Environmental Engineering Reference
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THE TOOL THAT IS MORE: AN INQUIRY INTO FIRE, THE
ORIGINAL PROMETHEAN INVENTION
STEPHEN J. PYNE
FLICKERING FLAME
Gaston Bachelard once declared that flames had a hypnotic effect that ren-
dered them unsuitable for rational analysis. Instead one sank into reverie.
He then demonstrated his thesis indirectly by writing another 200 pages of
flickering, discursive text. 1 Yet he did grasp one core fact: that the more one
stares into the flames, the less obvious their identity. Fire is the electron of
the human-scaled world, at times a wave, at other times a particle; in some
circumstances, a process, in others a seeming element; in some contexts, a
natural phenomenon, and in others a cultural creation. Or better still, it
simply exists beyond our dichotomizing categories and common-sense
imagery.What is undeniable is its unremitting bonding with humanity.
THE CURIOUS CHARACTER OF FIRE
In nearly all myths, when people get fire, they move beyond the rest of cre-
ation; they become distinctively human. Aeschylus had Prometheus pro-
claim that, in bestowing fire on humanity, he had invented “all the arts of
man.”That's a claim as reckless as it is bold. But it is certainly the case that
humans are tool users, that fire is among the oldest of human technologies,
probably the most pervasive, and likely the most enduring. Since they first
met, people and fire have rarely parted. Together they have crossed deserts
and glaciers, passed into rainforest and oak grove, sailed over oceans and
flown through clouds, landed on Mars and the moon. Everything humans
have touched, fire has touched as well.
Yet it remains as curious a technology as it was for the ancients, an odd
“element.” In one form, it is a tool that behaves like other tools. It can apply
heat the way an ax can apply impact. A candle holds flame the way a handle
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