Prote hyle

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. 

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