Past Discoveries Matter
by Eli Harrell('20)

Early contributions to science are the foundation for our current understanding, despite how ignorant or primitive they might seem through modern eyes. While it is difficult to remove ourselves from a modern perspective on scientific knowledge, this presentism should not cloud our appreciation and understanding of the past. For much of human history, wood was wood, dirt was dirt, and flesh was flesh: substances simply were. As time went on, this would not hold up, and philosophers like Empedocles were the first to challenge this notion through logic. He contended that all substances have certain properties which are determined by a unique ratio of his four “elements”: fire, earth, air, and water. Turtles had more earth and less fire than hares, and birds more air than either—Empedocles shifted the paradigm from a monistic view of all matter and reality as simply being to understanding matter as divisible. These four “Classical elements” are a concept which ought to be more widely considered a scientific milestone, and not merely a misconceived attempt at understanding matter. It would be easy to disprove Empedocles’ notion, for no matter how small matter is divided, the resultant particles never approach what he believed to be “elemental” fire, earth, air or water. What matters is not the validity of his contention, but rather how he sowed the seeds for later discoveries about the structure of matter. Empedocles’ groundwork of popularizing matter as divisible enabled his successor Democritus to develop his own theory of matter with indivisible atomos, more closely resembling our modern atomic model. While not all past theories were influential or productive contributors to modern science, Empedocles’ early notion of elements composing matter certainly deserves to be more widely considered scientific thought. Empedocles was far from the only early contributor to science—he is merely an example of the presentism we unfairly heap on all past understandings and events. There are certainly happenings and practices of the past we may correctly interpret as wrong or misguided—the witch trials came to mind—but the skill to be more discriminate when interpreting such events should be taught and encouraged to a greater extent. If we are to become truly empathetic, as Packer so fervently wishes, we must not conform to modern condescendence on historical beliefs, and rather view the past from perspective of then. In an isolated system such as the scientific community, time is an arrow dictated by the second law of thermodynamics—what is once discovered always influences what is to be discovered. Ancient understandings appear faulty, inaccurate, and downright wrong, but they nonetheless deserve wider appreciation as elemental in modern science.

Bibliography
​Campbell, Gordon. “Empedocles”. Internet Encyclopedia Of Philosophy, 2018, https://www.iep.utm.edu/empedocl/. Accessed 4 Mar 2018. Carpi, Anthony, Ph.D. "Early Ideas About Matter: From Democritus To Dalton". Visionlearning, 2003, https://www.visionlearning.com/en/library/Chemistry/1/Early-Ideas-about-Matter/49/reading. Accessed 4 Mar 2018.