Empedocles partitioned the universe into four elements, earth, water, air, and fire, a commonsense taxonomy that mirrors the four physical states of matter, solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. Science long ago disabused us of this backward perspective, and the ancient Greek view is now seen for the simplistic and unenlightened—primitive—view that it is. Atomic theory tells us that there are 118 elements, each capable of assuming multiple physical states according to their energy level at the time their physical state is being assessed. The universe is a far more complex place than Empedocles could have possibly imagined.
But this doesn’t seem quite right. Atomic theory tells me that the air entering my lungs is composed of a multiplicity of elements, mostly nitrogen, an inert gas that is somehow also responsible for the sky’s particular shade of blue. Atomic theory has to tell me this, because it is not at all obvious. In fact, the composition of the air entering my lungs is entirely beyond my direct experience. The air of a crowded room breathes differently than the air of a forest trail, but the difference I experience is a difference of the air taken as a whole, as a unitary presence, as a coherent and indivisible entity, a difference in its density, its viscosity, the way that it folds itself around my exposed skin. And, likewise, with the many solid and liquid substances I come in contact with. Wine flows differently than water, but the molecular components responsible for this difference are quite beyond any experiential grasp.
A perspective informed by science, while useful for scientific purposes, imposes a conceptual barrier to the world of direct and immediate experience, a world that flows and breathes and binds us inextricably to each other and to all other beings.
