THE RATIONAL CONCEPT IN EXPLAINING THE WORLD STRUCTURE IN ANCIENT CHINESE AND ANCIENT GREECE MYTHOLOGY

Abstract

Humanity has a long history of exploring the mysteries of the universe and the world, and myths were the first interpretations of the origins of the world and natural phenomena by primitive ancestors. Ancient Chinese and ancient Greek mythology both arose during childhood in human development, and myths from this stage reflect the poetic understanding of the structure of the world by the first people of ancient societies. The myth of the world's origin mainly includes the beginning of the universe and the origin of all things. Famous Ancient Chinese myth about Pan Gu and Ancient Greek myth about Chaos contain the understanding of the world’s beginning from Eastern and Western civilizations. The study argues that differences between both myths are mostly structural. Analyzing the differences in the archetypes of thought and the characteristics of the concept of rationality as well as discussing similarities of those myths, it is proved that both creation myths greatly influenced the culture of the opposite parts of the World. They formed similar understanding of the world development as the moving from chaos to order and at the same time creating linear (West) and curvilinear (East) types of thinking, as well as heroic (West) and harmonious (East) understanding of the man-nature opposition.