 While the details and argumentation of Avicenna’s theory are complex, the heart of the theory can be grasped through the following example. (For a discussion of the history and details of Avicenna’s account of natural minimums see McGinnis 2015.) Avicenna first observes that the smaller something is compared with its surrounding environment, the faster and more easily that environment acts on what is surrounded. For example, a blast furnace melts a kilogram of ore more readily than it does a metric ton of ore. Now, the example continues, isolate some relatively small quantity of water, e.g., a milliliter, in a beaker. The water qua the element water has the essential qualities of being cold and wet. Additionally, inasmuch as the water is isolated, and so not part of a lake or the like, it is surrounded by ambient air, which, according to the elemental theory that Avicenna adopts, is hot and wet. Provided that the quantity of water is sufficiently large, it can counteract the heating influences of the surrounding air; however, as one physically separates off smaller and smaller quantities of the water, the natural heat of the surrounding air more readily and effectively acts on the diminishing quantity of water. At some point, the heat of the surrounding air fully overcomes the coolness of the small quantity of water such that the coolness is replaced with the same degree of heat as the surrounding air. In that case, there is no longer a cold-wet element but a hot-wet element, and so there comes to be air. What the example indicates is that there are natural limits of smallness beyond which the qualitative concomitants of a given element can no longer be sustained in isolation, and instead a new set of concomitants, now associated with dominant ambient element, come to be. These limits beyond which a particular kind of body cannot be physically divided and remain the same kind of body are the natural minimums. 