Mythical Thinking Research Articles

Encounter between literature and science: Galileo’s impact on Milton

The relationship between literature and science finds its roots in the Renaissance, with the widely acknowledged literary quality of works such as Galileo’s, extending to novels of today such as Ian McEwan’s Solar, Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder and Daniel Kehlmann’s Vermessung der Welt. Here, I will focus on the influence that one of the greatest scientists of all times had on John Milton, when writing his Paradise Lost. Albert Einstein, in his Foreword to Galileo’s Dialogo sopra i massimi sistemi del mondo ( Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems) writes about its author that: His unusual literary gift enables him to address the educated men of his age in such clear and impressive language as to overcome the anthropocentric and mythical thinking of his contemporaries and to lead them back to an objective and casual attitude towards the cosmos, an attitude which had been lost to humanity with the decline of Greek culture. ( Galilei, 2001 : xxiii)

Metaphysical Experiences in Gražina Cieškaitė’s poetry

This paper analyses and discusses the signs of metaphysical experience in the work of the contemporary Lithuanian poetess Gražina Cieškaitė. The paper was inspired by Vytautas Kavolis’ provoking thought that in Cieškaitė’s poetry attempt is made to analyse and criticise the key myths of Western civilisation, and female mythology, very old and going back to pre-civilisation conscience, is recreated from the shards of the broken myth of Western civilisation. In this paper, Cieškaitė’s work is analysed in several stages that are reflected in the headlines of the sections. Recognisable are the landmarks of metaphysical thinking, mythical personages and plots; discussed are the outcomes of the interaction of eclectic metaphysical and mythical thinking; finally, an attempt is made at recognising the central idea of this metaphysical lyric and at reconstructing the version of myth so closely linked with this idea. All parts of the paper are concerned with the issue of poetic language, and the key features of Cieškaitė’s poetics are recorded. The paper asserts that in Cieškaitė’s work it is really possible to restore an extremely old version of female mythology, which is embodied in the figure of the goddess Aphrodite that had acquired Promethean creative powers. Yet here metaphysical experiences can hardly be generalised as one comprehensive metaphysical theory. In Cieškaitė’s work, metaphysical thinking based on language and logic frequently yields ground to spontaneous mystical experiences, which are not controlled by either logic or language.

The Legend of the Artist: Family Romance and Führer Myth

The essay provides a theoretical and historical analysis of Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz’s study of The Legend of the Artist , first published in German in 1934 and republished in English in 1979. While Kris and Kurz’s book has been recognized as an essential scholarly compendium of artist biographies and a crucial contribution to art history, its nuanced thesis on the afterlife of mythical thinking has usually passed unnoticed. This essay explores both the theoretical significance of Kris and Kurz’s psychological thesis and its application to the cultural and political situation at the time of its original publication.

The Dark Glory of Criminals: Notes on the Iconic Imagination of the Multitudes

Fil: Tonkonoff, Sergio Esteban. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales. Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas; Argentina

A Memoir of an Other

I am the literary executor for my late partner, the prolific poet and essayist Reginald Shepherd. Shepherd often spoke of writing a memoir but never had the chance to do so before his death. However, the essays he wrote, his poetry, his correspondences, and other writings contain many, many fragments of memoiristic material in his voice. I am in the process of assembling these fragments into his posthumous memoir, and the project bears a strong relationship to the long tradition of ethnographic biographies, as well as being a strong example of bricolage and mythic thinking. Here, I will reflect on the relationships I am encountering between memoir, myth, and ethnography as I construct/assemble this book.

Stigmatic and Mythical Thinking

Stigmatic and Mythical Thinking

The mythopoetical model and logic of the concrete in Quechua culture: Cultural and transcultural translation problems

This article deals mainly with problems of cultural/transcultural translation between the Quechua and Spanish cultures, analysing these on the basis of some ideas by Juri Lotman and Peeter Torop. The process of translation implies considering the Quechua semiosphere’s internal borders as well as the external borders related to the cultures that existed at the time of Tahuantin Suyo, and all changes that have come from the Spanish conquest of Latin America. In the case of the Quechua culture, the problems are numerous and conflicting in several dimensions. First of all, Quechua is an agglutinating language that creates problems for translation into a flexional language such as Spanish. Secondly, and more importantly, there exists a mythopoetical model of the world that has been built in this culture, which does not use concepts of rational logic, but poetic images integrated into mythical thinking: it represents a different cognitive pattern. Thirdly, the presence of the logic of the concrete in Quechua culture, articulated with the mythopoetical model, makes translation from Western abstract formal logic difficult. Reflections on these issues provide new analytical possibilities.

Logophilia, logophobia and the terra mota of personal linguistic experience

This article discusses how an integrational approach to teaching linguistics at tertiary education institutions differs from the orthodox approach. Drawing from experience with English in Hong Kong, it is argued that individuals need to become confident and responsible language-users, which, in turn, requires a different understanding of how language relates to one’s personal life. A ‘science’ of linguistics, however, takes for granted that there is a semantically determinate metalanguage which operates independently of time, culture, language, and people; a consequence of this is that students come to think of verbal communication exclusively in reference to languages, i.e. fixed codes that individuals already possess prior to language-use. Mythical thinking about language, however, leads to pathologies identified here as ‘logophilia’ and ‘logophobia’, respectively.

Reading Cassirer's philosophy of myth: early signs of Heidegger's late philosophy?

Abstract Reading Cassirer’s philosophy of myth: early signs of Heidegger’s late philosophy? In 1928, Heidegger’s book review of the second volume of Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (The Mythical Thought) was published in the Deutsche Literaturzeitung. Cassirer’s text date of 1925, hence it is possible that Heidegger had read it even before the publication of Being and Time. What makes both texts worthy of a closer examination is the fact that several central motifs and terms of Heidegger’s later philosophy are already present in these two texts. Heidegger focuses particularly on Cassirer’s reflections on the representation of mana (Mana-Vorstellung) in mythical thinking. This representation involves not only the distinction between the familiar and the unfamiliar, the ‘uncanniness’ or ‘not-at-homeness’ that befalls mightily the Dasein, but also the distinction between the sacred and the profane and that of the four world regions (Weltgegenden) and its organization in form of a cross. Although not everything that Heidegger announces is interpretable as full awareness of the future impact of these traces, one would wonder if the density with which they appear would be mere accident. Thus, the article contributes to the debate on the issue of the emerging of Heidegger’s late thought and its origins which can be traced back to the stage of genesis, or rather, the final draft of Being and Time.

Norbert Elias's Post-Philosophical Sociology: From ‘Critique’ to Relative Detachment

This paper argues that Elias's work presupposes a radical abandonment of philosophy as a vestige of magical–mythical thinking that has been rendered obsolete by the rise of sociology. For Elias, attempts by philosophers to claim a continuing non-empirical area of investigation are spurious and reflect only professional interests. The origins of Elias's position are traced to his rejection of neo-Kantianism and his participation in the Wissenssoziologie of Karl Mannheim in Weimar Germany. Focusing on the traditional ethical or normative questions, the paper shows how Elias's conception of the ‘detour via detachment’ enabled him to transcribe these issues (as well as traditional epistemological and ontological questions) into sociologically manageable terms. His strategy is further clarified through a comparison with the all-pervasive Critical Sociology approach to these matters, which emerges as severely handicapped by its reliance upon quasi-metaphysical, transcendental arguments. Also, its attributions of social blame generate fear images that reinforce conflict and its negative overstatements strengthen anxiety and frustration, thereby bolstering precisely what it is trying to change. The paper reveals the tacit function as a leftist code-word that the term ‘critical’ performs for many sociologists. Neo-Marxist ‘critique’ is shown to be a profoundly flawed attempt to deal with issues of theory and practice.

We're All Bad Poets

IN OUR USE OF WORDS in ordinary life ... we are all bad (Frye, Educated 58). But we can become better poets with literary and that means in mythical thinking, especially biblical thinking, for without understanding our metaphors and their historical origin, we are illiterate. other words, it's myth of Bible that should be basis of literary training (46). So insisted our deservedly illustrious Northrop Frye in his little book, Educated Imagination. And what influence has this had on me? As a freshman at UBC, with faint hope of becoming an English professor, I had little trouble understanding that I was a bad poet (well, to be honest, I would have agreed to being inferior, but not outright bad). But when my professor, Errol Durbach, pronounced that one could not understand English without proper knowledge of its two pillars, classical mythology and and then shook his head, saying that he imagined we might fairly soon have to put a footnote to term Bible, (1) I cheered inwardly, glad to know that whatever I knew of as a Christian, would be respected in his class. (It was, but that's another story.) From then on, moving on to graduate work on John Milton with Jan de Bruyn at UBC, high school teaching, motherhood, teaching at TWU, completing a doctorate on educating moral imagination through fantasy with Kieran Egan at SFU, and continuing to teach at TWU, I have had much occasion to ponder and cite from Frye's Anatomy of Criticism and Educated Imagination. I particularly love his feminine metaphors for poet's birthing of a poem: The poet, who writes creatively rather than deliberately, not father of his poem; he at best a midwife, or, more accurately still, womb of Mother Nature herself ... poet ... responsible for delivering [the poem] in as uninjured a state as possible, and if poem alive, it equally anxious to be rid of him ... of his ego (Anatomy 98). Fantastic. That passage alone registers hugely on my Richter scale of de-and-reconstructing gender discourse. And Frye's insights here, of course, have much to do with his knowledge of how notions of masculine and feminine operate metaphorically in surprisingly gender-inclusive ways in Bible. As he said of his own experience, while he was not interested in doctrines of faith as such in this discussion, the Bible ... suggested [to him] a of getting past some of limitations inherent in all positions (Great Code 167, xvi). Over years, what keeps on impressing me in particular Frye's pithy and uncompromising position on centrality of biblical education. In his view, biblical literacy essential to education because Bible is a book that has had a continuously fertilizing influence on English literature (xvi). While sensitive topic of religious faith often flusters and frustrates believers and non-believers alike, Frye could, I believe, educate others in biblical without violating humane educator's mandate to honour sanctity (to use a religious metaphor) of each individual. It's Canadian way, isn't it? Robert Fulford, for another, praises Frye's way of examining Bible without formality or piety, an approach students enjoyed and admired. In striving to give his students and readers a well-trained imagination, Frye was determined to impart understanding of biblical metaphors. For example, in 1963, with shrewd hilarity Frye nails arrogance of literalism: Religious language so full of metaphors of ascent, like 'lift up your hearts,' and so full of traditional associations with sky, that Mr. Krushchev still thinks he's made quite a point when he tells us that his astronauts can't find any trace of God in outer space (Educated 54). …

Mythical Thinking, Scientific Discourses and Research Dissemination

This article focuses on some principles for understanding. By taking Anna Mikulak’s article “Mismatches between ‘scientific’ and ‘non-scientific’ ways of knowing and their contributions to public understanding of science” (IPBS 2011) as a point of departure, the idea of demarcation criteria for scientific and non-scientific discourses is addressed. Yet this is juxtaposed with mythical thinking, which is supposed to be the most salient trait of non-scientific discourses. The author demonstrates how the most widespread demarcation criterion, the criterion of verification, is self-contradictory, not only when it comes to logic, but also in the achievement of isolating natural sciences from other forms of knowledge. According to Aristotle induction is a rhetorical device and as far as scientific statements are based on inductive inferences, they are relying on humanities, which rhetoric is a part of. Yet induction also has an empirical component by being based on sense-impressions, which is not a part of the rhetoric, but the psychology. Also the myths are understood in a rhetorical (Lévi-Strauss) and a psychological (Cassirer) perspective. Thus it is argued that both scientific and non-scientific discourses can be mythical.

Ticuna knowledge, Worecü stars and sky movements

AbstractThis paper focuses on the Ticuna interpretation of the iconography inscribed on ritual artifacts collected by the ethnographer Curt Nimuendaju in the early 1940s. The Ticuna describe certain celestial bodies depicted in the iconography of artifacts that are used in the Ticuna girls' puberty festival as ‘Worecü stars’. They relate these stars to various aspects of indigenous mythology expressed in ritual songs and speeches aboutworecü, a Ticuna word meaning the girl for whom the initiation is being performed. I hold that by incorporating Ticuna mediations into anthropological analysis we enrich this analysis by associating iconic images with mythical meanings transmitted generation by generation through ritual performances in which mythical thinking has the persuasive force of prescriptive action. In thinking about how the Ticuna read the iconography I avoid seeking a strict correlation between Western scientific explanations and the Ticuna's own knowledge about a special star known by them as the Woramacüri star. However, by postulating an association between the Worecü stars and the planets, we can examine the possibility that the Woramacüri Star is correlated with a particular planet at certain times, in specific circumstances.

Ernst Cassirer. Ausgewählter wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel (review)

Reviewed by: Ernst Cassirer. Ausgewählter wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel Thora Ilin Bayer John Michael Krois, hrsg. Ernst Cassirer. Ausgewählter wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel. Nachgelassene Manuskripte und Texte, 18. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 2009. Pp. 380. Cloth, €238.00. This volume is part of the multi-volume edition of Cassirer's Nachlass, the first volume of which, Zur Metaphysik der Symbolichen Formen, appeared in 1995 (English tr.: The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 4, The Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms, ed. J. M. Krois and D. P. Verene [Yale University Press, 1996]). This volume of Cassirer's correspondence contains 186 letters to and from Cassirer spanning the length of his career, beginning with a letter of 1893 prior to his arrival in Marburg in 1896 to study with the founders of the Marburg Neo-Kantian School, Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp, and ending with an exchange of letters with Hans Reichenbach regarding an offer of an appointment at UCLA a few days before his [End Page 403] sudden death on April 13, 1945. The volume includes a DVD containing copies of the originals of the entire correspondence. The letters are selected on the basis of their scholarly importance and their significance for understanding the development of Cassirer's thought. There are no purely personal letters, but many have a personal tone or contain personal details, as Cassirer is often writing to his friends and colleagues. The reader will not find long, essay-like letters in which Cassirer develops his philosophical ideas. Most letters vary from one half to one or two printed pages. They chronicle what Cassirer once called his intellectual odyssey as he moved from teaching positions in Berlin and Hamburg to Oxford and Götteborg, Sweden, and finally, in the 1940s, to Yale and Columbia Universities. Some letters contain cultural views such as Cassirer's expression of his attachment to the operas of Mozart, especially Don Juan, in a letter to his old friend, the philosopher Albert Görland (April 21, 1906). There is a substantial exchange with Albert Einstein concerning Cassirer's manuscript of Einstein's Theory of Relativity (1921), which Einstein endorsed. There is correspondence with the leading members of the Vienna Circle: Moritz Schlick, Otto Neurath, and Philipp Frank. There is a letter from Edmund Husserl commenting briefly on the second volume of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms: Mythical Thought (1925) and Cassirer's reply. There is correspondence with the Swiss psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger, who founded Daseinsanalyse. There is considerable correspondence, as might be expected, with Aby Warburg, founder of the famous Warburg Institute and Library and its director, Fritz Saxl, which was originally located in Hamburg and later moved to London. There are two supplementary letters of Saxl to Warburg, describing how he showed Cassirer the unique features of the Library, that amplify Cassirer's own published comments on how the arrangement of its contents paralleled the structure of his theory of symbolic forms. There is correspondence with Susanne Langer in 1944 concerning her translation of Language and Myth, and in the same period with Paul Schilpp concerning the preparation of the Library of Living Philosophers volume on Cassirer that appeared in 1949, after his death. Cassirer's letter to Schilpp of May 13, 1942, clarifies why there is no volume on art in the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. In this letter (first noted by D. P. Verene in the introduction to Symbol, Myth, and Culture: Essays and Lectures of Ernst Cassirer 1935–1945 [Yale University Press, 1979]), Cassirer says that such a volume was planned but the Ungunst (disfavor) of the times caused him to postpone it again and again. His account of art as a symbolic form finally appeared as a chapter in An Essay on Man (1944) and in "Language and Art I & II" in Verene's aforementioned volume of Cassirer's papers, Symbol, Myth, and Culture. Since Cassirer died during the preparation of the Library of Living Philosophers volume, it appeared without the customary autobiographical essay. As a substitute, there appeared a biographical sketch by Dimitry Gawronsky, whose friendship with Cassirer began in their student days at Marburg. In 1948, Ms. Cassirer completed her typescript of Aus Meinem Leben mit Ernst Cassirer, which includes a...

Contemporary myth and its aesthetic consciousness

现代社会的实用理性和科技发展共同终结了古典神话，将之送入精神文化的历 史博物馆。然而，神话思维和神话意识则共时性地隐匿于人们的心理结构之中，对 文明和文化依然施加了重要影响。在现代和后现代的历史文化语境中，神话以变形 的方式潜藏于人类的精神文化活动里，演变为一种当代意义的神话形式，继续发挥 着强大的心理功能和扮演着意识活动与形态助产士的角色。当代神话的典型表现是 科技神话、消费神话、英雄神话等样式。它承袭了传统神话的符号和结构形式而又 有所发展和变异，尤其是借助于科技手段,它获得了更广泛、更丰富的社会内容和迅 捷密集的传播方式，对于社会的方方面面都产生了广泛而深刻的影响。 关键词: 当代神话 审美意识 科技神话 消费神话 英雄神话 Pragmatic rationality and scientific and technological developments in modern society have jointly put an end to classical myth and consigned it to the historical museum of the spiritual culture. However, mythical thinking and consciousness are synchronically hidden in our psychological structures and still exert an important influence on civilizations and cultures. In the modern and postmodern historical and cultural context, myth hides in our spiritual and cultural activities in various altered forms. Having evolved into a mythic form in the contemporary sense, it continues to play a powerful psychological role and to act as a midwife of conscious activities and forms. Contemporary myth typically comprises science myth, consumption myth and hero myth. It has inherited the symbols and structures of traditional myth, but with some developments and variations; in particular, by means of science and technology, it has acquired broader and richer social ingredients and swift and intensive modes of transmission, producing a widespread and far‐reaching influence on various aspects of society.

Strands: Weaving a Mythopoietics of Place

Oral traditions like those of Native Americans illustrate that storytellers are well suited for creating postmodern environmental ethics through what Jim Cheney (1995) calls “bioregional narrative”—contextualist discourse that serves an epistemological function akin to “mythic thinking.” Inspired by Cheney’s assessment, I set about applying “mythic thinking” to place—in this case, Silver Strand, a tiny southern California beach once inhabited by the Chumash, whose stories about their interactions with both land and sea demonstrate an inherent ethos that communicates moral behavior and values. In so doing, they provide a model for developing a personal sense of place from which nonindigenous inhabitants might learn.

Symbolist Writer Andrej Belyj’s Viewpoints of Mythology

Andrej Belyj, a symbolist writer, conveys profound ideas and concepts of mythology through his own creation by borrowing a large number of plots and characters from myths or creating new mysterious stories, all based on his mythical thinking and the structure of myths he has employed in his creation. This paper takes the writer’s masterpiece, Petersburg, as an example to explore deeply his viewpoints of mythology.

Le mythe ou l'image du temps messianique

My intention here is to evaluate myth’s category through some philosophems unfolded in The Origin of German Tragic Drama, in order to show that, far from being the accomplice of historical time, the myth, released from logos – literally pulled out from the mythology which gives it an extrinsic meaning –, it would rather be the very aesthetic figure in which an image of messianic time shows itself. Keywords : Philosophy of language, myth, mythical thinking, right, tradition, justice, image, messianism.

<i>Neo-Mythologism in Music: From Scriabin and Schoenberg to Schnittke and Crumb</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Neo-Mythologism in Music: From Scriabin and Schoenberg to Schnittke and Crumb Anatole Leikin Neo-Mythologism in Music: From Scriabin and Schoenberg to Schnittke and Crumb. By Victoria Adamenko. (Interplay Series, no. 5.) Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2007. [xv, 299 p. ISBN-13: 9781576471258. $36.] Illustrations, music examples, bibliographic references, index. This is an ambitious interdisciplinary undertaking that brings together various aspects of music, mythology, semiotics, philosophy, religion, and anthropology. The subject is complex and, at times, speculative, but Victoria Adamenko's lucid writing and thoughtful organization of the book, with detailed subheadings, make the reader's job much easier. The author introduces the concept of neo-mythologism in order to shed negative implications that are occasionally associated with myth (for example, myth as an obsolete and untrue view of the world). She defines neo-mythological as "newly constructed, . . . desirable, vital—that is, culturally inspiring" as opposed to "those myths in need of de-mythification" (p. 2). Ac cording to Adamenko, "neo-mythologism is a trend rather than an artistic movement in the conventional sense, such as expressionism or symbolism" (p. 3); therefore, it can manifest itself in the works of vastly diverse composers. Indeed, it is difficult to find a more divergent group of twentieth-century composers than those chosen by Ada menko for her study: Scriabin, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Berg, Crumb, Stockhausen, Schnittke, Denisov, and others. From the outset, Adamenko places neo-mythologism within a historical context and traces its origins from earlier music. The romantic movement, with its acute interest in folklore, fantastic images, fairy tales, and oneness with nature, is, of course, the most immediate predecessor of the neo-mythological trend. Adamenko also points out examples of mythological treatment of certain subjects in pre-romantic music, citing Haydn's The Creation and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as cosmological projects (p. 18). Chapter 2 opens with an inquiry into the structural procedures in mythology and music that were introduced by Claude Lévi-Strauss. In his seminal works Structural Anthropology (trans. by Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf [New York: Basic Books, 1963]) and The Naked Man (Introduction to a Science of Mythology, vol. 4. trans. by John and Doreen Weightman. [New York: Harper & Row, 1981]), Lévi-Strauss viewed binary opposition (e.g., life-death, nature-culture, day-night) as a major attribute of mythic thinking. The system of binary oppositions usually involves mediating elements that directly or indirectly smooth over the polarities. This mythic aspect can be seen in Hinde mith's approach to harmony, which is built on the antagonism between tonalities a tritone apart. In Hindemith's opera Die Harmonie der Welt, E symbolizes universal Harmony, while B-flat indicates Earthly imperfection. The remaining ten keys, while mediating the main opposition, also include inner pairs of tritone-based opposition: Kepler (C-sharp) and his opponents (G), Heaven (C) and Earth (F-sharp) (pp. 29–31). Adamenko then considers the role of binary opposition in the music of other composers. Schoenberg's binary thinking stemmed largely from the concepts of "old" (tonal) and "new" (twelve-tone) harmony, as well as mediating elements between the two. Scriabin's thinking "attached a highly sacred meaning to opposites and their reconciliation" (p. 39). Stravinsky's binary approach, by contrast, was "light and ironic" (p. 40). His oppositions include sharps vs. flats and odd vs. even in Les Noces, and black vs. white keys in Petrushka. The latter arguably mirrors black vs. white in [End Page 314] Pagan Slavic mythology as exemplified by the White God (Belbog) and the Black God (Chernobog) (pp. 39–40). Crumb likewise used the interplay between the white and the black keys in Makrokosmos II. Elsewhere Crumb "wrote about the opposition of 'light' and 'dark' in regard to Star-Child (1977)" and defined certain sounds and structures as either "godly" or "devilish" (p. 43). Polarities in the music of Stock hausen, asserts Adamenko, are closer to Schoenberg in the sense that both composers preferred dealing with opposing categories. For Stockhausen these extremes were, typically, "determinacy and indeterminacy, static and dynamic, and the discrete and indiscrete" (p. 44). Another mythic and ritualistic characteristic that is embodied in musical compositional procedures is repetition. The...

Colloquium 7: On Names and Concepts: Mythical and Logical Thinking in Plato’s Symposium

Colloquium 7: On Names and Concepts: Mythical and Logical Thinking in Plato’s Symposium