Philosophy (TIP)

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==Philosophy==
Earlier, it was mentioned that philosophy has little to do with the Inner Planes-that belief just doesn't seem to matter in the face of pure reality. It's true that faith won't move mountains here, but that doesn't stop folks from concocting various ideas and theories to explain the mysteries of the Inner Planes.
==Alchemy==
The study of alchemy owes its entire conceptual basis to the Elemental Planes. In the dim recesses of time, graybeards spoke of these planes as the sole components of matter. Interestingly enough, they discovered the elements (air, earth, fire, and water) first, and only later realized that each had its own physical plane of existence.
Later, of course, folks learned of the paraelements and quasielements. Unlike the Elemental Planes, the para- and quasiplanes were discovered long before anyone included those substances into a cohesive philosophy of the nature of matter. In other words, folks knew about Ash before they knew about ash-they didn't work those components into their theories until after learning of the associated para- and quasiplanes. Chant has it that the quasiplane of Lightning was the first to be discovered, though it was originally thought to be a demiplane. Other graybeards say that the paraplane of Ice was the first inner-planar find after the discovery of the four basic Elemental Planes.
'Course, it's a little barmy to talk about "discovering" any of the Inner Planes. Long before primes trod elemental ground, natives of those planes lived and died here. The histories of races like the djinn and the efreet extend much farther into the past of the multiverse than do those of most, if not all, prime peoples. Surely the elementals existed as long as the Elemental Planes themselves-and if the Inner Planes provide the rest of the multiverse with its building materials, the elementals may be the oldest intelligent beings of all.
In any case, alchemy's a study that really only serves a purpose on the Prime, so this book doesn't give it much attention. Still, many bashers might benefit from realizing that all matter's composed of the elements (along with the appropriate measures of negative and positive energy and-if the matter's found on the Outer Planes-belief). For example, a spellslinger might find it useful to know that wood in a living tree is part earth and part water imbued with the resonance of positive energy (as are all living things). Once cut, the wood retains a little of that positive energy, but ever so slowly the spark fades away. Wood that's particularly light has a little air to it, which replaces the solid, dense earth.
Truth is, a body can look at anything this way. A diamond is earth mixed with positive energy, glass is earth and air, and poison gas is air with a little water and negative energy. All the different materials that comprise the multiverse are just different combinations of these elements.
==Parallelism==
The cutters who wigwag about which Inner Plane was discovered first are also the folks who rattle their bone-boxes about parallelism. This belief expresses the idea that all aspects of an Elemental Plane (and perhaps all Inner Planes) share an equivalent counterpart in the other Elemental Planes. Simply put, if a body runs afoul of a fire bat in the plane of Fire, as sure as Sigil there's a water bat in the plane of Water, an earth bat in Earth, and so on.
Certainly, a good deal of evidence supports this theory. Air, Earth, Fire, and Water each have a type of elemental, fundamental, genie race, genasi, mephit, elemental grue, and even archomental ruler. A body might observe that various spells, substances, and magical essences from the Elemental Planes also appear to exist in parallel. For their part, the graybeards point out that while not all of these sets of counterparts're identical, enough similarities exist to carry the point (though the frost and fire salamanders may be a bit of a stretch).
Opponents of parallelism claim that while some similarities may exist, a canny basher won't always assume that everything's got an equivalent on another plane. Plenty of things, from the xorn of Earth to the tshala of Fire, appear to have no parallels. What's more, the Paraelemental and Quasielemental Planes don't seem to possess all the qualities and components of the Elemental Planes, let alone one another's. 
Still, the theory's useful, even if it doesn't always hold true. It can't hurt for a planewalker to remember that each Inner Plane (except, perhaps, for the Energy Planes-and that depends on who a body asks) has its own basic "elemental" native, that each serves as home to a type of mephit, and that each often requires some sort of magic for long-term survival. In other words, a smart cutter'll let the graybeards spout the philosophy and just learn the facts needed to get by.
==Opposites and Fours==
The so-called inner-planar experts tend to claim other truisms specific to such places. For instance, they say that supposedly multiversal laws like the Rule of Threes and the Unity of Rings don't hold true in the Inner Planes. To support this theory, they stress the differences between the Inner Planes and the Outer-differences as pronounced as belief and cold, hard reality (but aren't both just different sides of the same coin-alternating views of truth?).
In any event, these folks point out that in the Inner Planes, the Unity of Rings gives way to the Law of Opposites. Each Inner Plane has its opposite: Water and Fire, Earth and Air, Magma and Ice, Negative Energy and Positive Energy, and so on. The importance of opposites and the harmony that comes from a balance between them can't be overlooked. An elemental force can struggle against its opposite all it wants, but in the end it's still defined by that opposite-at least partially. What would Air be without Earth, or hot without cold?
That said, some of the opposites found in the Inner Planes just don't seem intuitive. What makes Lightning the opposite of Dust? Why would the multiverse put Mineral and Vacuum on different sides? The answer, of course, is that they're positive and negative aspects of opposing core elements, but that doesn't really help a leatherhead understand it. An easier thing to remember is the idea that each element (or para- or quasielement) embodies its own unique aspects, and is as opposed to all other elements as are any of the rest. None of the creatures of an Inner Plane seem to get along with those from any other Inner Plane-of that a body can be sure. In reality, then, all of these planes are in opposition.
Some of the same folks who hold to the Law of Opposites also dismiss the Rule of Threes as having any bearing in the Inner Planes. They claim that it's replaced by the Rule of Fours, and as proof point to four Elemental Planes, four Paraelemental Planes, eight (four doubled) Quasielemental Planes, and two (four halved) Energy Planes. Everything comes in fours in the Inner Planes, they say, which to their critics sounds like little more than a different take on parallelism.
By the way: It should be mentioned that true innerplanar natives don't give a mephit's backside about any of this. They don't care about the Rule of Threes or Fours. To them, the Inner Planes simply are what they are-home.
==Elemental Evolution==
Some scholars have noted that as time passes, it seems that more and more elemental creatures, locations, and specific nuances appear. At one time, for example, it was thought that nothing lived in the quasiplane of Vacuum, or that the paraplane of Ice was the same wherever a body looked. Both statements are now known to be false. While most explain this by saying that as outsiders spend more time in the Inner Planes, they learn and discover more about them, others have postulated that, in fact, the Inner Planes are evolving.
These theorists put forth the idea that as time passes, the primal and simplistic nature of the Inner Planes fades, and the planes become more and more sophisticated and complex. Many graybeards believe that it's actually the increasing presence of nonnatives that "corrupts" the Inner Planes, infecting them with the intricacies of the Prime Material and Outer Planes. Ironically, they point out, such a change in the Inner Planes could lead to their dissolution. If correct, this theory would indicate that as primes and nonnative planars travel to and settle in the Inner Planes, they destroy those realms conceptually. And the destruction of the foundation planes could only mean an eventual end of the multiverse.