Ages

The Empedoclean Cosmic Cycle

Also Known As The Cycle of Love and Strife

Cosmological Age

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "The Empedoclean Cosmic Cycle." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://divinity.interactivelion.com/ages/the-empedoclean-cosmic-cycle.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). The Empedoclean Cosmic Cycle. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://divinity.interactivelion.com/ages/the-empedoclean-cosmic-cycle

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-the-empedoclean-cosmic-cycle,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {The Empedoclean Cosmic Cycle},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://divinity.interactivelion.com/ages/the-empedoclean-cosmic-cycle},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

The Empedoclean cosmic cycle is the doctrine, set out in the fifth century BC Sicilian philosopher Empedocles' poem On Nature, that the four eternal roots, fire, air, earth and water, are alternately united and separated by two opposed cosmic forces, Love and Strife, in a repeating cycle with no beginning or end. Nothing is created or destroyed; what is called birth and death is only these roots mixing and separating in new proportions. At the extreme of Love's ascendancy the roots blend completely into a motionless, undifferentiated sphere, and as Strife enters and separates them, the world presently known, with its plants, animals and people, forms during one stage of that separation.

Facts

Disputed

Proposed Dating

The stage of Strife's separation in which limbs and organs are said to wander alone and join at random, so that only the combinations able to survive persist, has drawn comparison to natural selection. 1

Some modern commentators read the passage, in which viable random combinations of limbs and organs alone survive to form the animals and people of the present world, as an early anticipation of natural selection; others judge the resemblance superficial, since Empedocles describes a single cosmogonic episode within the eternal cycle rather than an ongoing process of selection repeated across generations.

Identity

Symbol

The Sphairos, a motionless sphere in which the four roots stand wholly blended and no individual thing exists, is the doctrine's own image for the extreme of Love's ascendancy, and appears in Empedocles' own verses as very nearly a divine being in its own right. 1

Attributions

Tradition

Presocratic Greek philosophy, transmitted from Empedocles' own poem On Nature through Aristotle into medieval and later alchemical elemental theory. 1

Cross-Tradition Connections

Belongs to Tradition

Ancient Greek Religion

Sources

1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman (eds.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2024Entry on Empedocles, sections on the four roots and the cosmic cycle of Love and StrifeView the Source

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