Re: Shouldn't lightning be the fifth element?

Bridgette, 

Science has not acknowledged those four "elements" for a very long time. For 
about the last two hunderd years, science has acknowledged quite a different set 
of elements -- somewhere between 70 and 114 of them, such things as hydrogen, 
helium, lithium ... etc.

Those four elements, along with a frequently forgotten fifth, the aether, came 
from the conclusions that the early Greek philosophers (Aristotle in particular) 
formed in their scientific(?) speculations about the basic substances from which 
others are made. We now know that air is a mixture, water is a compound, earth 
is 
a mixture of compounds, fire is immaterial, and the aether is non-existent. 
Modern science sees none of the ancient "elements" as elementary in any sense! 
Nor is lightning.

The early Chinese philosophers, whose knowledge about materials was equally as 
impressive as the ancient Greeks, and much more developed in the practical 
areas, 
recognized five elements: Water, earth, fire, wood, and metal.

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Dan Berger adds:
Prof. Christie is absolutely correct. Nobody has used the four-element (five 
counting aether) picture non-metaphorically since about 1750, if not earlier. 
It was about that time that alchemy was discredited as a serious intellectual 
pursuit.

But within the four-element worldview, lightning would NOT be an element. 
Instead it would be a form of the element Fire.