The alchemical symbol for air is an upward-pointing triangle, bisected by a horizontal line. Other things associated with air and blood in ancient and medieval medicine included the season of spring, since it increased the qualities of heat and moisture the sanguine temperament (of a person dominated by the blood humour) hermaphrodite (combining the masculine quality of heat with the feminine quality of moisture) and the northern point of the compass. Blood was the humor identified with air, since both were hot and wet. In ancient Greek medicine, each of the four humours became associated with an element. For him, aether was an unchanging, almost divine substance that was found only in the heavens, where it formed celestial spheres. Aristotle definitively separated air from aether. According to Aristotle, air is both hot and wet and occupies a place between fire and water among the elemental spheres. The four elements were arranged concentrically around the center of the universe to form the sublunary sphere. Plato's student Aristotle (384–322 BCE) developed a different explanation for the elements based on pairs of qualities. He also said of air that its minuscule components are so smooth that one can barely feel them. This places air between fire and water which Plato regarded as appropriate because it is intermediate in its mobility, sharpness, and ability to penetrate.
In the Timaeus, his major cosmological dialogue, the Platonic solid associated with air is the octahedron which is formed from eight equilateral triangles. Plato (427–347 BCE) took over the four elements of Empedocles. Empedocles’ roots became the four classical elements of Greek philosophy. Ancient and modern opinions differ as to whether he identified air by the divine name Hera, Aidoneus or even Zeus. 435 BCE) selected four archai for his four roots: air, fire, water, and earth. Aristophanes parodied such teachings in his play The Clouds by putting a prayer to air in the mouth of Socrates.Īir was one of many archai proposed by the Pre-socratics, most of whom tried to reduce all things to a single substance. A similar belief was attributed by some ancient sources to Diogenes Apolloniates (late 5th century BCE), who also linked air with intelligence and soul ( psyche), but other sources claim that his arche was a substance between air and fire. Plato, for instance writes that "So it is with air: there is the brightest variety which we call aether, the muddiest which we call mist and darkness, and other kinds for which we have no name." Among the early Greek Pre-Socratic philosophers, Anaximenes (mid-6th century BCE) named air as the arche. The ancient Greeks used two words for air: aer meant the dim lower atmosphere, and aether meant the bright upper atmosphere above the clouds. According to Plato, it is associated with the octahedron air is considered to be both hot and wet.
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