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7. Pyrotechnics: Fire and Technology
- University of Washington Press
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In nearly all myths, when people get fire, they move beyond the rest of creation; they become distinctively human. Aeschylus had Prometheus proclaim that by 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 rainforests and oak groves, 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 a curious technology, just 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 holds an axhead. Yet in other forms, it more resembles a domesticated species. It must be birthed, tended, trained; it compels people to change their own habits to accommodate its; it derives its power from its surroundings. Field fires have more in common with oxen than with axes. The hearth fire cannot be put on a shelf as a hammer can. It is more akin to a draft horse that needs a barn, feed, currying, and bridle . There is still one more form of fire technology, and that is fire’s status as a captured ecological process that people can, broadly, harness. Humans can tap into the power of air and water to turn gears and millstones , but we cannot call forth floods or gusts in the way we can flame. In brief, fire roams across a wide spectrum of human tinkerings. Moreover , fire is perhaps the ultimate interactive technology because it makes possible other tools. Even where fire does not dominate—might almost seem absent—somewhere along the chain of technologies it serves as a catalyst or enabling device that allows events to proceed, without which a link or two would break. Its variants do matter, however. To the extent that fire is a simple tool, it is possible for another tool to replace it. An acetylene torch can Chapter Seven Pyrotechnics FIRE AND TECHNOLOGY 119 substitute for a forge, an incandescent wire for an oil lamp. This process has so progressed that the industrial world has little use for open flame, which it regards as impossibly dangerous. Much as early life incorporated oxygen into the machinery of the cell, constraining it to single, well-controlled acts, so modern technology has absorbed fire, until combustion has replaced fire altogether, and concentrated heat has replaced combustion. It is harder to substitute for fire as a kind of domesticated creature, because burning is essential to the task. Fire does a variety of things, not easily emulated in its ecological effects. But to the extent that it burns in a built setting (even one “built” of natural materials), it is possible to reconstruct that setting, piece by piece, with surrogates at each point. This, for example, is the logic of industrial farming. When fire serves its purposes as a loosely controlled ecological process, however , no exchange is possible. What is needed is fire as it freely burns in a roughly natural context. The ability to start and stop this process is surely a technology, but it is not a “tool” as commonly understood. One can break a campfire into its constituent parts, can find alternative sources of heat, light, attraction. One cannot so break down a fire sweeping through a pine forest. The range of its interactions with its surroundings is too complex. To speak of such fires as “tools,” as though chain saws and tractors and ammonia fertilizers could substitute, is to miss the point of their presence. Its titles are thus important. Treating the tamed fire as though it were a mechanical device can cause trouble. It is a truism that how people perceive fire will influence how they respond to its powers and problems . Such perceptions are also complicated, for fire’s symbolic power has always matched its practical powers. The care of fire became the paradigm for domestication. The application of fire became equally the paradigm of technics, of the innumerable crafts that require fire or rely on the tools that fire renders and assists. Fire remains...