A Defense of the Introduction to a True and Unheard-of Physics

...because from those very good things, the Devil was actually made evil. This completes the thought from the previous page: just because a good angel has the potential for evil does not mean they are actually evil until they fall. Reason itself dictates that a logical consequence does not hold from potentiality to actuality. A classic Aristotelian logic principle: the ability for something to happen (potential) does not mean it is currently happening (actuality). Therefore, to confuse Potential Fire, which lies hidden in the Elements, with actual fire is a thoughtlessness of the anonymous author. For Potential Fire is clearly nothing [in an active sense], because act—or motion—and Potentiality do not exist together at the same time. Nor does he prove that Minerals are generated from the Elements, especially water, by the force of potential Fire (even if this were assumed, which I do not concede). Potential Fire is never transferred by itself, nor from its own starting principle, into act, unless an external motion or an internal motion is applied—and indeed, motions that are violent and disordered. The author likely refers to the "violent" act of striking flint and steel to produce a spark, which releases the "potential fire" within.

§. 7. And it is obvious, the anonymous author adds, that every end corresponds to its own beginning. In this context, the "beginning" (principio) is the source material, and the "end" (finis) is the final purpose or result. True, I grant this. But I do not see how this rule fits this specific case. For though Fire may appear from steel chalybs: a technical Latin term for steel or iron used in alchemy and metallurgy etc., yet that Fire is not the end of its own beginning, nor is it that for which the Steel exists: since its production occurs by a disordered motion, and such a dissolution of the Steel