Five-Element theory

Nicholas Lemery (1645-1715 CE) was a corpuscularian who favored a five-element theory (water, spirit, oil, salt, and earth). His acid/alkali theory invoked spikes on an acid that interacted with the pores of the base. In 1675 CE in Paris, he published Cours de Chymie, a textbook that was translated into English, German, Italian, Latin, and Spanish and was popular for more than fifty years. In this book, he espoused the Cartesian corpuscular mechanism (45). 

According to Five-Element theory, when there... 

The Liver is located in the Lower-Jiao. It belongs to wood in the Five-Element theory. It houses the soul and regulates the Qi movement and the blood circulation. The syndrome of Liver-Yin deficiency is often observed in chronic diseases, people over 50 years old or people with a constitution of Yin deficiency. 

This syndrome is generally referred to as disharmony between the Liver and Spleen. In fact, it can be divided into several sub-syndromes besides disharmony between the Liver and Spleen, such as disharmony between the Liver and Stomach, and disharmony between the Liver and Large Intestine. Since the Stomach and Large Intestine are directly finked to the transportation function of the Spleen, and both belong to Earth in the Five-Element theory, the liver often attacks these organs if it overacts on the Spleen. Hence they are often considered and discussed as one syndrome under the name of disharmony between the Liver and Spleen. 

Five-Element Theory in Chinese Traditional Medicine... 

As the case of the five-element theory suggests, the threat to the theory of the tria prima did not come from the outside, hut from inside alchemical practice. By comparison, the Scholastic resistance to the tria prima did not seriously affect it. Perhaps typically of chemists, Boyle gives to Peripatetic arguments short thrift he was not prepared to accept a theory that was based on rhetoric rather than experimentation. 

Professor Paul Deussen8 who with Professor Garbe is credited by Max Muller with having placed his name in the front rank of Sanskrit scholars in Europe, is distinctly of the judgment that the developments are independent, as for instance, speaking of the Hindu theory of the five elements, he says ... 

Classification of herbs in CTM is different from the modem pharmacological method. Based on their physical properties, either color or taste, each herb can be linked with the theory of five elements (Table 5.2), named Woo-Wei in Chinese. Also, the properties of herbs can be classified according to the four-chi principle (Su-Chi in Chinese). Four-chi refers to the four properties of... 

Ancient philosophers in Greece, India, China, and Japan speculated that all matter was composed of four or five elements. The Greeks thought that these were fire, air, earth, and water. Indian philosophers and Aristotle from Greece also thought a fifth element—"aether" or "quintessence"—filled all of empty space. The Greek philosopher Democritus thought that matter was composed of indivisible and indestructible atoms. These concepts are now known as classical elements and classical atomic theory. 

The interest in alchemy did not exclude philosophical or theoretical aspects of the study of matter, and a number of different systems of matter theory were developed in China. A four-element system based on earth, water, air (or wind), and fire can be traced back to Chinese creation stories, but a more popular system, based on five elements, was well established by the time of the introduction of Taoism, and its roots are lost in history. The five elements of... 

Kant s notion of element would warrant separate attention. Cf. Carrier (2001), B673-681, (29 161-166, 341-361). Kant followed Stahl in having five elements, which for him were more like regulative ideas of reason and can never be identified empirically. Kant s understanding of these elements changed over time under influence of developments in chemistry. Kant s theory of elements in the KrV is transcendental (not empirical or metaphysical). 

The platonic solids (the regular solids, regular polyhedra) are the only convex polyhedra with equivalent convex regular polygons as faces. They are the building blocks of the universe in Plato s theory of five elements (in the Timaeus), and are examined in Euclid s f/ewewte. 

Since the integration values form such an important element of structure determination, we need to set the spectrometer up properly before carrying out the NMR experiment. And one very important parameter which is often forgotten is the relaxation delay, the delay between the single NMR experiments which allows the nuclei to relax. Remember that relaxation is an exponential process, so that theory suggests that it is necessary for the best results to set this equal to at least five times (in our case more than 25 sec for the aromatic protons ). The other parameter we need to set correctly is of course the pulse angle, and the following set of experiments show how these are interrelated. 

Loring published chemistry books—Studies in Valency (1913), Atomic Theory (1921), Definition of the Principle of Equivalence (1922), and The Chemical Elements (1923). During the brief existence of the Alchemical Society, he published twenty articles (eight of them lead articles) in Chemical News on such subjects as atomic weight, the radio-atoms, the evolution of chemical elements, and a five-part Introduction to the Theory of Relativity. He also published seven correspondences in the journal, and Chemical News reviewed his Studies in Valency positively. 

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