J. R. Partington on Nature
Browse 2 quotations attributed to J. R. Partington, catalogued under nature, with dates where available.
This page displays 2 quotations attributed to J. R. Partington and filed under "nature" in QuoteLineage. The selection is ordered by stored importance and quality scores, not citation counts. A topic label describes how an entry is catalogued; it does not establish the theme's importance in the author's work.
Attributed to J. R. Partington, entry #56182: "We find Theophrastus describing... the manufacture of white lead... "lead is placed in an earthen vessel over sharp vinegar, and after it has acquired some thickness of a kind of …"
Attributed to J. R. Partington, entry #60598: "The first clear expression of the idea of an element occurs in the teachings of the Greek philosophers. ...Aristotle ...who summarized the theories of earlier thinkers, developed …"
2 Quotes by J. R. Partington on Nature
"We find Theophrastus describing... the manufacture of white lead... "lead is placed in an earthen vessel over sharp vinegar, and after it has acquired some thickness of a kind of rust... they open the vessels and scrape it off. ...repeating over and over again... til it is wholly gone. What has been scraped off they then beat to a powder and boil with water for a long time, and what at last settles to the bottom is white lead."
"The first clear expression of the idea of an element occurs in the teachings of the Greek philosophers. ...Aristotle ...who summarized the theories of earlier thinkers, developed the view that all substances were made of a primary matter... On this, different forms could be impressed... so the idea of the transmutation of the elements arose. Aristotle's elements are really fundamental properties of matter... hotness, coldness, moistness, and dryness. By combining these in pairs, he obtained what are called the four elements, fire, air, earth and water... a fifth, immaterial, one was added, which appears in later writings as the quintessence. This corresponds with the ether. The elements were supposed to settle out naturally into the earth , water , air , fire and ether ."