Last night I was at my local hangout and a guy mentioned that there were four elements: Earth, Water, Air and Fire.
I said I thought there were five, the fifth being Void.
This started a debate that Void can’t really be called an element for the same reason black and white aren’t colors. I asked him to describe the color of my pants, then went into Cecil mode ( http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_344.html ) as best as I could.
Eventually the discussion petered out because we started doing shots but I confess that I didn’t really know what I was talking about.
So is Void an element or just an absence of all the others, and what the heck it all this about anyway? Where does the periodic table come into all of this?
I’ve never heard of Void being a fifth element. I know of at least one culture (China at the time of Lao Tzu) that listed five elements (water, fire, wood, metal, and earth)[sup]1[/sup]. I think (but am not sure) that the Greeks of the same time period had a fifth element that was called something like “life”, or “motive force”.
Void is usually used to refer to the absence of everything.
A quick google search (earth air water fire void) turned up at least one page that list those as the five elements, but nothing of substance.
As for the periodic table, I’m guessing that they chose to name the different types of atoms elements because the word was used to refer to the constituent parts of matter–only now, there were more than four or five.
The fifth element in the Greek scheme of things was ether, also known as the quintessence. This was the element (generally held to be luminous, I believe) which the stars and planets were composed of.
I remember a Superman storyline about a mad chemist who created rings that personified the elements. Superman caught four of the badguys who stole and used the rings then Prof. Hamilton told him that some cultures respected a fifth element also, the void. Just about then the fifth badguy showed up with his void ring. YMMV
The earth, water, air, and fire business comes from the ancient Greeks. It was their belief that these were the most basic forms of matter and all other matter is made up of them in various proportions. Each element had special properties that they imparted to whatever matter contained them. This was also tied into early medicine and the four bodily humours.
I’ve never heard of void being an element. I’m not sure how you could use void as a component of matter.
This, of course, isn’t how matter is constructed. Matter is made of atoms, and the most basic chemical elements are described by the periodic table.
In India the five element names in Sanskrit are: tejas (fire), vâyu (air), apas (water), p.rthivi (earth), and âkâSa (ether or space). Because âkâSa can be translated as either ether or space, that may have brought about the confusion with “void.” Actually, the Sanskrit name for void is a different word: Sûnyatâ, which means emptiness or nothingness. âkâSa originally meant ‘a free and open space’ and can also be used to mean air, the sky, heavens, the cosmos. Not only that, âkâSavâNî (voice of âkâSa) is the modern Sanskrit coinage for ‘radio’. The idea being that âkâSa is the subtle and etheral fluid that fills and pervades the universe and is the vehicle for life and sound. The subtle matrix that provides the ground in which the other four elements exist. Because it’s subtle, people don’t perceive it, so they mistake it for nothingness or “Void”. But in Sanskrit âkâSa and Sûnyatâ are two distinct concepts.
Empedocles added to the traditional four elements two more: attraction and repulsion, or love and hate.
I wonder where I heard/read it. I’m not a Superman fan, so not there.
FWIW, I had always thought of it not as the absence of everything, but more like the vacuum of space. As it so happens, vacuum is one definition of void, so I’m still wrong, dammit!
Eh, learn something new every day. I DO dig that word, quintessence though. Especially when you consider the etymology of it…fifth essence indeed.
The reason you didn’t come up with the right answer is because you used the wrong search engine. I searched for “the fifth element” on IMDB and the plot summary clearly states that the fifth element is love.
Well Buddhist philosophy seems to have incorporated via way of the Sanskrit miss-translation the concept of the void as a fifth element. Here is a good site with the various elemental philosophies.
Well when I read the topic title, I immediately thought of the Book of the Five Rings, by Miyamoto Mushashi. It is a book of philosophy and fighting technique and the chapters are titles Air, Earth, Fire, Water, and Void. Don’t recall if he meant them as the main elements of the world or how the translator may have played with things, but there ya go.