A TIMELINE OF MATTER

A TIMELINE OF MATTER

A Pre-Christian History of the Theories of Matter, the
Elements, and the Atom.

Mesopotamia

The basic consciousness of matter begins in the western world with the pre-historic recognition of the four states of matter: Fire, Air, Water, and Earth.

In the Enuma Elish, the Sumerian creation epic, "Khubur" is the ocean (Water) encircling the known world, upon which the Earth floats, and beyond which the Sun-God (Fire) pastures his cattle. Heaven (Air) is a solid vault which also rests upon the ocean -- "Ti’amat" (chaos) -- which surrounds and supports it.

Metallurgy : from previous to 6000 BCE copper is smelted from malachite which is found in surface deposits and later mined; copper is molded into many types of household items, cooking vessels and utensils, and tools, but is too soft to hold an edge, and therefore of limited use in the production of weapons. Around 3500 BCE however, a method of strengthening copper is finally discovered: by mixing the molten metal with around 15% molten tin, the alloy called bronze is produced.

"The Bronze Age" begins, which produces not only new household articles and tools, but also the reliable sword blade, so that the technology is founded upon which new military politics and the State are based.

Neo-Babylonia
In the later kingdom in the cities of the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the sky is studied nightly by the schools of Magabazae, or Magi, priests. Perceived patterns of stars in the black sky are named as the constellations, identified with animals and the pantheon of gods, such as Perseus, Cassieopia, Orion. The "dial of the animals" or the zodiac, which is the circle of constellations extending around the plane of the ecliptic, or evident narrow table of the planetary orbits of the solar system. The positions of the zodiac mark twelve segments in the sidereal year beginning with the vernal equinox, when the sun was positioned in the constellation of Taurus, invisible in the day sky. The movement of the stars and planets are charted into elaborate, precise tables of observed movements in the night sky over long periods of time, so that reliable forecasts can be made regarding the expected positions, intervals of observation, and regular phenomena such as eclipses of the sun and moon. The patterns of the movement of planets are distinguished.
Egypt
Ptah is "the Opener," the giver of truth upon the Earth.
Khnemu is "the Moulder," the lord of the Primeval Water, inundation, and the "Lord of the Cataract."
Thoth, the inventor of the hieroglyphic system of writing, is also the great god of the Earth, Air, Sky, and Sea.
Greece
Thales of Miletus (640-562 BC), the early 6th century BCE astronomer, who had studied in the temples of Memphis, Egypt, is credited by Aristotle with the invention in the West of Geometry, learned in Egypt as the science of land measurement, seeks a conceptual method "to reduce the manifold of observed phenomena to a unity." He assumes a "primary matter" from which all things were composed. [pg. 2, The Atomic Scientists] This one matter for Thales was the element of Water, from which all things originated, and to which all things would return, and which is therefore both eternal and divine. Thales believed the world is a circular disc floating "like a piece of wood on the ocean," the water of which is the principle or origin of everything, and from the evaporation of which the air is formed. He saw that the nourishment of all things is moist, and the heat itself is generated from moisture, the first principle from which all things spring, and the germs of all beings are of a moist nature.
Anaximander of Miletus (610-540 BC) regarded the origin of all things to be the Infinite, which he regarded as the Divine, describing it as ‘eternal and ageless’ and as "surrounding" and "governing" the innumerable worlds. Each world he envisaged as the product of a number of pairs of conflicting opposites which are separated from one another out of the Infinite and "pay due compensation to each other according to the assessment of Time for their injustice." He therefore first conceived the universe as a cosmos subject to the rule of law. Anaximander revolutionized astronomy by treating the paths of the Sun and Moon as great circles passing beneath the Earth and composed of fire wrapped in vapor.
Heraclitus of Ephesus, a late 6th century BCE metaphysician and follower of Thales, but to him the divine attribute of eternity belongs not to a primary substance, but to a universal Logos. Following Anaximander, he conceived the universe as a ceaseless conflict of opposites regulated by, and understandable as, the unchanging law of the cosmic process. The Logos itself is the transcendent Wisdom and the elemental fire. He speculates: "to be is to change, therefore the primary matter must exhibit this principle." For Heraclitus, Fire fulfills this requirement, as it exists it is continually composed of different burning matter -- it is different from one moment to the next.
Rather than a periodic world-conflagration of this fire, Heraclitus believed in a perpetual stream of creation in which "all things are an exchange for fire, and fire for all things…"
Parmenides, a contemporary of Heraclitus, takes the contrary position, specifying: "Permanency only is real -- change is an illusion."
Leucippus establishes the concept of the atom as the tiniest indivisible particle of physical matter. The theories of his pupil Democritus were unquestionably derived from Leucippus’ teachings, but separation of their personal concepts has not been achieved by scholars of the period.
Democritus of Adera (460-497 BCE ) : tutored by Magi priests who remained at the estate of his father, following a visit by the Persian king Xerxes, Democritus learned the arts of theology and astrology. He later traveled to Egypt to learn geometry, then also to Persia, India, and Ethiopia. Aristotle relates the origin of Democritus’ theory of matter to the Eleatic school, who argued that what is truly real is one and motionless, and that empty space is not a real existent, since motion is impossible without empty space, and plurality is impossible without something to separate the units one from another. According to Aristotle, Leucippus first proposed to rescue the sensible world of plurality argued against this system by asserting that empty space, the ‘non-existent,’ may nevertheless serve to separate parts of what does exist from each other. Therefore the world has two ingredients: being, which satisfies the Eleatic criteria by being ‘full,’ unchanging and homogeneous, and non-being or empty space. By contrast, the pieces of real being are by characteristic indivisible units, are called ‘atoms,’ solid, invisibly small, and undifferentiated in material. They differ from one another in shape and size only, perhaps also in weight. The only change they undergo is in their relative and absolute position, through movement in this non-being empty ‘space.’ By their changes of position these atoms produce the compounds of all seen matter in the visible world, which differ in quality according to their shape and arrangement, their congruence and their tendency to latch together because of their shape, and the amount of space between them.

Epicurus. The ideas of Democritus were adopted by Epicurus, the originator of a school of reflective thought, as the materialistic basis of his own philosophy.

Roman Republic and Empire

The "Precession of the Equinox": During the time of the Roman Republic it was discovered from a review of the earliest Babylonian records that the time of the vernal equinox had shifted earlier in the sideral year from the constellation of Taurus into the sector of Aries. (In modern times it has further shifted into the break between Aries and Pisces.) Higher into the zenith above Aries stands Perseus, depicted in ancient charts of the heavens in the act of slaying Taurus. This is the basis of the Cult of Mithra, the Babylonian name of Perseus, popular among the Roman Legions, as representing a force powerful enough to twist the entire Firmament of the heavens from above the northern axis of the universe.

Lucretius (99-55BC). In Book 2 of his De Rerum Natura, Lucretius discusses the Movements and Shapes of Atoms on the level of the motion of dust observed in a beam of sunlight: "their dancing is an actual indication of the underlying movements of matter that are hidden from our sight; you see many particles under the impact of invisible blows changing their course this way and that in all directions. This movement mounts up from the atoms and gradually emerges to the level of our senses." [cf. Chaos Theory concerning the motions of fluids in closed pipes.]

Resources

Henry A. Boorse, Lloyd Motz, Jefferson Hane Weaver, The Atomic Scientists, (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1989).

J.L.E. Dreyer, A History of Astronomy from Thales to Kepler, (Dover Publications, New York, 1953).

The Oxford Classical Dictionary; Second Edition; Edited by N.G.L. Hammond and H.H. Scullard;(Oxford at the Clarendon Press; Oxford, England; 1970).