ABSTRACT
In 1938 Gaston Bachelard, the French philosopher of science, published a charming little book with the title The Psychoanalysis of Fire. In this book he discusses the way that scientists have, through the course of history, treated fire as an object of inquiry. Bachelard begins from quite a simple observation:
When, as I have done on many occasions, one asks educated persons and even eminent scientists, ‘What is fire?’, one receives vague or tautological answers which unconsciously repeat the most ancient and fanciful philosophical theories.
