Knowra Empedocles Empedocles Empedocles was an ancient Greek philosopher and poet who taught that four roots—earth, water, air, and fire—combine through Love and separate through Strife.
Four classical elements : Earth, water, air, and fire, conceived in ancient philosophy as the basic constituents of matter. Empedocles called these four enduring constituents the roots of all things.
Cosmic cycle (Empedocles) : Empedocles’ recurring alternation between Love’s complete union and Strife’s complete separation of the roots. It describes the large-scale rhythm behind the mixture and separation of things.
Parmenidean monism : The doctrine that reality is one unchanging being, associated with Parmenides of Elea. Empedocles adopted the permanence of being but multiplied its basic constituents.
Acragas : An ancient Greek city in Sicily, known today as Agrigento. Empedocles was associated with this prosperous Sicilian city.
On Nature (Empedocles) : The philosophical poem attributed to Empedocles that explains the roots, cosmic forces, and natural processes. Its surviving verses are the main source for his physical cosmology.
Love and Strife : The opposing cosmic forces that unite and separate the roots in Empedocles’ cosmology. They explain how his unchanging roots produce a changing world.
Mixture (Empedocles) : The combination of the four roots in different proportions to form particular things. Differences among objects arise from the proportions of roots, not their transformation.
Heraclitus : A Greek philosopher known for describing an ordered world of continual change and opposing forces. His emphasis on opposition parallels Strife, though Empedocles gave the forces a different role.
Diogenes Laërtius : A third-century CE biographer whose Lives of Eminent Philosophers preserves reports about ancient thinkers. His biography transmits many later anecdotes about Empedocles’ life and death.
Purifications (Empedocles) : A poem attributed to Empedocles that treats purification, wrongdoing, and the soul’s journey through lives. It shows the religious and ethical concerns alongside his account of nature.
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