ACCORDING to Greek mythology, Prometheus stole fire from the gods and brought it to humankind, for whom it was a blessing, as the forge of human civilization. But fire also turned out to be a curse, because it was dangerous and could be used to destroy. The "fire in the mind" of this book's title refers to the Promethean dilemma in terms of our theoretical understanding of the world. In other words, the tools that enable humans to satisfy their rage for order and intelligibility may also be a curse, because they screen us off from the world that we burn with desire to understand. As philosophers from Descartes to Kant have stated, the representation that we havcdevel-oped to inquire into the structure of reality could actually be screening us off from that reality.
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