The Greek elements are Fire, Water, Earth and Air.
The Chinese elements are Earth, Metal, Wood, Fire and Water.
Why?
Why haven’t the Chinese recognised air as an element and aren’t Wood and Metal a part of Earth?
Discuss.
Not exactly true
prima materia=wood
metal can be switched with air in the 5 elements in the Chinese version.
wood is living, a combination of the other 4 elements, as is prima materia.
“metal” is not in reference completely to the substance, but the color of certain types of “metals”.
These are just my observations.
i dont know much but i think air isnt recognised as an element because depending on what its doing and things it can take on the othe relements.
eg. you see a car, so its obviously metal. but if it shoots past you very quickly, it can also have the fire element.
so even something more obvious can be tricky.
im just learning about 5 elements too, and this is somehting hazy from my memory of talking over a dinner, so maybe wrong i dunno 
dawood
Re: Element Theory
Originally posted by Serpent
[B]The Greek elements are Fire, Water, Earth and Air.
The Chinese elements are Earth, Metal, Wood, Fire and Water.
Why?
Why haven’t the Chinese recognised air as an element and aren’t Wood and Metal a part of Earth?
Discuss. [/B]
Qi = air/breath
now u opened a huuuge can of worms 
oh well - will make ur day at work more interesting i guess 
dawood
To open this up a bit:
creative cycle:
fire>earth>air>water>wood>back to fire
destructive cycle:
wood>earth>water>fire>air>back to wood
In a martial sense, each element can represents a type of fighter or a type of movement.
Elements are more like processes to associate things with,as often in Chinese medicine and philosophy.
You can say every human posses a quality from all of the five elements but rarely do you see them on fire,being metal or plain water (even though a lot of the mass if of-)
Besides,Greeks had their own ideas.
I’ve always thought that fire and air were interchangable in
concept.
I’ve learned 3 different elemental schemes and forgotten one
of them, well, maybe 2 of them as all I practice is the hsing yi
version I learned.
my take has been that the differences were just semantical as in
different label for same concept. Maybe ‘semantical’ isn’t the best
word but I’m not an english major so…
Air = Qi. I knew that would crop up.
However, someone also said that air and metal are the same-ish in Chinese theory (good god, I sound like No_Know!) How does that work then?
And Wood is like a fifth element that combines earth with life? So would that be earth with Qi?
whereas a daoist priest or doctor when u need them?
dawood
Oso,
Air and Fire are not interchangable. From what I know, FC is right about these being associative things. For example another way to talk about air is minor yang, and fire as major yang. Again, someone who fights like fire would fight in a straight line and go all out. Someone who fights like air would tend to more elusive but not very agressive.
Serpent,
Wood is a combination of all the elements (I meant) not just earth. These elements represent life when combined. Think about your own life in this instance. You need oxygen(air) in combination of H2O(water), a sugar(fire), certain elements like potassium, sodium, or cloride or something else(earth) in order to use energy on the cellular level(wood). Something like that anyway.
Air and metal can be the same for the reason that you breathe in and breathe out. Yin and Yang. Yin is gold in color, and Yang is silver in color in this tradition. (I have put this together from my own observations. Someone can give me a better understanding if they’d like). It does not really have to do with the substance metal. The Chinese like to use allegory to illustrate an idea.
Any more?
maybe someone who knows TCM can explain more 
as far as i am right now, they are more a set of principles… eg: different elements relate to different internal organs in the body, different directions etc. xingyiquan also has the 5 elements for the 5 core techniques and they all have a different ‘flavour’.
dawood
ps. did u expect anyone whos online at this time to have a rela clue about it serpent?
Trying to make a connection here:
Metal is the element of the lungs…
Lungs suck in the air…
How’s that?
Originally posted by dezhen2001
did u expect anyone whos online at this time to have a rela clue about it serpent?
Good point. Maybe it will be more interesting tomorrow!
lol! not to insult anyone on heres intelligence of course
dawood
Of course.
not bad considering we dont really know - 2 pages and going strong
dawood
That’s KFO!
now, I’m confused.
But like I said, I’ve learned 3 (one of them japanese) schemes
and am evidently confusing them.
I still asleep and will need to review notes again.
and, I am by no means an expert on this.
but, it’s a cool subject to think about.