ACTIVITY NO.

7: The Ideas of the Ancient Greeks on the Elements

NAME: DATE:
YEAR & SECTION: SCORE:

Concept Notes:
What were the early ideas of the Greeks on the elements?
Many Greek philosophers tried to answer the question "What are the primordial substances from which
everything is made up of?" Some of them believed that there was only one element that made up all
materials. Anaximenes thought that it was air; Heraclitus supposed it was fire; Thales believed that it was
water; and Xenophanus assumed it was earth.
Empedocles proposed that all four – air, fire, water, and earth, are the primordial substances. He called them
roots.

Plato, the founder of the Academy in Athens (the first institution of higher learning in the Western world), first
used the term element. The word element came from the Greek word “στοιχεῖον” (stoicheion) which means
smallest division.
Plato treated the four elements geometrically and named them Platonic solids. Air was an octahedron; fire
was a tetrahedron; water was an icosahedron; and earth was a cube. He also added a fifth one, a
dodecahedron, which was the shape of the Universe.

Aristotle, a student of Plato, described each element with two qualities. He

stated that air was wet and hot; fire was hot and dry; water was wet and
cold; and earth was dry and cold. He then added a fifth element, aether. He
thought aether was the finest of all substances, the “quintessence,”
associated with the heavenly realm. It was neither hot nor cold and was
neither wet nor dry.

Key Points
Some Greek philosophers believed that there was only one element that made up all materials. Anaximenes
thought that it was air; Heraclitus supposed it was fire; Thales believed that it was water; and Xenophanus
assumed it was earth.
Empedocles proposed that all four – air, fire, water, and earth, were the primordial substances.
Plato first used the term element. He treated the four elements geometrically and named them Platonic
solids.
Aristotle described each element using the qualities hot, cold, wet, or dry. He also added a fifth element,
aether.
Exercises: Read each statement carefully. Encircle the letter/s of the correct answer.
1. Which of the following describes the primordial substance?
a. It is the substance that makes up aether.
b. It is the substance from which everything is made of.
c. It is the substance from which Platonic solids are made of.
d. It is the substance that is made up of fire, air, water, and earth.
2. Which of the following is the primordial substance that Anaximenes thought the world is made up of?
a. air b. earth c. fire d. water
3. Who among the following Greek philosophers believed that the four elements can be described
geometrically?
a. Aristotle b. Empedocles c. Plato d. Thales
4. Which of the following elements are correctly matched to their geometric shape according to Plato?
(Give 2 answers.)
a. air: octahedron b. earth: cube c. fire: icosahedron d. water: tetrahedron

5. Which of the following statements are true about Aristotle’s notion of elements?
a. Every material in the world is made up of elements.
b. Every material in the world is made up of the same element.
c. Each element, air, fire, water, and earth, has two distinct characteristics.
d. Each element, air, fire, water, and earth, can be described using geometrical shapes.
6. Which of the following elements are correctly matched to their characteristics according to Aristotle?
(Give 2 answers.)
a. air: cold and dry c. fire: hot and dry
b. earth: hot and wet d. water: cold and wet
7. According to Aristotle, which of the following are true about aether? (2 possible answers)
a. It makes up everything on Earth.
b. It is the finest among all the elements.
c. It is the sixth element that makes up matter.
d. It the “quintessence,” associated with the heavenly realm.
8. A Greek philosopher believed that everything on Earth is made up of primordial substance X. He
described X as hot and dry and shaped like a tetrahedron. Which among the following primordial
substances is most likely X?
a. air b. earth c. fire d. water
9. Which of the following Greeks’ notions of elements are still considered valid today? (Give 2 answers.)
a. Elements have certain characteristics.
b. There are four elements – air, fire, earth, and water.
c. Elements are the substances from which everything else is made up of.
d. Each element can be described using its geometrical shapes octahedron, cube, tetrahedron, or
icosahedron.
10. What are the contributions of the Greek philosophers to the development of the field of Chemistry?
(Give 2 answers.)
a. They conceptualized the idea of elements.
b. They studied the substances that make up matter.
c. They studied naturally-occurring and radioactive elements.
d. They developed a method to create the fifth element, aether.