Empedocles' philosophy is best known for originating the cosmogonic theory of the four classical elements.
18 Facts About Empedocles
2.
Empedocles proposed forces he called Love and Strife which would mix and separate the elements, respectively.
3.
Empedocles challenged the practice of animal sacrifice and killing animals for food.
4.
Empedocles is generally considered the last Greek philosopher to have recorded his ideas in verse.
5.
Empedocles' death was mythologized by ancient writers, and has been the subject of a number of literary treatments.
6.
Primary sources of information on the life of Empedocles come from the Hellenistic period, several centuries after his own death and long after any reliable evidence about his life would have perished.
7.
Empedocles never used the term "element", which seems to have been first used by Plato.
8.
Empedocles assumed a cyclical universe whereby the elements return and prepare the formation of the sphere for the next period of the universe.
9.
Empedocles attempted to explain the separation of elements, the formation of earth and sea, of Sun and Moon, of atmosphere.
10.
Empedocles dealt with the first origin of plants and animals, and with the physiology of humans.
11.
Empedocles was a vegetarian and advocated vegetarianism, since the bodies of animals are dwelling places of punished souls.
12.
For Empedocles, all living things were on the same spiritual plane; plants and animals are links in a chain where humans are a link too.
13.
Empedocles is credited with the first comprehensive theory of light and vision.
14.
Empedocles attempted to explain the phenomenon of respiration by means of an elaborate analogy with the clepsydra, an ancient device for conveying liquids from one vessel to another.
15.
The fragment certainly implies that Empedocles knew about the corporeality of air, but he says nothing whatever about the void, and there is no evidence that Empedocles performed any experiment with clepsydras.
16.
Diogenes Laertius records the legend that Empedocles died by throwing himself into Mount Etna in Sicily, so that the people would believe his body had vanished and he had turned into an immortal god; the volcano threw back one of his bronze sandals, revealing the deceit.
17.
Burnet states that Empedocles likely did not die in Sicily, that both the positive story of Empedocles being taken up to heaven and the negative one about him throwing himself into a volcano could be easily accepted by ancient writers, as there was no local tradition to contradict them.
18.
Empedocles' death is the subject of Friedrich Holderlin's play Tod des Empedokles as well as Matthew Arnold's poem Empedocles on Etna.