ABSTRACT
The Aristotelian doctrine which was of great importance in the sixteenth and early seventeenth-century debates and developments derives from the role of contraries in his conception. The true relation of the substratum of change and the elements includes the substratum is the hyl, matter, involved in the elements, these being the substances. It is to be expected that the Paracelsian doctrine, as part of the general anti-Aristotelian movement of thought, would also contribute to bringing the theories of the Presocratics and those of the Roman medical schools, into renewed significance as lending support to this anti-Aristotelian conception of changeless elements. Because the theory of atomism, as was evident from the Aristotelian criticism of it, presented difficulties, it was sufficient to regard the elements as the smallest constituent bodies of compound bodies Daniel Sennert accordingly chose the term corpuscula rather than atoms for the elementary bodies.
