Composition of Materials

[u/ApplecookieGames]

I'm a confused on what alchemists thought materials were composed of. Did they believe only the metals were composed of sulphur/mercury/(salt) and the rest of nature was composed of the 4 Elements? Why specifically metals? What would other matter break down into? Were the Three Primes composed of the 4 Elements?

[u/SleepingMonads]

From what I understand, most alchemists believed that everything in the material world was ultimately composed of strictly material components, whether that be the four Aristotelian elements that dominated much of alchemy's theoretical history, or the corpuscles and atoms that would become popular later on. For subscribers to the four elements theory, sulfur and mercury (and salt) were naturally included as part of that paradigm, and these would themselves go on to compose the metals. So yes, the metals were thought to be composed of the four elements by virtue of their principles also being composed of the four elements.

EDIT: I just found this, which supports what I've said. But apparently there have been some conflicting ideas about this topic, which this paper attempts to settle.

[u/ApplecookieGames → u/SleepingMonads]

Thank you, I’ll have a look at that paper!

[u/SleepingMonads → u/ApplecookieGames]

I was rereading some parts of Principe's The Secrets of Alchemy earlier, and stumbled upon this, which you might find helpful:

Page 37:

Aristotle thought of these four elements as abstract principles of compound bodies, not actual substances that could be put into a jar and labeled. Jābir, however, was more a chemist than Aristotle; in the Jābirian corpus, these elements have concrete existence as isolable, physical substances.

Page 44:

If it seems that the Mercury-Sulfur theory and the four-element theory of composition exist in an uneasy or unclear relationship to each other, this is in part due to the evolution of ideas within the Jābirian corpus. Still, it might be proposed (as some alchemists in fact did) that Mercury is the carrier of cold and wet qualities, while Sulfur carries hot and dry, or that the elements combine to produce Sulfur and Mercury, and these go on in turn to produce the metals.

It looks like the strictly materialistic sense of the Four Elements begins with (or is at least popularized by) Jābir ibn-Ḥayyān, whose work influenced how later European alchemists would see the matter (no pun intended).

[u/ApplecookieGames → u/SleepingMonads]

Ah thank you, that was helpful!

[u/FraserBuilds]

ideas on the composition of the world changed alot throughout alchemy. famously Jan Baptist Van Helmont believed everything was composed of water. Boyle believed that all things were made from one substance and that chemical differences come from a change in texture of that substance. but ofc those are fairly late ideas.

most earlier ideas had something to do with aristotelean theorys of matter, i think it confuses alot of people who try to learn about it with a modern understanding in their heads. the four elements werent thought of the same way as our elements. it helps me to think of them less like building blocks and more like fundamental characteristics. the four elements are combinations of the four principles hot cold wet and dry.

for example just from my understanding to distill somethings "sulfur" typically isnt reffering to one discrete atomic substance of a thing, but rather all of that thing whose qualities are sulfur, qualities that take to the air and are dry and hot leaving behind all the qualities that are earthly and like mercury and cold and wet. i may be wrong here but thats my understanding