gr. stoicheíon: letra do alfabeto, corpo primário, elemento; stoikheîa (tá): elementos. Latim: elemento. Componentes simples do mundo sensível. E o plural da palavra neutra tò stoikheíon, raramente empregada sozinha, pois o real se apresenta como uma coabitação dos elementos simples que o compõem. Aristóteles   define o elemento como: "Um primeiro componente de um ser, que lhe é imanente e é indivisível em outras espécies" (Met., A, 3).

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Plotin   suit ici la physique des éléments d’Aristote exposée dans le traité De la génération et de la corruption, II, 1 à 4. Voir également traité 40 (II, 1), 6 et 7 où Plotin examine les propriétés spécifiques des quatre éléments. Plotino - Tratado 1 (I,6) - Sobre o belo (estrutura)

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Aristotle disagreed with Plato in postulating a fifth element as constituting the heavens, whereas Plato had been satisfied with one of the standard four elements, namely fire. The commentators offer almost opposite harmonisations, according to whether they are friendly or hostile to Aristotle. Proclus  , the hostile one, tries to show, in the preface to his commentary on Plato’s Timaeus  , that Plato had already anticipated virtually everything that Aristotle had to say. So when Plato associated the shape of the heavens with the fifth of the five figures that had been shown to be the only possible regular convex solids in geometry, he was anticipating Aristotle’s fifth element, in Tim. 1.6,29-7,2; 2.49,29-50,2. The explanation is repeated by Simplicius  , in Cael. 12,16-27. But Simplicius knows a more friendly method of harmonisation, in Cael. 85,31-86,7. Aristotle recognised that the heavens were a particularly pure mixture of the four elements with fire predominating. He spoke as if the result were a fifth element, only to emphasise its divinity in praiseworthy opposition to the sort of view more recently taken by the Christians. On both interpretations Aristotle’s view is accommodated, but on the first he comes out an imitator, on the second a hero. Harmonisation is not a unitary procedure. [SorabjiPC3  :17-18]

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LÉXICO: STOICHEION; elementos