I think so. And there were other reasons, too, for Aristotle’s theory of the four elements to look more appealing than the atomism he was rejecting. For example, it attempted to explain hot and cold by incorporating them as basic qualities of the elements and giving some rules about how one can turn into the other. Taking hot vs cold and dry vs wet as the basic qualities, we have four possibilities:
hot and dry → fire
hot and wet → air
cold and dry → earth
cold and wet → water
Transitions between these four that change only one quality are easy and more common (like water->air by evaporation, or air->water by rain), while those that change both qualities (air<-->earth, fire<-->water) are harder, next to impossible. This actually corresponds to observed phenomena to some degree. The atomic theory had nothing of the kind and didn’t even attempt to account for things like temperature.
I think so. And there were other reasons, too, for Aristotle’s theory of the four elements to look more appealing than the atomism he was rejecting. For example, it attempted to explain hot and cold by incorporating them as basic qualities of the elements and giving some rules about how one can turn into the other. Taking hot vs cold and dry vs wet as the basic qualities, we have four possibilities:
hot and dry → fire
hot and wet → air
cold and dry → earth
cold and wet → water
Transitions between these four that change only one quality are easy and more common (like water->air by evaporation, or air->water by rain), while those that change both qualities (air<-->earth, fire<-->water) are harder, next to impossible. This actually corresponds to observed phenomena to some degree. The atomic theory had nothing of the kind and didn’t even attempt to account for things like temperature.