These are the dark days leading up to Christmas. It is dark most of the day. Today, December 19, the sun has disappeared behind the horizon for 16 hours, 16 minutes and 38 seconds. There is still a little light right before sunrise and right after sunset, but darkness lasts almost twice as long. Many people think it’s warm, the candles are lit, the Christmas tree is there, but I think it will be spring again. In two days we will experience the shortest day, which will last nine seconds shorter than Sunday, but then the days will start to lengthen again. Since we know all this, up to the second, we owe it to science, to Copernicus and Galileo to Newton and Joffert Schelling. But the ancient Greeks did not yet have this knowledge. They had the sun god Helios arrange everything for them.
Elemententtheory
But this does not mean that these ancient Greeks were crazy or stupid. exactly the contrary. In any case, try to explain the world and phenomena, and we should not laugh at them. I myself have always been fascinated by their idea of the four elements. Air, Earth, Water, Fire and everything that happens on Earth is the result of the interaction of these four elements. Take a volcanic eruption. This is an interaction between earth and fire. A storm at sea is an interaction of air and water. and so on and so on. It was the Greek and Sicilian-born philosopher Empedocles who popularized the element theory.
But in fact we are still doing the same thing. Only we now call the atmosphere. Water is called the hydrosphere and the earth is the geosphere. But what is fire then? We never talk about atmosphere or anything like that. I can say it’s the biosphere.
combustion fire. With the absorption of oxygen and the excretion of carbon dioxide, a process occurs in which heat is released. You immediately think of your stove or cylinders, but combustion is also what keeps life going. You and I are warm thanks to our metabolism, our digestion, consuming oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide just like any other campfire. Fire, this is life. The fourth element, the fourth sphere, is the biosphere.
beach picnic
The best way to perceive all four elements at once is to walk on the beach. We can do that this afternoon if needed. If you then walk along the waterline, you are literally walking over the land, the geosphere. You breathe air and air. Seawater, the hydrosphere, washes your toes or wets your shoes. And you yourself, along with roaring seagulls soaring in the sky and shrimp in beach pools, are part of the biosphere.
These ancient Greeks weren’t that crazy after all. I wish you a pleasant and inviting walk on the beach, greetings from Empedocles. you still have time; Today, the sun sets at 1 minute 24 seconds before 4:30. Then Helios drowns in the sea.
