Explores the ancient and perennial notion of the four
elements as environmental ideas. Bache lard called them “the hormones of the
imagination.” Hegel observed that, “through the four elements we have the
elevation of sensuous ideas into thought.” Earth, air, fire, and water are
explored as both philosophical ideas and environmental issues associated with
their classical and perennial conceptions.
David Macauley embarks upon a
wide-ranging discussion of their initial appearance in ancient Greek thought as
mythic forces or scientific principles to their recent reemergence within
contemporary continental philosophy as a means for understanding landscape and
language, poetry and place, the body and the body politic. In so doing, he
shows the importance of elemental thinking for comprehending and responding to
ecological problems.
In tracing changing views of the four elements through the
history of ideas, Macauley generates a new vocabulary for and a fresh vision of
the environment while engaging the elemental world directly with reflections on
their various manifestations.
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