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Full Idea
At certain fated times the entire cosmos goes up in flames and then is organised again. And the primary fire is like a kind of seed, containing the rational principles and cause of all things and events, past, present and future.
Gist of Idea
The cosmos is regularly consumed and reorganised by the primary fire
Source
report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Aristocles - works
Book Ref
'The Stoics Reader', ed/tr. Inwood,B/Gerson,L.P. [Hackett 2008], p.96
A Reaction
[in Eusebius] I wonder why the stoics thought this? Is it just spring cleaning? So is each cycle different? Does that mean that the primary fire was different at each seminal event? What made it different? Or is it eternal recurrence?
Related Idea
Idea 20828 Fire is a separate element, not formed with others (as was previously believed) [Chrysippus, by Stobaeus]
| 8154 | Originally there must have been just Existence, which could not come from non-existence [Anon (Upan)] |
| 1746 | The parts of all things are susceptible to change, but the whole is unchangeable [Anaximander, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 420 | The cosmos is eternal not created, and is an ever-living and changing fire [Heraclitus] |
| 456 | Nothing could come out of nothing [Melissus] |
| 16595 | If each thing can cease to be, why hasn't absolutely everything ceased to be long ago? [Aristotle] |
| 5083 | Do things come to be from what is, or from what is not? Both seem problematical. [Aristotle] |
| 20827 | The cosmos is regularly consumed and reorganised by the primary fire [Stoic school, by Aristocles] |
| 5694 | Nothing can be created by divine power out of nothing [Lucretius] |