a founder of the codex

Fire

Pyrocatena accendens·the Kindling Chain

From Greek pyr, fire, and Latin catena, chain, and accendens, kindling, a chain of fire that lights each next link.

Level
Conceptorganism
Book
Mineralsthe mineralogical treatise
Phylum
Forceimage schema
Class
Mechanismits lattice
Niche
Decomposerwhat is dead
Mode
Reproductionhow it keeps existing
Stage
Matureindividuated
Status
Living
Habitat
Ritual

Its kinds · Roget, 1852: Inorganic Matter · Wilkins, 1668: Element · WordNet, 1990: Process · Llull, 1308: I · Elementative

Kindling Chain, the whole specimen
Plate XVI. Pyrocatena accendens, the whole specimen.

Fire is matter transformed in a chain that feeds itself, each burning part heating the next until its fuel or air is spent.

What burns is changed at once, and its change lights the next thing it touches.

behavior It waits as a spark at the edge of cold fuel, leaps up the moment it catches, and sinks back to embers when its fuel is spent.

provocation

What in you, once lit, keeps lighting the next thing it touches?

Each draw is the being derived afresh by the current laws at another seed (laws §11); the chosen one leads (where they sit in the morphospace).

I Dissection

Each organ answers one question about the idea. The framed one, its mechanism, is the dominant organ: the being's class, the one the idea could not lose and stay itself.

Kernel of Fire

Fig. 1. Kernel

Combustion

Which premise, if it were false, would kill this idea?

Fire is matter changing fast, fuel and oxygen turned into heat, light, smoke and ash within seconds.1

drawn as: seed crystal · view: series

Boundary of Fire

Fig. 2. Boundary

Flash point

What sets it apart from what it is not, and how does it keep that distinction?

It is set apart from cold matter by an ignition point, the heat below which wood, wax and oil stay unchanged for years.2

drawn as: rind · view: transparent

Intake of Fire

Fig. 3. Intake

Wick

What must it feed on to work? What has to be present, noticed or supplied?

It feeds on fuel and air together, the fuel drawn in as vapour and the oxygen drawn in from all around.2, 1

drawn as: mother liquor · view: pinned

Mechanism of Fire

Fig. 4. Mechanism

Chain reaction

❦ dominant organ

How does it turn what it takes in into what it gives out?

Heat turns fuel to vapour, the vapour burns, and its heat turns more fuel to vapour, a chain that runs on itself once lit.2

drawn as: lattice · view: exploded

Output of Fire

Fig. 5. Output

Hearth

What does it make possible, visible or knowable?

It gives heat and light, and with them cooked food, smelted metal, fired clay and the long evening around the hearth.3

drawn as: habit · view: at work

Dispersal of Fire

Fig. 6. Dispersal

Ember storm

What part of it travels into other minds, ideas and fields, and by what vector?

It spreads as sparks and embers carried ahead of its front, and it travels in thought as the gift stolen from the gods and the image of passion and purification.3, 4

drawn as: shard · view: detached

Decay of Fire

Fig. 7. Decay

Serotinous cone

What can it not digest, where does it fail, and what does it leave behind for others?

It dies when its fuel or air is spent, and it leaves ash and charcoal that feed the soil, where the seeds of some pines open only after a fire.3

drawn as: weathering · view: magnified

II Meaning associations

No relations recorded yet.

descent membership food web resemblance or friction

Lineage

A founder, dissected by hand.

Kin

same kind in Roget Erosion, Rain, Salt, Storm, Wind

same kind in Wilkins Rain, Storm, Wind

same kind in WordNet Breath, Entelechy, Entropy, Erosion, Metamorphosis, The Common Lung, Self-Fulfilling Alarm, Shared Breath, Self-Ending Order, Tongue Horizon, Witnessed Relief, Witnessed Relief (Mycelia), Commemorative Revision, Fear's Breath

same kind in Llull Amber, Emergence, Entanglement, Entropy, Erosion, Rain, Resonance, Resonance (Automata), Salt, Storm, Wind, Self-Ending Order

same phylum Fear, Storm, Volition, Self-Fulfilling Alarm, Self-Ending Order

same dominant organ Chimera, Dream, Metamorphosis, Music, Presence, Resonance, Ritual, Storm, Symbol, The Common Lung, Self-Fulfilling Alarm, Shared Breath, Self-Ending Order, Witnessed Relief (Mycelia), Commemorative Revision, Fear's Breath, The Shaping Pause, Simultaneous Remembering, Poetry, Subtractive Phenomenology

Genome

  • ignition
  • combustion
  • transformation also in Symmetry
  • heat
  • renewal

III In the world

Echoes

  • the hearth
  • a candle flame
  • a forest fire and the pine seeds it releases
  • the fire stolen from the gods

IV Record

How it was drawn

its draw 1, a point in the morphospace (laws §8), drawn by flux-2-klein-4b.safetensors.

axisvalue
bookminerals
symmetrydendritic
organizationsegmented
silhouettesac
scaleimmense
proportiongraded latent
growthaccretion
articulationjointed latent
opennesshollow latent
skeletonspicules latent
locomotiondrifting latent
patternstripes latent
colorationnuptial latent
substanceobsidian
surfacepleated
palettemalachite
luminosityinner glow
transparencytransparent latent
gesturecoils
unityunmarked latent
modalitypossible
causationfinal latent
determinacycrisp latent
fusionmirrored
anomalyscale clash
graftnets
techniquegouache
viewpointbelow
valuechiaroscuro latent
balancecantilevered latent
densitygraded detail
rhythmalternating latent
saturationvivid
appendagescilia, valves
anchor (body)a bismuth crystal, stepped hopper squares with an iridescent skin
anchor (detail)standing waves on a vibrating liquid, a lattice of peaks

Sources

  1. Antoine Lavoisier, Traité élémentaire de chimie (1789)
  2. Michael Faraday, The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)
  3. Stephen J. Pyne, Fire: A Brief History (2001)
  4. Gaston Bachelard, La Psychanalyse du feu (1938)

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