Mythological Concepts Research Articles

Amazonas del mar y sátiros acuáticos

The work of Luis de Góngora (1561–1627) arguably represents the peak of early Baroque poetic mythography, but even if myth is a recurring element in Gongorine poetry its appearance varies greatly. From the youthful poetry to the major works of the first decades of the 17th century and beyond we find important nuances and a recurring revaluation and redefinition of myth. Thus, starting off by the both moral and sensual interpretation characteristic of Renaissance literature in the early sonnets, passing through Ovidian aetiology in the Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea and the philosophical meditation on myth in the Soledades, the poet reaches the satirical-burlesque with a moral flavour in the Fábula de Píramo y Tisbe. However, underlying all these different phases we find a persistent ambiguity rooted in the ambiguous post-classical reception of Greco-Roman mythology. On the background of a brief survey of the ambiguous concept of classical mythology permeating Góngora’s work from beginning to end, the present article particularly explores the meditative phase of the Soledades, arguing its importance for our understanding of the Baroque period as well as for the origin of what may be termed the tradition of ’mythological literature’.

Wild animals in ethnozoological practices among the Yorubas of southwestern Nigeria and the implications for biodiversity conservation.

A questionnaire-guided ethno-zoological survey of the Yoruba speaking communities of Ogun state (Nigeria) was conducted. Forty Traditional Medical Practitioners (tmps) and ten hunters were interviewed. The choice of species utilised in fauna-based traditional medicinal preparations were found to be guided by many factors which in addition to the bioactive constituents, also include some morpho-physiological characteristics and behavioural ecology of the animal as well as some mythological conceptions associated with the animal. Out of the 55 species identified in use for various traditional medical practices, 21 are listed as threatened in Nigeria’s Endangered Species (Control of International Trade and Traffic) Decree 11 of 1985 and the Control of International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Animals raised under ex-situ conservation projects were not readily acceptable for perceived deficiencies in requisite characteristics that informed the choice of fauna species. The use of substitute species was also found not acceptable as preferred substitute species are often animals under higher threat than regular one in use. Implications of the findings on biodiversity conservation were discussed. Key words: Ethnozoology, Yorubic medicine, zootherapy, traditional medicinal practitioner, biodiversity.

Irano-Talmudica I: The Three-Legged Ass and Ridyā in B. Ta‘anith: Some Observations about Mythic Hydrology in the Babylonian Talmud and in Ancient Iran

In this paper we shall study an aggadic tradition from the Babylonian Talmud while trying to find traces of early Iranian mythological conceptions that were absorbed by the talmudic sages as a part of their own biblically enrooted knowledge. We shall also attempt to gain a better understanding of the talmudic text by presuming that it reflects ideas absorbed from the Iranian—or, rather, “Iraqian”—environment. Occasionally, however, early Iranian myths do not always survive in their original, complete forms, and sometimes only fragmentary remains in medieval Zoroastrian literature can be used for their reconstruction. The so-called ninth-century books in Pahlavi were edited by Zoroastrian priests at a rather late date, and in a quite tendentious manner. Significantly, the bulk of the numerous “pagan” strains were excised, probably because the editing work took place in a Muslim environment, and our knowledge of the actual popular religions of Sasanian—or, for our purpose, talmudic—western Iran and Mesopotamia/Iraq is far from adequate. Thus, every piece of secondary evidence regarding the popular Iranian beliefs is precious.

Wittgenstein and the Fate of Metaphysics

I take it to be a central task of Wittgenstein's philosophy to undermine certain mythological conceptions of language that tend to hold us captive in philosophy. I believe too that one of his primary motivations for attempting this task is his sense of the corrosive effect such conceptions have on a society uncritically beholden to them. This paper explores a related question: How did Wittgenstein understand our relation to the philosophical problems that arise from these mythological conceptions once we have a clearer picture of the connections between the mythology and the problems? More specifically, I discuss the suggestion, made independently by Stanley Cavell and John McDowell, that Wittgenstein believed the problems of philosophy to be so fundamentally rooted in us, that any freedom from metaphysical quandaries one may enjoy can at best be temporary. Quite apart from the overall validity this view may have as an interpretation of the relation between human beings and metaphysics, there is the question of whether it is what Wittgenstein actually held. My aim here is not to engage in a debate about whether or not the “will to philosophy” is part of the human condition. Rather, I wish simply to argue that there are good reasons for believing that Wittgenstein believed it possible to abandon metaphysics.

Mythological content: a problem for Millikan's teleosemantics

I pose the following dilemma for Millikan's teleological theory of mental content. There is only one way that her theory can avoid Gauker's [(1995) Review of Millikan's White queen psychology and other essays for Alice, Philosophical Psychology, 8, 305–309] charge that it relies on an unexplained notion of mapping or isomorphism between mental state and world. Mental content must be explained in terms of the mapping relation that is required for mental state producing and consuming mechanisms to perform their biologically proper functions, i.e. producing mental states that are consumed in systematically adaptive practical inferences. However, this proposal leads to unacceptably counterintuitive ascriptions of content to mythological beliefs and related desires: such beliefs and desires must “map onto” environmental states that make them adaptive, not onto the mythological states of affairs that (would) make them true or fulfilled. I conclude by discussing the merits and drawbacks of a potential solution to this problem: the view that the contents of mythological beliefs and desires are determined by the non-mythological concepts out of which they are constructed, rather than by the environmental states that make them adaptive. The affinities of this proposal with Pascal Boyer's recent theory of mythological concepts [(2001) Religion explained, New York: Basic Books] are also discussed.

Naming of new elements(IUPAC Recommendations 2002)

Abstract A procedure is proposed to name new elements. After the discovery of a new element is established by a joint IUPAC­IUPAP Working Group, the discoverers are invited to propose a name and a symbol to the IUPAC Inorganic Chemistry Division. Elements can be named after a mythological concept, a mineral, a place or country, a property, or a scientist. After examination and acceptance by the Inorganic Chemistry Division, the proposal follows the accepted IUPAC procedure and is then submitted to the IUPAC Council for approval.

Texture and Anisotropy

The study of preferred orientation of minerals in rocks dates back to Omalius d’Halloy (1833) who attributes a special significance to the alignment of crystals as an indicator of the formation process. Much later the influence of crystal alignment on physical properties was quantified (e.g., Weissenberg 1922, Voigt 1928, Reuss 1929). Only recently has this field emerged as a coherent part of earth science research linking such branches as mineralogy, petrology, structural geology, geodynamics and seismology. The reason for this was the emergence of quantitative methods to analyze preferred orientation, or “texture” as it was first called by Naumann (1850). These methods were largely developed in collaboration with materials science and mechanics. Quantitative measurements, detailed field studies, rigorous data analysis, theories to predict textures, and improvements in characterizing seismic anisotropy in the Earth are leading to a coherent picture that is now being refined. Though seismologists have long accepted that there is a causal relationship between anisotropic propagation of seismic waves, the deformation field and crystal orientation, the prevailing view is still largely the mythological concept that seismic fast directions align with the flow direction. While this may be approximately the case for olivine deformed under certain conditions, it is certainly no universal law, as we will try to illustrate in this review. The “fast” direction of a crystal depends on the mineral species and its crystal structure. The alignment of crystals depends on microscopic, intra-crystalline deformation systems and the deformation history. Both relationships are complex and not intuitive, but there are well-established theories to compute single crystal physical properties as well as orientation patterns. Simulations can be compared with experimental data and then applied with some caution to the macroscopic Earth. This review is intended to provide a brief introduction, highlighting some of the issues with …

Bultmann se ontmitologiseringsprogram herwaardeer

Bultmann's demythologising program reevaluated. The kerygma of the New Testament is depicted in the mythological language of a bygone mythological world-view. Bultmann suggested that demythologisation is necessary in order to explore the true Existenzverstandniss contained in the mythological concepts. Reaction to his program of demythologising was mostly negative, especially in South Africa. This article focuses on the necessity for demythologisation as well as Bultmann's definition of myth, in order to re-evaluate his program of demythologisation. Bultmann's demythologising program is considered as a responsible method for interpreting the texts of the New Testament.

Studies in Gnosticism and Alexandrian Christianity

The discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library (1945) has given an enormous impetus not only to the study of ancient Gnosticism but also to that of early Christianity in general. Most of the studies contained in this volume deal with mythological conceptions and theological ideas found in various Nag Hammadi writings. The gnostic views on the nature of God and on creation and salvation receive particular attention, ranging from Philo to the medieval Cathars. The Nag Hammadi Library also shed new light on the development of early Alexandrian Christianity and its theology. The book contains six studies which explicitly deal with these topics. This volume is of interest to students of Gnosticism, early Christianity and Graeco-Roman religious and philosophical ideas in general.

Book Review: Myths and Their Interpretation: Star Myths of the Vikings: A New Concept of Norse Mythology

Book Review: Myths and Their Interpretation: Star Myths of the Vikings: A New Concept of Norse Mythology

Intercultural understanding: Max Weber and Leo Strauss

For much of human history intercultural understanding has been precluded by fantastic folkloric and mythological conceptions about inhabitants of exotic lands. What the contemporary academic lexicon defines as xenophobia, ethnocentrism and prejudice have often been the very basis of judgments about the ways of life and belief in other societies. The western social sciences evolved in part by serving or rebelling against such judgments in the course of the last three centuries.1 They have sometimes fallen prey to pitfalls of both extremes. But vacillating between these extremes, we contend, has gradually enabled the social sciences to identify and articulate the central problems involved in acquiring valid knowledge of other societies.2 Thus, to ignore all the social sciences' substantive, methodological and critical achievements3 concerning the intricacies of intercultural understanding and research may represent an unglamorous naivete in which problems and solutions seem deceptively facile and final. Still, Leo Strauss' unhesitant denunciation of the social scientific approach toward intercultural understanding calls for a review of his intriguing invitation to an alternative method of understanding other cultures and societies. It also requires a reappraisal of the accomplishments of the social sciences in this respect. The focus of the present evaluation, therefore, is Strauss' criticism of social science in general and his critique of Max Weber's methodology and sociology in particular. An exegesis of the anthropological and sociological implications of a Weberian theory of intercultural understanding will conclude this essay.

On the semiotics of mythological conceptions about mushrooms

Essai sur le role exceptionnel joue par le champignon dans le systeme semiotique de nombreuses traditions a travers l'examen des mythes et des cultes qui lui sont associes.

Narrative Structure and Technique in Thucydides VI-VII

OF THE BOOK Thucydides Mythistoricus W. P. Wallace writes: F. M. Corn ford maintained .. that Thucydides, in short, aimed not at historical accuracy, but at literary effect.' Most scholars today would take exception to Cornford's standpoint. But it is nevertheless fact that historiography is not history, and that anyone who undertakes to record series of historical events must bring some interpretive faculties to bear on them. In the hands of one who has a mythological conception of the world of human acts and passions,2 literary effect may indeed become an end in itself; but it need not be mutually exclusive with historical accuracy, if it is employed purposefully and judiciously to trans form an initially amorphous collection of data into cohesive and integrated historical account. It may be useful at the outset to draw distinction between accuracy and objectivity. The latter may extend to refraining even from evaluating the quality of one's sources, which can of course lead to inaccuracy, while accuracy may well be the result of careful selectivity and discrimination.3 The fact is that even the historian consummately concerned with historical accuracy must be subjective at several levels. He begins exercising his interpretive

Twinship in mythology and science: Ambivalence, differentiation, and the magical bond

This article has attempted to show parallels and continuities between mythological traditions dealing with twinship and modern scientific approaches that either study twinship itself or use twin studies to answer more general questions. We do not mean to imply that modern research on twins is just a continuation of mythological concepts. What we have tried to show is the continuity in some of the questions being asked and in some of the answers being given. The explanation we would like to offer here for these parallels is that there are common psychological elements in both mythological and scientific approaches to twinship. The two major elements are fascination and ambivalence. Fascination with twin births has always been combined with a great deal of apprehension and ambivalence. In both primitive and modern societies, multiple births have been viewed as a potential source of familial and social conflict and complication. The Old Testament mythological tradition, which emphasized competition and individuation in twin pairs, and the Greek mythological tradition, which emphasized fusion and intimacy, are both reflected in modern approaches to the study of twinship.

The Romantic Mythology of Language

Respect for language, as everyone acknowledges, is a constant of French culture. It is no less clear, however, that the appraisal of language and of its powers and the notion formed of its essential nature vary from epoch to epoch. Intense philosophical, scientific and literary preoccupation with language and the age-old problems it raises is undoubtedly one of the most significant characteristics of pre-romanticism. The traditional respect for language, manifest İn discussions of inversion and of the importance of signs in the formation of ideas, is gradually transformed, when these discussions have run their course, into a cult of language in general and of the word in particular. Indeed, by much insistence on the primordial importance of language in the act of knowledge, thinkers such as Locke and Condillac, and after them Voltaire, Diderot, Maupertuis, Rousseau, Garat, and many others, eventually endow the instrument of thought with an autonomy that thought itself, subjugated by matter, was in danger of losing. “ Ah! Monsieur “, exclaims Diderot, combien notre entendement est modifi・ par les signes.” Minds seem to pass, at this critical moment of European reflection, from a purely intellectual conception of language—which, moreover, the Grammaire de Port-Royal barely distinguished from logic—to a mythological conception of its principal functions.

Time and History

Our present Western conception of history as an immanent and continuous process in chronological, or secular, time is of modern origin. It came into being in the wake of increasing secularization and the concomitant rise of scientific inquiry; and it was preceded by mythological and theological conceptions which discounted the significance of chronological time for an understanding of the past. Think of the indifference to chronological accuracy among the Greeks of the classical period; of the recourse to Tyche in the Hellenistic age when the Mediterranean peoples were thrown into open space where Reason seemed powerless; and of the general predilection, based on nature religion, for a cyclical theory of history in the Graeco-Roman pagan world. Nor did the ancient Jews consider history a linear process; rather, their past appeared to them as a series of partly supernatural transactions, with God's wrath or forgiveness constantly intervening in the course of secular events. And where would He lead his chosen people and through them humanity? The hoped-for redemption, envisioned by the apocalypses of later Judaism, marked not so much a new historical epoch as the divinely decreed end of human history. Early Christian eschatology engulfed chronology also. But since the parousia failed to come, the Church, while retaining the belief in ultimate resurrection, established herself in the world, with the result that she had to reconcile with each other two divergent times: a vertical time pointing heavenward and a horizontal, or chronological, time framing the succession of innerworldly happenings. Medieval chronicles, with their incoherent mixture of elements from both salvation history and mundane history, nicely reflect this attempt simultaneously to move within secular time and away from it. Incidentally, one does well to remember what Malinowski says of his Trobriands that their reliance on magic does not prevent them from approaching many issues in a rational, all but scientific spirit.' By the same

Symbol and Myth

There are two ways in which Symbol and Myth are related to each other. Firstly, a certain class of symbols represents the remnant of myths. Such figures as, e.g. the Dragon, Leviathan, etc., which we find in Biblical literature, are not used in the full sense of the underlying mythological conception, but in a metaphorical sense. They are chosen by the author because of their mythical associations, but not in their mythical meaning. Ametaphor of this kind is, as H. J. D. Astley put it, “broken-down mythology.” There are a great many symbols both in poetry and mysticism which must be understood as the relics of mythical thought. We owe a great deal to ethnology for having thrown light on this relation. The microcosm-macrocosm symbolism, for instance, becomes more intelligible if we consider that in primitive mythology the world emerged from the body of primordial man. The gifts to the dead appear in later forms of sacrificial cults as purely symbolical, but there is no doubt that originally they were intended for the real use of the dead. In these and in numerous other cases the symbol has only a reduced value as compared with the original-myth from which it is borrowed. It is not self-evident, but relies on the mythical conception, without, however, taking it seriously. It is “merely” a symbol, and has no truth of its own.

XL.—On the Principal Deities of the Rigveda

In the paper which I had the honour to read before the Society last winter, I stated the reasons, drawn from history and from comparative philology, which exist for concluding that the Brahmanical Indians belong to the same race as the Greek, the Latin, the Teutonic, and other nations of Europe. If this conclusion be well-founded, it is evident that at the time when the several branches of the great Indo-European family separated to commence their migrations in the direction of their future homes, they must have possessed in common a large stock of religious and mythological conceptions. This common mythology would, in the natural course of events, and from the action of various causes, undergo a gradual modification analogous to that undergone by the common language which had originally been spoken by all these tribes during the period of their union; and, in the one case as in the other, this modification would assume in the different races a varying character, corresponding to the diversity of the influences to which they were severally subjected.