April 12, 2004
A: FROM MENTOR JOAN LUSK IN RI
The idea that everything is made of the "elements" earth, air, fire and water goes back to the Greeks, to Empedocles of Sicily (the Greeks conquered Sicily for a while back then.) In looking up the name of the right Greek I found this site http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF8/877.html which states what I was about to say: earth, air, fire and water are pretty good names for the states of matter: solid, gas, plasma and liquid. At the temperature of the big bang, matter was broken down to (or formed as) ionized particles, so you'd have to say (in those terms) that fire came first. After that... atoms in the gas state as stars formed? then solid planets with liquid water? What do you think?
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April 9, 2004
A: FROM MENTOR LESLIE WAITE IN CA
Oooh, Cool question Alexis! I love thinking about this stuff! And it
depends on what you mean by Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.
If the "Big Bang" theory of the Universe is correct (and I think it's
the best theory we have going at the moment), then it would suggest
that fire came first. Not fire like we traditionally think of, which
of course requires oxygen, but incredible heat that caused the vacuum
of space gases to explode into matter that would become our solar
system. Which means that Earth came next.

Now is where my memory and logic fades. I believe you need an
atmosphere to allow formation of water, which would suggest that air
came next, then water. But I am also willing to believe others who
might suggest that formation of water led to "storage" of gases and
molecules such as hydrogen and oxygen that helped create our
atmosphere.
I do know that the oxygen in our atmosphere first rose to high levels
because marine life generated it. If you are strict in your
definition of fire, and you feel air must have oxygen, then this
means that the order is more like: earth, water, air, fire.

More information can be found at the web site for the PBS program
Nova. Two I found interesting were:
An explanation of the big bang and the formation of the Milky Way at:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/universe/historysans.html
A description of marine life adding oxygen to the atmosphere at:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/fire/plants.html

I do believe that if you surfed the web enough you would find ample
credible scientific basis for a specific order. My order based on
what I know and make educated guesses about, is: Fire made earth,
gravity on earth made air, molecules within air combined to make
gaseous water, followed by liquid water.