A What-If Scenario

[Maximum Zersk]

Okay, I have a what-if.

What if the world really was made up of the four elements that people believed it was? Would the world look any different? If so, by how much? And how much would science be different?

Pure speculation, not to be taken too seriously.

[Soterion]

Well, for one thing there would be no atomic theory, which means modern chemistry, genetics, nuclear power, quantum theory, electronics, plastics, lasers, climatology, zeppelins, mass spectroscopy, the sun, carbon dating, and the Giant in the Playground forums wouldn't exist.

[Pyrian]

The traditional "elements" turned out to be the states (solid, liquid, gas, energy) of what we now call elements, but it could have easily been vice-versa in most respects. Reversing that dichotomy changes nothing at a macroscopic level; after all, both theories were developed from observations of the real world, and thermodynamics are surprisingly unaffected (energy being an element in a truer sense than the entities we call elements). Nor does it mean we would have been unable to create science and technology based on it, though it may have been a bit different.

Alchemy, for instance, would be possible. Fantastic materials should be much easier to come by, with "state changes" between material types harnessable in the same way we use phase changes to power machinery.

[Player_Zero]

Technically all the modern physics you realise as fact is theory which may be erroneous. There may not be such a thing as gravity.

[RandomNPC]

then many historical figures may not have been killed by blood letting, and the world would be a much different place.

also, science would still exist, It would just only be practiced by "Mechans" who are often riddiculed and mocked. Give yourself a cookie if you get the refrence.

[Hazkali]

It may be that the effects of modern science (computing, lasers, biology, etc) would all still be possible by some deeper knowledge of how the four elements interact and combine, because we would still have had thousands of years studying it.

In fact, though there is no way to reconcile our current understanding of the universe based on a four-element theory, on the presumption that the four element theory is correct then there must be an explanation for these phenomena in terms of it.

Of course, any explanation you give would be pure fantasy.

[Cyrano]

Close enough. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Matters)

[Moff Chumley]

I'd do the same thing then as I do now: a barrel roll.

[dogmac]

I think technology would in fact be far more advances, as many of the ancient scientific work, based on the four elements, would have been able to progress.