A Greek philosopher who held that all matter was composed of earth, air, fire and water.
Used in a Sentence
empedocles
Definitions, parts of speech, synonyms, and sentence examples for empedocles.
Editorial note
The poet and philosopher Lucretius followed Empedocles in his masterwork De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things).
Examples15
Definitions2
Parts of speech1
Quick take
A Greek philosopher who held that all matter was composed of earth, air, fire and water.
Meaning at a glance
The clearest senses and uses of empedocles gathered in one view.
A volcano off the southern coast of Sicily.
Definitions
Core meanings and parts of speech for empedocles.
noun
A Greek philosopher who held that all matter was composed of earth, air, fire and water.
noun
A volcano off the southern coast of Sicily.
Example sentences
The poet and philosopher Lucretius followed Empedocles in his masterwork De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things).
Ole Roemer, a Danish astronomer, proved suspicions of many such as Empedocles (490-435 B.
If I only got one cite, id be interested in the empedocles...
Aristotle's point of view did not hold sway everywhere or for all of that period; afaik pneumatics started with Empedocles and the clepsydra, and obviously the atomists favored the vacuum.
> In the fifth century BC, Empedocles postulated that everything was composed of four elements; fire, air, earth and water.
If this were true, then one could see during the night just as well as during the day, so Empedocles postulated an interaction between rays from the eyes and rays from a source such as the sun.
He, in effect, I think, found a way of enacting the story of Empedocles, where Empedocles tries to die by jumping into a volcano so he will have just seemingly vanished and be believed to have ascended to godhood but was revealed by his bronze sandals.
In 1021, Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham) published his Book of Optics, in which he presented a series of arguments dismissing Empedocles emission theory of vision in favour of the now accepted intromission theory, in which light moves from an object into the eye.
Quote examples
Empedocles seems to have been the first Greek philosopher to have used the word "daemon" in this sense.
I'm currently reading "Story of Philosophy" by Will Durant and was struck by this even earlier reference to a process of evolution by natural selection: > Empedocles (fl.
("If this were true, then one could see during the night just as well as during the day, so Empedocles postulated an interaction between rays from the eyes and rays from a source such as the sun.") I guess they could have argued that the rays of light returning from each object were perfect specular reflections that traveled directly back to the eyes that emitted them...
"The first known person to question the whole “speed of light is infinite” thing was the 5th century BC philosopher Empedocles" If you want your mind blown, there also was a physicist in the 20th century who questioned whether or not the speed of light was directionally invariant (isotropic).
Proper noun examples
Empedocles does not leap to escape mortality; he leaps to overreach it, to force the cosmos to acknowledge his claim, even if the price is erasure.
You got something like Empedocles' eye rays there, but only in one eye?
>The proposal that one type of organism could descend from another type goes back to some of the first pre-Socratic Greek philosophers, such as Anaximander and Empedocles.[34] Such proposals survived into Roman times.
Frequently asked questions
Short answers drawn from the clearest meanings and examples for this word.
How do you use empedocles in a sentence?
The poet and philosopher Lucretius followed Empedocles in his masterwork De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things).
What does empedocles mean?
A Greek philosopher who held that all matter was composed of earth, air, fire and water.
What part of speech is empedocles?
empedocles is commonly used as noun.