This book is both an encyclopedia of the history of ideas and a passionate defense: Hartmut Böhme and Gernot call for a reconsideration of the nature and basis of feelings, showing his "indelible mark even the most spiritual concepts." The fact that today we use the concept of element abstractly to refer to different types of atoms is, according to the authors, an indication of how far we have lost sight of the whole. The escalation in the destruction of nature occurs precisely in the domain of the four elements, and the neglect of the elements have also lost emotions symbolized in language. Besides being archetypal elements, fire, water, earth and air are representations of humans to understand the fundamental forces of nature and to build a speech about it. The philosophical and cultural ways in which humanity has defined the four elements along cultural history, ie what they are, who are just four, how to behave toward each other and in what sense are "elementary" , have been given a historical dimension. For this a special place in a cultural history of nature, while showing the impact of this on the concepts created by the mind.