This section needs additional citations for verification . Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( November 2015 ) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Ancient philosophers as far back as Thales of Miletus c. 550 BCE had inklings of the conservation of some underlying substance of which everything is made. However, there is no particular reason to identify their theories with what we know today as "mass-energy" (for example, Thales thought it was water). Empedocles (490–430 BCE) wrote that in his universal system, composed of four roots (earth, air, water, fire), "nothing comes to be or perishes"; instead, these elements suffer continual rearrangement. Epicurus (c. 350 BCE) on the other hand believed everything in the universe to be composed of indivisible units of matter - the ancient precursor to 'atoms' - and he too had some idea of the necessity of co...
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