Jack comments on Open thread, October 2011 - Less Wrong
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Yeah, I read the wikipedia page looking for something. And certainly no one would say they had a good understanding of thermodynamics. Usually different ancient philosophers had different opinions about these sorts of things so I would not surprise me if a few prominent figures had the basic idea down. They definitely associated fire with heat, and fire in most accounts was an element. In seems plausible that they might have believed cold simply involved the absence of fire.