It’s a common elemental theme we see across stories, fantasies, etc. It seems like it is an element that should be part of that pantheon but maybe there is a scientific explanation of why it isn’t? Or is it simply, they did not have enough understanding of it at the time those 4 were suggested.
Electricity is just wind and fire combined.
Or something… Like this isn’t entirely a joke. That’s how the classic elements worked. Other forces of nature were simply combinations of those four.
Modern science is essentially the same, we just recognize way more elements that make up everything else.
Electricity is pretty much just very directed fire if you think about it in a sorta abstract way.
Thats why ATLA was objectively correct that fire benders could also handle lightning.
I suppose the most straightforward and general answer to this is: understanding is a process, and alchemy is from a much earlier stage of that process than chemistry and electricity.
Mostly because the only real exposure to electricity the people who came up with the “classical” elements had was lightning. I’m sure they experienced static electricity from time to time, but they probably didn’t associate it with lightning.
From their perspective, lightning is a very brief moment of extreme light, then maybe a fire if they can actually see the impact site. So it seems a lot more closely related to fire than we would suppose.
maybe there is a scientific explanation of why it isn’t
Nothing about the “classical elements” is rooted in what we would understand as science today. It was just people making guesses about how the world around them worked without the rigor of the scientific process. It was little more than wild speculation.
Exactly. I think the elements fire, air, water etc are from the presocratics and they did not have any concept of electricity yet.
Well, static electricity has been well known and well documented since ancient times… that is about the same time as people started talking about fundamental elements.
I guess they just didn’t consider it important enough.
(And yeah, they didn’t know lightning is the same thing.)
The Greeks knew of electricity, knew of static shocks and lightning, but since the only thimgs they could apprise of it was that it zapped you and made noises, they must have assumed that it was something secret.
Zeus’s lightning bolts must have been hammered together of billions of those tiny zaps you get from sheepskin and amber. The blacksmith that can weld lightning must be a deity, all in all it is too great a subject for mere mortals.
And then Ben Franklin came along and slew Zeus and stole his lightning.
I now I use Zues’ power to read your words from great distances. Take that, puny god.
I mean, what is “Aether” in a historical/classical context? Would that fit?
Edit: I guess not. Aether seems to be more like…‘dark matter’ or ‘gravity’ than electricity.
Give me alchemy, give me wizardry
Give me sorcery, thermatology
Electricity, magic if you please
Master all of these, bring him to his knees
I master five magics
– Megadeth, Five Magics
more importantly, why is wood not in the four western elements? Wood fucking rules
This is herbaceous erasure
Because electricity isn’t an element, it’s fairies. That’s why when there’s a short you see smoke: it’s really the fairies escaping the wires.
It’s a combination of fire and air, possibly just fire
Electricity was invented some 7000 years later.
Shortly before we taught little rocks to think.
In antiquity people probably considered it a form of fire since anything struck by lightening tends to burn or at least get extremely hot? Or possibly they saw it as some combination of wind and fire maybe?
not sure what stories and fantasies you like reading, but most elemental magic systems i know of usually contain electricity as one of the elements. mostly a manga reader here.
