On the Cognitive Value of Fire and Fire Chemical Technology Invented by the Ancients

Understanding of the Value of the Invention of Fire and Fire Chemistry by the Ancients Liao Zhengheng (Institute of Dialectics of Natural Science, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian 116029, China) and the value of the chemical technology of fire to trace the origins of ancient mythology, philosophy and scientific thoughts The basis of knowledge. The article believes that this is an important aspect that should be strengthened in the fields of philosophy history, science history, and chemical history. It requires concrete and in-depth exploration and exploration.

Director of the Department of Research, Director of the Institute of Natural Dialectics and Natural History of Liaoning Normal University, is currently retired. Research direction: Chemistry Philosophy, History of Japanese Science and Technology.

The ancient people had invented artificial fire-making technology by tapping meteorites or drill fires about 300,000 years ago. It is of great significance and can even be considered as “the beginning of human history.” Since then, the system has been gradually implemented under the high temperature conditions provided by fire. Pottery (about 10,000 years ago), copper smelting (about 55 years ago), and ironmaking (about 4,000 years ago) invented three major fire chemical processes, which greatly increased social productivity and promoted humanity to enter the slave society from the primitive society. It has a significant role in the feudal society, but its significance and role does not stop there. It has an important ideological and cognitive value from the perspective of the academic history of philosophy and the history of science, and it should be given attention to the needs of excavation. A preliminary analysis of the knowledge value of three aspects of knowledge accumulation and natural picture depiction.

1 The cradle of primitive thinking The ancients created thought activities when they made the first stone knife or stone axe stone tool. Considering the choice of stone raw materials and the use of cutting tools to master the finished tools, the original thought sprouted. However, since the physical processing of cutting is limited to changing the shape of the object without involving the nature, the thinking process is relatively simple and the thinking ability is low. However, since mankind invented artificial fire, the chemical movement of material combustion has not only changed the appearance of the object but also changed the nature of the object, and has resulted in a variety of new substances and light, heat, taste, smoke, and ash. The chemical phenomena adopted were surprising and thought-provoking, which exercised and improved the thinking ability of the ancients and became the cradle of the development of primitive thinking.

In the first instance, it seems that the fire has caused the ancients to feel that it is a kind of “awesome, dynamic, and changeable” [1] awesome natural force that can drive away wild beasts, burn down forests, devour life, and change into Delicious, earth is pottery, and mineralization is gold. It seems that “it can destroy everything and create everything” and the power is incredibly mysterious. Therefore, the question of what fire is and what might have caused the ancients to think about it, so that we can weave various myths in the way of imagination and association. For example, imagine the fire as the embodiment of Hephaistos, the god of fire; think of the origin of fire as the god of justice, Prometheus, stealing from heaven to earth; The power comes down to abstraction, personification, and omnipotent deity, which has rapidly improved the ability of the ancients to think in the image and promoted the formation and development of ancient mythology as the mother of philosophy.

Secondly, the fire also made the ancients realize that it is "it is both a movement and a thing that can make other things move. For example, it can turn a solid into a flowing liquid and even a gas can cause other materials to burn or change, etc. Therefore, the fire in the universe The question of where he lives, what role he has, and how it relates to everything have inspired the ancients to further ponder and make philosophical speculations in such abstract ways as speculation, reasoning, and judgment, such as thinking that fire is everything. The reason “, or everything” leads to the philosophical conclusion that fire is the “origin of everything”.

This has enhanced the ancients' abstract thinking ability and promoted the birth of ancient philosophy as the mother of chemical ideas and scientific ideas.

Once again, the fire also directly developed the ancient people's chemical ideology.

Due to the need to consider the selection of fuels, the understanding of the flammability of materials, the use of air circulation methods, the control of temperature and humidity conditions, and the conversion of mechanical energy, thermal energy, and chemical energy into the "friction fire" technique, the manual fire-making process needs to consider the selection of fuels, smoke, and ashes. The elimination of such products, as well as the identification of new substances that trigger the combustion of other materials, and a series of chemical investigations and details of the operation, produced the original chemical thinking process, with the chemical thinking energy of chemical observation, analysis, and judgment. As a result, later generations have opened up many chemical fields such as alchemy, medicine, metallurgy, and gas chemistry that use fire as their primary means, as well as combustion chemistries such as the doctrine of igniting flammability and oxygen theory. In this way, for quite a long period of historical time, chemists “specially attached importance to relying on the operation of the fire to prove the natural transformation process” and even raised the use of fire to a chemical consciousness level as the “chemical first The great guiding principle that this chemist also calls himself "Philosophusperigriem", and the entire chemistry subject is broadly summed up as "fire technology" or "fire technique philosophy". It is a portrayal of the main characteristics of ancient chemistry and modern chemistry before the 18th century. It can be seen that the gestation and development of the chemical ideology of fire has already had a considerable and far-reaching impact.

2Experience Knowledge Accumulation The role of the three major chemical processes of pottery making, copper smelting, and ironmaking is not only to improve social productivity, but also to accumulate rich knowledge of chemical experience and to provide a solid knowledge of chemical ideas and philosophical ideas. basis.

The ancient three major chemical technologies of fire were practical and practical skills, but they were the purposeful and planned chemical practices of the ancients, and they were able to continuously reproduce and continue to obtain the intended products. This shows that the ancients have mastered the series of chemistry. Knowledge, including the identification of clays and ores such as copper, tin, and iron, and their products, the dosing of fuels and reducing agents such as charcoal, the provision of different high-temperature conditions, the control of redox reactions, the melting of metals and alloys, etc. knowledge.

This means that at that time, the ancients had "a fairly reliable understanding of the nature of matter," and even had recognized some general principles of oxidation and reduction and mastered certain causal connections or regular knowledge in the actual chemical movement.

The characteristics of these knowledge are mainly obtained through the use of the phenomenon description method based on direct observation, and have obvious experience, that is, although the soft clay can be burned into hard pottery, but they do not know the reason for the change of nature; Oxidation-reduction produces metal, but I don't know the nature of the reaction process. In fact, only the results of the chemical process have been obtained, and the reasons for the process have not yet been explored; only chemical phenomena have been described, and the chemical nature has not yet been revealed; it only stays at the stage of perceptual knowledge and has not yet reached the level of rational knowledge. In short, this knowledge "has no theoretical basis" and it is only empirical knowledge that describes chemical phenomena as its main content.

The formation of such empirical characteristics is mainly due to the low productive forces in ancient societies, and the social demand is limited to obtaining such physical products as pottery, copper, and iron, rather than their theoretical understanding. In particular, when science was not yet differentiated from production, scientific conditions were far from being sufficient to understand the nature of the complex and advanced forms of motion, chemical change. In addition, the lack of social wealth also does not allow anyone to leave the production of specialized chemical brain labor for chemical theory exploration, and it is impossible to produce chemists.

In fact, at that time, the inventors of the three major fire chemical processes were still unknown chemical craftsmen. They still don't know what chemistry is. They also "didn't think" that they were engaged in a chemical work. Their knowledge of chemistry is merely to be grasped as "a special craft of the next industry." Therefore, the level of chemistry at that time cannot be compared with those subjects whose theoretical demands are urgent or whose research objects are simple and low-grade, and which cannot “combine with astronomy, mathematics, and medicine”. Those disciplines had already reached the level of applying the doctrines, principles, and laws to reflect the laws of movement in the natural world.

It should be noted that although this knowledge of chemical experience is superficial and sensuous, it implied, in essence, that it belongs to the principles of chemical science, and implies the understanding and understanding of chemical craftsmen on chemical laws.

Under certain conditions, these "implies" can be highlighted and developed into chemical theory. Obviously, these experiences and understandings are important foundations for the promotion of chemical theory, chemical thinking, and even philosophical ideas. As Mr. Yuan Hanqing, a historian of chemistry, said, “The increase in these perceptual knowledge has led to an increase in the ability of later production activities, and at the same time has created some basic 3 natural material for human understanding and explanation of nature. The depiction was first embodied by natural mythology and natural philosophy, which contained embryos of chemical thoughts. In the process of depicting the natural scene, the results of the three major fire chemistry processes constituted important thinking materials, with prominent The value of ideas.

In the case of pottery craftsmanship, the ancients used their imagination, association, and weaving to produce a Minos Nouveau culture. It was an ancient Greek bronze culture that appeared in about 2000 BC. It worshipped the goddess and later developed into a natural religion.

In the potters’ workshop, Mu created the legend of the world's 'first person' with yellow mud.

The Chinese mythology also has the story of the son-in-law "Loess and Loess". The ancient Roman mythology is more straightforward, treating the man of creation as a “sacred potter” and seeing the relationship between God and man as a “process of pottery and clay” and the process of making pottery Expanding the process of creating a human-inhabited city for the gods. Imagine that the Babylonian god Marduk first built the clay in the warehouse and later created the brick mold, created bricks, built the city, and so on. The brick (pottery) process weaves into mythological content.

In addition, in ancient Greek mythology epics, they described the happy dance movements of the deities as a pottery operation. They wrote: “They have sometimes turned their light legs into a clever way to turn circles like a potter bending over, The poems such as the Pottery Wheel[6] made the myth more vivid and vivid. In Minos culture 1 in Crete, Greece, the images of the gods were also portrayed and burned on the clay figurines. Pottery is used as a carrier to spread myths. It can be seen that the pottery making process has become an indispensable thinking material in the ancient mythological weaving process.

This is especially true of metallurgical processes such as copper smelting and ironmaking. And because metals are stronger, sharper, and more versatile than pottery, the myths woven out of them are more imaginative and richer, including aspects of the life, wealth, battle, power, and dominance of the gods. Imaginary content with metal as material. In the myth of ancient Greek mythology, I imagined the shrine's residence as "a house of bronze paving land." In order to be able to "brightly resemble a star and shine among the gods," the gods own the wealth, "bronze and gold." The amount of gray iron “and its hardship” is huge enough to enjoy his descendants. “7. The gods are on the battlefield, they wear the bronze helmets, and they wear the brass, and they ride.” The "horse of a hoof-hoofed horse" is armed with a "two-edged iron axe" and is designed to "stay awake like a bronze." In addition, the process of weaving the gods' cast weapons, the operation of the "Godsmith" is entirely a transplant. In the metallurgical process, the God of Craftsman was described as using “20 bellows blowing into the shabu-shabu, spraying hot winds of varying temperatures” and then throwing the metal into the fire, tough bronze and tin Blocks, precious gold and silver "were differentiated by the order of the casting process and the level of quality, and we used the high and low levels of metal to distinguish between four different types: Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age, and Black Iron Age. The "human era" [8. And the Babylonian mythology is more imaginative, taking the stars of heaven The body is associated with the metal on the ground and believes that the “seven stars that dominate the world” control the metal on the ground: Mars tube iron, Venus tube copper, and Saturn tube lead” and so on, with the idea that r' celestial bodies are in charge of various substances. As a "theory" of later alchemists, it can be seen that the three major chemical processes of fire are important material foundations for ancient mythological weaving as the earliest depiction of natural landscape achievements.

The influence of the three major fire chemical processes on natural philosophy is more direct and more prominent. In terms of the five elements of “gold, wood, water, fire and earth” put forward by ancient China, it is clear that gold is related to the metal and copper metallurgical results obtained from metallurgical processes; mention of wood is not without a process of making pottery and metallurgy. The shadow of fuel or reducing agent wood and charcoal; when it comes to water, it cannot be said that it is not possible to see the indispensable role of water in the process of making pottery and “mud” slabs; it is not impossible to mention the fact that fire is observed. In the high-temperature pottery and metallurgy, fire manifests the tremendous power of “the source of movement”; when it comes to soil, it cannot be said that it is not because clay (or clay) ore is known to make pottery and metal. Proof, but in general, the proposal of "Five Elements" should be "originated in ancient China's rich and advanced production technology soil or it could not be summed up." The western countries put forward the four-element theory of “water, fire, gas, and earth” as well. In addition, ancient philosophers often used the results of metallurgical techniques in their arguments. When explaining the concept of the “nature” of objects, Aristotle repeatedly analyzed “Bronze is the nature of bronzes, (1)” and other examples.When Pythagoras proposed the “digital theory” that constituted all things, It is gradually realized by the relationship between blacksmiths. Among them is the ritual philosophical conjecture (12) of the bronze altar of the temple of Apollo, “The Number Three”.

The influence of metallurgical technology on natural philosophy is evident.

In fact, depicting a natural landscape requires a combination of material and spiritual “material and pattern of two things.” [13] Both are indispensable, and the material is more important. It is the material basis for depicting the pattern. The natural picture depicted by humans is also positive. With the changes in the mastery of materials, the earliest thing is that the material that humans have mastered is stone tools, and the myth of “God engrave the stone to create people” emerged. Later, when humans invented pottery, they weaved out “sacred potters”. Mud made legends. Later, when humans invented metallurgical technology, they imagined that God had created stories such as gold, silver, bronze and black iron in four different eras. Obviously, the material results of the three major chemical processes of fire strongly influence the concept of human nature. Therefore, the scientific historian Bernard said that "these types of myths are not people-like, and they are arbitrarily technical." [14, indeed.

The results of the invention of fire and fire chemistry by the ancients were significant and far-reaching for the generation and development of ancient myths, philosophies, and scientific thoughts. They should not be ignored or satisfied only with simplistic conclusions, but should be based on extensive historical data. In-depth exploration and excavation, to make specific expositions, in order to be able to more fully understand the historical sources of the development of philosophy and scientific thinking.