Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Why we stare into fire

While camping, I've noticed how people like to stare into a fire pit for hours on end.

What is it about fire--in the setting of a campfire--(from a scientific standpoint) that is so mesmerizing?

Haha, probably something lingering from caveman days I expect.

In Oz, we call open fireplaces "rural television".

I expect Kate is partially correct though I expect the origin is older than that.

Allow me to give you another one ... hardly anyone stares in wonder at the flight of sea gulls or other birds in quite the same way we do that of raptors.
I expect it goes all of the way back to when we were raptor food.

Great stabs at an answer. You're both probably right. I thought there would be something more scientific to it involving the eyes (vision) the brain, color, movement of the flames, etc. Come to think of it, the "mesmerizing" nature of fire is not unlike Hypnotism, which then causes us to ask what is actually going (scientifically) on when a good hypnotist is "moving the pocket watch" in pendulum fashion in front of your eyes.

How about staring into fire just because the fire with the crackling sparks, and the red hot logs are simply beautiful?
And how about watching gulls fly and other raptors is also beautiful, although int he latter case (raptors), their flight is also majestic and impressing? I am sure that everyone who has ever seen a vulture flying above a mountain top will agree with me.

http://www.geocities.com/elbillaf/ashes.html

Very familiar with this phenomenon. It's easy to medidate over fire, sorta the natural state of the mind at those moments. Watching a camp fire is a communion.

Fire is the source of photons and our eyes have sensitive cells which specilaize in capturing the sensation of photon at particular frequency...fire produces those photons.. Anything which can keep you busy and can deliver little excitement is worth the staring....
During winters it produces heat and which again gives you all the warmth you want...
at a more abstract level you keep wondering a small fire has the capability to coldness of its surroundings....here you are staring at the most powerful aspect of our existence... usage of fire is the most conclusive weapon used in the process of evolution.
The eyes are glued becuase they are conditioned to experience the photons and brain is focused because it is conditioned to capture the excitement.
As simple as that should not waste a scientist.
:-))
a good question is always as good as the answer.

Pasti:

The flight of raptors is beautiful. But then so is the flight of other large birds. Yet we clearly differentiate those that would put a rodent sized creature at peril from those that wouldn't. And I expect it is hard-wired into the visual machinery.

Consider how many tens of millions of years 'we' spent looking out for raptors and snakes. And still they inspire us today to watch their every move. I think it is more than just a matter of beauty.

More thoughts:

Fire doesn't have a cellular structure, or DNA, but on a macro level it does fulfill most of the criteria for being "alive". It grows, reproduces etc.

Maybe our brains actively seek out "alive" things in the environment. Probably with the view to eating them I expect:-)

And the "Firely-life" has photon as its DNA...
:-))

Kate: More likely we retain a primal sense of fear and are as fascinated by a "controlled" danger as we are with watching other "controlled" dangers such as lions, tigers, cobras, raptors. I don't believe anyone going to the beach, and seeing a doral fin in the water, averts their vision ... even if they are safely sitting on the beach.

Kate you have raised a good question ....
What is the ultimate criteria of defining life?
Assuming that there are other forms of life which are not necessarily DNA based...
We do not have any law which says that life without DNA is not possible...except the intution derived fromt the fact that no other life form has been observed till now.
There are RNA's based cell as well in the Life as we know.

I feel it's more like our fascination with chaotic systems. A pendulum gets boring quick, but a double hung pendulum will hold our attention much longer. We all strive to find order and patterns. The photons add to the exercise, like fireworks

Some people look at television snow and see immanent alien invasion.

Certainly people like to make noise, but people also like to meditate - not in any religious sense, but in a calming sense. I read a lot in mall coffee shops. I can zone out quite well sometimes - unless there is screeching or babies crying - with the general background noise.

I can produce a similar effect by swimming long distances - the effect becomes noticeable going into the 10th or 12th lap and will last for as long as I'm in the pool (sometimes 1 - 2 Km).

I suspect it's similar to the feeling that glassolalliasts and others experience at church.

You might have nailed it erich. Because I started thinking about our fascination with clouds and how we make recognizable objects out of these random patterns and how we turn an array of stars into familiar things. But I wonder why we are drawn to do this. We seem to defy the natural order of things (entropy) by trying to make order out of disorder.

Dear j6p,

I think that life it self is in opposition with entropy. While all else is wearing down,life is reorganising from the simple to the complex. Sure, we wear down too, but my kids will take up the torch against entropy.

We may in some sense be pockets of anti-entropy, but we should remember that we (and life) do not violate the 2nd law; rather, we operate in accordance to it.

1. When we speak of order in the sense of entropy, we are speaking specifically of thermodynamic order. A particular arrangement of charged particles might bear strikingly close resemblance to the mona lisa (or the virgin mary, if you prefer) as compared to another arrangement that resembles an Rorscharsh placard. In this case, an artist might have one ideo of which of the two arrangements manifests the greater order while a thermodynamicist might come to a completely different answer. Which is right? They both are. But they are only right in the confines of their own disciplines. The laws of thermodynamics hold with regard to thermodynamic definitions - not artistic ones.

2. 2nd law doesn't say order can't increase. It says order can't increase in an isolated system. In any isolated system there can be pockets of decreased entropy so long as the net entropy of the system does not decrease. Life may decrease entropy, but at a cost of increasing entropy of the system of which we are part.

At first glance life appears to be a sort of Maxwell's demon. But then we realize that the demon and the system he is controlling are both part of a larger system - and the entropy of THAT system is increasing.

I think we stare at things that move and change. We also stare at the waves on the seashore. At a puppy jumping around the place. We don't stare at the dark except when we have to and we don't stare at each other except the rare occasion of being in love. We look at a fly crawing up the wall, not at the wall. I'd suggest movement with possibility of change is the reason we look at the fire.

Yes,........I stand corrected..........over all entropy wins..............ahh, but the struggle is life.

I got that artistic idea of life being an anti-entropy pocket after reading this radical site about how the sodium-potassium pump in cellular biology is a form of cold fusion. Now I have found no other creditable support for this idea, but it got me thinking about the power and persistence of life.

THE EQUATION OF LIFE http://www.papimi.gr/eqoflif.htm

I believe this article to be ridiculous. The author begins by claiming that the Na/K pump model is deeply flawed and utterly unsupported, which just isn't true. He then proceeds to complain about contradictions in the model which, to any educated biochemist, are not contradictions at all (specifically, he seems completely unaware that Na+ and K+ channels exist in the same membranes, thus erasing the contradictions). Third, he proposes a ludicrous - though amusingly imaginative - solution to these imaginary problems. And fourth, he writes in a style that admits no other possible interpretations but his own. I admit that I have only read the paper once and briefly, but my immediate thought is, "it's no wonder the paper has only one author... I suspect that anybody working with this guy would be terrified to publish jointly with him."

But this is all beside the point.
I think there's a ring of truth to Erich's idea about complex/chaotic systems (like the double pendulum) being somehow mesmerizing: the sensation of staring into a flame is indeed similar to watching a double pendulum. I seem to recall reading somewhere that staring into flames tends to stimulate a particular kind of brain wave that is also associated with meditative states. But this is a vague memory from years ago... I'm going to have to look this up. Does anyone else remember something like that?