The Great Chicago Fire

 The Chicago Fire of 1871 began 154 years ago today. It is said to have begun in the barn of Patrick and Catherine O'Leary, and ended as a burn zone four miles long and one mile wide.

It is often said to have begun with the kick of a cow.  There is no good reason for THAT belief. Indeed, the contemporary view is that the cow is, as Ockham would say, an entity introduced into the chain of cause and effect without necessity.

With wooden structures, large open doors, lanterns that were themselves simply small fires, and high winds: who needs a cow?  

In the days after the fire had burnt itself out, the notion that Mrs O'Leary had been milking her cow and the latter had kicked the lantern was one of several competing rumors. Another was that a boarder in the O'Leary house, Dennis "Peg Leg" Sullivan, had slipped into the barn to have a few drinks with some of his friends. During their partying they started a fire, not by knocking over a lantern but simply by smoking pipes amidst an abundance of hay.

The Peg Leg story died out and the cow story won the day.  We should not need to take sides in such a dispute.  That, if we need one, is the moral of our little story.  Some of us suffer from a temptation to be full-minded.  A full-minded person wants to have a view of any issue he is aware of.  How the Red Sox will do next baseball season, whether there is just one universe or several, whether the lives of average Germans have been improved as a whole by the reunification of the country in 1990, whether the death of Charlie Kirk was incident to a broad conspiracy, how the Chicago Fire started, etc. Best to let go of any such temptation.

Note that a full-minded person may very well be open-minded.  That is, I may (a) have an opinion on all of those subjects and more while (b) remaining willing to change any of them should I receive evidence.  Still, even when it is open minded, a full mind is a nuisance to maintain.