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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Electricity was invented some 7000 years later.
It’s a combination of fire and air, possibly just fire
