Empedocles

Empedocles (490 BC - 430 BC) was a Greek philosopher and a citizen of Agrigentum in Sicily.

He maintained that all matter is made up of four classical elements (which he called roots): water, earth, air and fire. In addition to these, he postulated something called Love (philia) to explain the attraction of different forms of matter, and of something called Strife (neikos) to account for their separation. He considered these to be distinct substances, with the four elements in solution with them.

Empedocles was also a mystic and a poet, and some consider him the inventor of the study of rhetoric. Gorgias of Leontini was his student, and it is probably from Empedocles that Gorgias developed the notion of rhetoric as magic.

This article is part of The Presocratic Philosophers series