TY - JOUR T1 - An A–Z of medical philosophy JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 36 LP - 36 DO - 10.3399/bjgp13X660841 VL - 63 IS - 606 AU - David Misselbrook Y1 - 2013/01/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/63/606/36.abstract N2 - Something amazing happened in Greece. I don’t mean trying to fall off the edge of the Euro, I mean in the 4th century BC when a distinctive Western consciousness blazed into being. One of the authors of this world was Aristotle. Aristotle (384–322 BC) was a wealthy man (the son of a doctor) who used his privilege to spend his life on a quest to understand the world.It is easy now for us to scorn Aristotle’s physics, which took a punt on the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water in preference to the atomic model suggested by Democritus et al. But without modern chemistry ancient atomic theories could not explain how things change. The four elements variably combined with the four qualities of cold and hot, wet and dry, could explain anything. And Aristotle’s theories lasted without fundamental correction for nearly 2000 years: longer than Newton (and almost Einstein while the fast Neutrinos were to … ER -