Empedocles c. 490 BC – c. 430 BC

Empedocles of Acragas was an ancient Greek Pre-Socratic philosopher of the 5th century BC, born in the Greek city of Acragas in Sicily. His doctrine of the four elements, earth, water, air, and fire, mixed and separated by the cosmic forces of Love and Strife, was the dominant account of natural change in Greek and medieval thought until the early modern period. His two surviving philosophical poems, On Nature and the Purifications, develop his cosmology, his theory of perception, and a doctrine of the transmigration of souls. He was reputed in antiquity to have died by leaping into the volcano on Mount Etna, perhaps to confirm rumours of his divinity. He left a deep impression on subsequent Greek thought and was one of the major Pre-Socratic interlocutors for Plato and Aristotle.