Aristotle's threefold conception of fire in meteor : I-III

The present paper deals with the threefold conception of fire in Aristotle's Meteorologica I-III. At the beginning of the work, fire is described as (a) an element, while in the rest of the treaty it is presented either as (b) a smoky exhalation or as (c) an excess of hot and a sort of boiling. The aim of this paper is to show that those different characterisations of fire are by no means contradictory, and that they peacefully coexist within the same cosmological and meteorological framework. What makes this possible is that their physical status does not overlap: (c) is a process rather than a body, whereas (a) and (b) are both bodies, but the former is only to be found potentially in the cosmos, the latter, actually. In doing so, the general and fundamental issue of the relationship between elements and exhalations within Aristotle's meteorological perspective will be addressed as well. [Publisher's text]