Aristotle's Stoichiology : its rejection and revivals

Abstract

Aristotle's rejection and reconstruction of the Pythagorean mathematization of things, of the Democritean and Platonic atomism, and the "materialism" of the pre-Aristotelian cosmologies, in general, are mostly based on his strikingly original theory of stoichiological opposites that is, the basic triadic set of principles, which, though ontologically distinct, are, intimately related. The theory involves: (a) the subject-in-process, which is continuous throughout the process of change or the substrate matter or the potentially perceptible body, (b) the four perceptible contrarieties, hot, cold, wet, and dry, which form the prime pair of contraries of the chemical elements, and (c) the four primary, actually perceptible bodies, fire, air, water and earth, which are subject to destruction and generation, also designated by the terms: "the first bodies" "the simple bodies" and which are distinguished from the traditional, the "so-called elements".