Elemental Philosophy: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water as Environmental Ideas -- Elemental Philosophy: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water as Environmental Ideas -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Four-Thought -- Sheltering the Elements -- Plan of the Work -- Part I: Elemental Encounters and Ideas -- 1: Philosophy's Forgotten Four -- Earth -- Air -- Fire -- Water -- Interstice: Stone -- 2: The Topology of the Elemental Environment -- Elementary Letters -- Elemental Places -- Elements as Archetypes -- Elemental Opposition -- Elemental Substances -- Chemical Elements -- Cultural Comparisons -- The Frame of the Four -- Social Construction of the Elements -- Interstice: Wood -- Part II: Elemental Theories -- 3: The Flowering of Ecological Roots: Empedocles' Elemental Thought -- Four-Play -- The Problem of the Poems -- Square Roots and Radical Rhizomes -- Empedocles' Elemental Cosmology -- Ecological and Political Equality -- Organic Unity -- Environmental Action -- Anticipation of Evolution -- Animal Empathy -- Environmental Roots -- Ecological Ethos -- Crafting Nature -- Purity and Pollution -- The Rhizomes of Deleuze and Guattari -- Interstice: Ice and Snow -- 4: Plato's Chora-graphy of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water -- The ABC of Everything -- A Probable Physics -- Derivation of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water -- The Corpus of an Ecological Cosmos -- Second Beginnings and Constrained Construction -- Removing the Spell of the Elements -- Elemental Recycling -- Forms of the Four? -- Elements Emplaced: Chora-graphy in the Matrix -- Construction and Structure of the Primary Bodies -- War and Play of the Elements -- Dispatching the Stoicheia: Elemental S/endings -- Husserl and the Mathematization of Nature -- Postscript to Plato: Whitehead's Philosophical Footnotes -- Interstice: Cloud.

5: The Place of the Elements and the Elements of Place: Aristotle's Natural Household -- Four Accounts of Five Elements -- A Dictionary of Elemental Definitions -- The Ancient Generation Gap -- Pondering Weight -- The Place of the Elements -- The Elements of Place -- Homecoming and Inhabitation -- Interstice: Heat and Cold -- 6: The Economy and Ecology of the Aristotelian Elements -- Hot, Cold, Wet, and Dry -- Converting the Contraries -- Compounding the Quartet -- Prime Matter: A Persisting Problem -- Extra Terrestrials: The Fifth Element -- Elemental Contact: Beholding Tangible Bodies -- In Touch With the Environment -- The Soul and the External World -- Aristotle and Ecology -- Interstice: Light and Shadow -- Part III: Elemental Worlds -- 7: Domestication of the Elements -- Outside-In -- Plumbing Philosophy -- Watercraft and Landscape Aesthetics -- From Waterways to Waterworks -- Bottled Water -- Fire and Water -- Eclipse of the Atmosphere -- Escape from Earth -- End of the Elements? -- Interstice: Night -- 8: In Touch With the Sensuous World: The Reclamation of the Elemental in Continental Philosophy -- Elemental Reveries: Bachelard's Poetics -- Elemental Dwelling: Heidegger's Fourfold -- Elemental Flesh: Merleau-Ponty's Re-membering -- Elemental Sensibility: Levinas on Enjoyment -- Elemental Imperatives: Lingis and Our Sensuous Surroundings -- Elemental Passions: Irigaray on Breath and Body -- Elemental Landscapes: Casey on Place -- Elemental Nature: Sallis on Imagination -- From Elements to the Elemental -- Interstice: Space -- 9: Revaluing Earth, Air, Fire, and Water: Elemental Beauty, Ecological Duty, and Environmental Policy -- Elemental Ethics -- Elemental Aesthetics -- Environmental Action -- Bewildering Order -- Notes -- Index.