The pre-Socratic Heraclitus related the kosmos to an everliving fire; kindling in measures and being quenched in measures. The world, like the beings that inhabit it, are constantly in a state of flux. Changing, they stay the same. His use of contradiction and paradox, I think, was designed to transcend the dichotomy and exclusivity of a logic that had not yet been “invented” by the rational minds that followed him.
In a figurative and a literal sense, fire transforms things. It is at once destructive and constructive, varying only by the way in which it is understood and tempered. Prometheus may have introduced us to the external phenomenon, thermodynamics is introducing us to The Science of Fire, and yet perhaps our most important relationship is the measure in which fire is being kindled or quenched in our own hearts.
