Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher who was a student of Plato (student of Socrates). He analyzed the world and influenced the Western philosophy which included ethics, politics, science, and much more. Aristotle also helped shape the definition and mechanics of Physics. He believed that five elements were naturally in balance in the world, and if they were tampered with, they'd cause imbalance with the balance. These five elements were:

-Fire: Hot and dry -Water: Cold and wet -Air: Hot and wet -Earth: Cold and dry -Aether (stars & planets): N/A

Today, these five elements are absolutely irrelevant to Physics. Even though Aristoles was wrong on the correlation between Physics and elements, he established today's definition of chance and luck.

-Kevin

Aristotle also believed that the element earth was the center of the universe, followed by water, air, fire, and aether. The reason that for example, a stone fell to the ground when dropped was that a stone was mostly made up of the element earth, and that things of these five basic elements liked to be together if at all possible. so, the reason that bodies sink, it rains, air bubbles in water, and that flame and smoke rise. Each of these has been displaced from its element, and is trying to reach it. Aristotle also thought that objects would only move as long as a constant force was applied to them. His reasoning behind the movements of stars and planets was that they were constantly being acted upon by a 'Prime Mover'. It was for this reason that Questions such as why an arrow continues to fly even after it is no longer being acted upon by the bow perplexed him.