Quintessence is a rather ancient concept. The word appeared for the first time in ancient philosophy. The first to start using it was Aristotle.
In ancient times, there was a doctrine, the creator of which was the physician and philosopher Empedocles. According to his ideas, there were four elements. Empedocles believed that in the world everything (including the human body) consists of four components - fire, earth, water and air. Moreover, the differences between, for example, plants and animals consist in the difference in the ratio of these elements, the predominance of one or another of them, and the degree of severity.
Aristotle added a fifth to the components indicated by Empedocles. Quintessence is the fifth entity. Aristotle called her ether. However, according to the philosopher, ether quintessence is not complementary to the four main elements, but opposed to them. Aristotle believed that the "primary elements" form the region between the orbit of the moon and the center of the earth - the "sublunar" (lower) world. And the "supra moon" world - stars and sky - consists of this fifth element. But this entity is not subject to emergence and destruction.
The term "quintessence" was very interested in the Renaissance. At that time, interest in alchemy, magic, antiquity was enormous. For Renaissance thinkers, quintessence is a kind of "spirit of the world" that revitalizes the body. This idea was the basis of the teachings of Plato.
In the Renaissance, these ideas became relevant again. Followers of the ancient teachings claimed that the quintessence constituted the astral body, which in turn acted as an intermediary between the soul, intangible and immortal, and the physical body. J. Bruno, Bacon developed their ideas in this direction. Agrippa of Nettesheim believed that the divine spirit could not directly influence bone matter. For this, some “connecting link” is needed, which was quintessence, which had a mixed nature - spiritual and physical. The idea of an "astral body" was developed in occultism.
Along with this, the doctrine of quintessence was criticized in antiquity. So, for example, the physicist and philosopher Straton argued that stars do not consist of ether, but of fire. The thinker Xenarch even wrote an entire treatise, Against Quintessence. However, no criticism could prevent the alchemists and philosophers of the Renaissance from developing ideas about the “fifth element”.
Thinkers believed that quintessence could be extracted from the body. Thus, their ideas came close to the ideas of the elixir of life and the philosopher's stone. Similarly speaks of the quintessence of Theophrastus Paracelsus. He was not only a great physician, but also an alchemist. The scientist believed that by God himself in the huge alchemical laboratory, which is the entire Universe, the fifth element of everything existing in the world was extracted. This quintessence is human.
This idea formed the basis of the famous film "The Fifth Element" directed by Luc Besson. It also, as conceived by the creators, creates the image of a perfect person who reigns over all four elements.
It was the Renaissance that declared man "a measure for all things." And it was at that notorious time that such an understanding of quintessence arose that was reflected in the idea of Paracelsus. And this idea was picked up by the filmmaker at the end of the second millennium.
Along with this, modern cosmology also uses the concept of the "fifth element". It cannot be said that today knowledge is much wider than in antiquity. However, if earlier many concepts were not accepted and criticized (for example, negative energy, dark energy and others), today they are used quite widely. At the same time, unlimited horizons of knowledge are opened before a person.