Primal substance

Empedocles made no attempt to create a new theory of matter. Instead, he tried to reconcile the thoughts of his various predecessors. He took Thales s theory that everything was made of water and Anaximenes s idea that the primal substance was air, and added two more elements, earth and fire. Empedocles didn t believe that one kind of matter could be transformed into another. Earth couldn t be changed into water, or water into earth, for example. Thus there had to be more than one element. 

Empedocles four elements do not represent a multiplication of the prote hyle, but rather a gloss that conceals its complications. Aristotle agreed that ultimately there was only one primal substance, but it was too remote, too unknowable, to serve as the basis for a philosophy of matter. So he accepted Empedocles elements as a kind of intermediary between this imponderable stuff and the tangible world. This instinct to reduce cosmic questions to manageable ones is one reason why Aristotle was so influential. 

This theory was put forward in 1815 by the chemist William Prout (1785-1850). He made no bones about the source of his inspiration the prote hyle of the ancient Greek philosophers, the stuff from which all matter is derived. It was this primal substance that underpinned old beliefs about transmutation, and now Prout was apparently suggesting that this idea was valid after all. Theprofe hyle, said Prout, is hydrogen. 

From another point of view matter was considered by the medieval philosophers as composed of body, spirit and soul. Body was that which gave solidity and permanence, spirit was that which fled from the fire or was volatile. Soul was not very intelligibly defined, and not so generally adopted. Paracelsus crystallized these vague theories into a more tangible form by assuming that all matter is made up of three primal substances, sulphur, mercury and salt. To these three constituents he ascribed more definite functions than had previously been recognized. Sulphur was the combustible principle, mercury that which imparts fusibility, liquidity and volatility, salt that which is nonvolatile and incombustible. This idea he developed extensively in very many of his works. Thus in the Paramirum ... 

Primal Origin of my origination Thou Primal Substance of my substance First Breath of breath that is in me First Fire, God-given for the Blending of the blendings in me, of fire in me.. .. Translate me now. .. by virtue of the Deathless Spirit. .. in order that I may become reborn in Mind.. . . Initiate, and that the Holy Breath may breathe in me in order that I mav admire the Holy Fire."... 

In modern chemistry we credit some one hundred elements—and counting— with being the basic stuff from which all matter is formed, but there was no reason for this to be the first assumption, and it was not. The initial thrust of the philosophical effort was to discover the one basic stuff of nature— the primal substance, the material from which all else is formed. This effort began for the Greeks around 600 bce, on the Aegean shores of Asia Minor, in the Ionian city-state of Miletos, with the first of the Ionian philosophers, Thales. 

Anaximenes, who lived around 550 bce, may have been a pupil of Anaximander, but the former proposed that air was the primal substance. According to Anaximenes, air rarefied was fire, and condensed air formed everything else (water, earth, and stones). In support of his theory, he pointed out that air expelled through puckered lips becomes cold, whereas air expelled through an open mouth is hot compressed air condenses and expanded air is transformed into fire. 

It is important to pause here and note what is evolving The identity of the primal substance or substances was debated, but all the debaters seemed comfortable with the assumption that whatever it was, this primal element (or elements) would be found in some portion in all matter. This was the assumption under which chemists would labor for the next 2000 years. One reason for its persistence was the intuitive appeal of arguments offered by philosophers, backed by everyday observation, but another reason was the social upheavals that scattered Greek philosophers throughout the Mediterranean like Anaxagoras seeds. 

But what of the nature of the First Matter itself Jung says The basis of the opus, the prima materia, is one of the most famous secrets of alchemy. This is hardly surprising since it represents the unknown substance that carries the projection of the autonomous psychic content. 7 It is, as we stated before, omnipresent and the root substance of all forms. Oriental texts term it Akasha the alchemical texts of the Occident give it many names. Taoism, the alchemical practice of China, has the primal intuition that the universe must have some unborn origin (prima materia). This is given verbal form in the Tao Teh Ching, XXV ... 

Thales s successor, Anaximander—the exact dates of his birth and death are unknown, but he was said to have been 64 years old in 546 B.C.—agreed that there was one primal material. But he didn t think it was ever encountered on Earth in its pure state. According to Anaximander everything in the world was made of apeiron, a substance that was infinite and eternal, and which could take on numerous forms, including those of all the familiar terrestrial materials. It is neither water nor any of the so-called elements, Anaximander said, but a nature different from them and infinite, from which arise all the heavens and the worlds within them. ... 

Boyle might have witnessed other projections as well but whether he did or not, he was clearly convinced that the transmutation of lead into gold was possible. This belief was not inconsistent with his chemical philosophy. Recall that he believed that the atoms, or corpuscles, of which all substances were composed were made of the same kind of primal matter. It followed that if there were ways to change the sizes and shapes of these corpuscles, transmutations could be carried out. 

Out of three, and these are the three principles of all things. Out of two, for the mercurial substance is twofold. Out of one, and this is the first essence of everything which emanated from the primal fiat of creation. 

Thales of Miletus (c.620-c.555 bc), one of the first known enquirers into the constitution of the physical world, posited only one fundamental substance water. There is ample justification for this view in myth the Hebrew god was not the only deity to bring forth the world from a primal ocean. But the Milesian school of philosophers that Thales founded produced little consensus about the profe hyle or first matter that constituted everything. Anaximander (c.6ll-547 bc), Thales successor, avoided the issue with his contention that things are ultimately made of apeiron, the indefinite and unknowable first substance. Anaximenes (d. C.500 bc) decided that air, not water, was primary. For Heraclitus (d. 460 bc), fire was the stuff of creation. 

I wanted to touch and smell them, although prudence held me back from tasting. This tactile, sensual experience was made more poignant by the knowledge that these substances were pure, unalloyed, irreducible. They were the primal stuff of creation, sitting in my hand. 

Anaximenes, the youngest of the trio from Miletus, and reputed by tradition to be a pupil of Anaximander, follows his alleged master in the concept of a primal matter, unlimited in space and eternal in time which by its inherent energy of motion forms all other matter. Instead, however, of leaving this primal matter qualitatively undetermined, he sees in air this simple first substance from which all others are generated. Fire, he thought, was produced from air by a rarefaction process and other substances by condensation processes. 

Ice or snow is converted by the action of heat into water. Therefore it was first water then snow or ice. But all metals can be converted into quicksilver, therefore they were first quicksilver. The method of converting them into quicksilver I shall teach below. But it being granted that a metal can be converted into quicksilver, there is refuted the opinion of those who assert that it is not possible for spirits (spiritus, that is volatile substances) and other materials to be transmuted into the elements and into the nature of metals, unless first reduced to their primal matter. This reduction to their primal matter is easy as I shall show below. Therefore the transmutation of metals is possible and easy. In the same way it can be shown you that the multiplication of metals is possible for everything that is born and grows is multiplied, as is clear with plants and trees. For from one seed a thousand seeds are procreated,... 

The electron patterns are the primal shapes of nature. Fundamentally, all of nature s shapes can be traced to such patterns. Even the properties of living substances are based on them—in particular, the properties of the molecules that carry the hereditary code. In the final scientific analysis, the stability of electron wave patterns causes the same flowers to bloom every spring and makes children similar to their parents. 

QUINTA ESSENTIA VEGETABILIUM — the Quintessence of Vegetable Substances, is that which is extracted from the components of vegetable things. It is most generally extracted from the Sap. Quintessence of Wine has the primacy. Lully calls it Vegetable Mercury others. Water of Primal Being, Heaven, Key, etc. 

These ideas about the world arose from a doctrine of Aristotle that emphasized the distinction between substance and form .f The doctrine recognized four formative principles hotness and dryness, and their opposites, coldness and wetness. By impressing those qualities in pairs on the single substance, the four primal forms of matter are produced according... 

Boyle was sceptical because he was no longer willing to accept, blindly, the ancient conclusions that had been deduced from first principles. In particular, Boyle was dissatisfied with ancient attempts to identify the elements of the universe by mere reasoning. Instead, he defined elements in a matter-of-fact, practical way. An element, it had been considered ever since Thales time (see page 8), was one of the primal simple substances out of which the universe was composed. Well, then, a suspected element must be tested in order to see if it were really simple. If a substance could be broken into... 

In the general case, the set of Equation 51.6 is solved by differential methods. If a step of reactant adsorption is irreversible, then the equations that describe the changes in isotope transfer in the gas phase are solved analytically. Further solution of the primal problem is based on the numerical search of eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the matrix at the right side of the equations describing changes of isotope fraction in the intermediate substances. In this case, the procedure of numerical analysis is performed much faster. 

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