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. 2016 Jun 5;371(1696):20150166.
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2015.0166.

Fire in the mind: changing understandings of fire in Western civilization

Stephen J Pyne  1
Affiliations

Fire in the mind: changing understandings of fire in Western civilization

Stephen J Pyne. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. .

Abstract

For most of human history, fire has been a pervasive presence in human life, and so also in human thought. This essay examines the ways in which fire has functioned intellectually in Western civilization as mythology, as religion, as natural philosophy and as modern science. The great phase change occurred with the development of industrial combustion; fire faded from quotidian life, which also removed it from the world of informing ideas. Beginning with the discovery of oxygen, fire as an organizing concept fragmented into various subdisciplines of natural science and forestry. The Anthropocene, however, may revive the intellectual role of fire as an informing idea or at least a narrative conceit.This article is part of the themed issue 'The interaction of fire and mankind'.

Keywords: Anthropocene; fire; history; history of ideas; history of science.

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References

    1. Pyne S. 1997. Vestal fire. An environmental history, told through fire, of Europe and Europe's Encounter with the World. Seattle, Washington DC: University of Washington Press; The core of this essay revisits, paraphrases, and elaborates on sections of this book, particularly pp. 59–77.
    1. Ross CM [transl.]. 1964 An eccentric but entertaining perspective is that is that in Gaston Bachelard. The psychoanalysis of fire. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
    1. On the prytaneum, see Frazier JG. 1885. The prytaneum, the temple of Vesta, the Vestals, perpetual fires. J. Philol. 14, 145–172.
    1. Frazer JG. 1923. Balder the beautiful. The fire-festivals of Europe and the doctrine of the external soul, 2 vols New York, NY: Macmillan and Co.
    1. Frazer JG. 1974. Myths on the origin of fire. New York, NY: Hacker Art Books.

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