of Chemical Philosophy , the chapter IB of which is entitled On Chemical Synthesis . However, in the meantime the word synthesis had experienced a semantic change and acquired the modern meaning of forming a compound . There is, therefore, a time lapse of more than twenty centuries, in which the word synthesis was not mentioned by chemists, perhaps because all of them believed as Gerhardt (1816-1856) that "The chemist s activity is therefore exactly opposed to living nature the chemist bums, destroys and operates by analysis. Only the life force works by synthesis it builds up again the edifice tom down by chemical forces" [4], A better ecological manifesto would be... 

Hoffmann s tale thus leads us back to the older debate on preformation and epigenesis that is also evoked by the name of Spa(l)lanzani. As we know, Aristotle believed that organisms generate themselves successively under the guidance of a formative drive. Kant translated this into an idea... 

Perhaps it was only natural that people steeped in Greek philosophy would think of trying to make gold when they encountered the rich Egyptian tradition of practical chemistry. Hadn t Aristotle said that transformations were possible Isn t that what happened when, for example, cinnabar (mercury ore) was heated Heating the red material, cinnabar, caused a pool of liquid metal to form. Didn t other chemical transformations take place when substances were heated, dissolved, melted, filtered, and crystallized ... 

B.c. Empedocles posits air, earth, fire and water as four major elements 400 B.c. Democritus leads atomists school, atoms basic form of matter 350 B.c. Aristotle s Meterologica... 

Aristotle s response to the question of what is permanent behind observed changes in the natural world, offered a single undifferentiated but permanent matter. This matter, however, carries properties which give it form, forms manifested fundamentally in the four elements, earth, water, AIR, and FIRE. 

Aristotle of Stageiros (384-322 BCE) did not agree with his teacher s geometric bodies for the different elements. He rejected the Democritian atoms in which matter was considered a principle but form was a secondary characteristic. Nor did he accept the existence of a void. According to the Aristotelian view, the four elements arose from the action on primordial matter by pairs of qualities (warm + dry, fire, warm + moist, air, cold + dry, earth, cold + moist, water). He introduced another element, ether, as a divine substance of which the heavens and stars are made (23). 

The four elements as such are subject to change. There must be something, however, back of these that is eternal and unchangeable. What this is, with Aristotle, it is not easy to understand. It is apparently not merely space as Plato seems to think, but something with at least latent power. It may be considered not as matter, for then it would be only another form of matter perhaps the nearest interpretation is that it is the potentiality of matter. 

When these four elements combine to form the many substances that make up the material universe, their properties then blend into a composite in which the elements lose their identity. Aristotle makes it clear that he considers compound bodies homogeneous even in their smallest conceivable parts, so that the ultimate particle of flesh is still flesh. This is also the idea of Anaxagoras, already cited. To these simple substances of like particles Aristotle gives the name homoiomere. It logically follows that the con cept of the four elements of Aristotle differs fundamentally from that of Empedocles, for the smallest particle of a given substance would, by the theory of Empedocles, be... 

The following extracts are from a treatise entitled the Book of Mercy. This work appears to have been edited by a follower of Djaber, though credited by this disciple to Djaber. It shows a rather more orderly arrangement, and its style seems more influenced by Aristotle s logical form than the other works of Djaber.89... 

When in 1530 Henry Cornelius Agrippa in his work on The Vanity of the Arts and Sciences quoted the proverb, Every alchemist is a physician or a soapboiler, he expressed in epigrammatic form a not unimportant classification for his time, as also for centuries before. By alchemists he meant all chemists, and there were indeed two classes of chemists, those who were scholars learned in the natural philosophy of the time and versed in the doctrines of Plato, Aristotle, Galen or of the Alexandrian neoplatonists, and those on the other hand who with no pretensions to be philosophers, were engaged in the practical arts of chemistry in its various applications. 

That two forms of water could combine to produce heat is counter to Aristotle s model of matter. In Chapter 9, the atomic model is used to explain how the combining of two molecules can give rise to heat. 

Logic is a tricky thing to evaluate. One of the earliest approaches was laid down by Aristotle, in the form of the syllogism. In it there are three lines consisting of two premises and a conclusion, a form that is called a mood. All are statements of relationships and, if the premises are true, there are only certain conclusions that may logically follow. For example ... 

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