View Of Myth Research Articles

Preparing Students for Competent Scientific Practice: Implications of Recent Research in Science and Technology Studies

Current empirical research in science and technology studies provides new and different views of science and scientists that contrast markedly with the mythical views that underlie many curricular efforts geared toward increasing scientific literacy. If descriptions of science and scientists that emerge from science and technology studies are legitimate, considerable implications arise for educational aims guiding science instruction, learning experiences directed toward those educational aims, and resources that support those learning experiences and educational aims. In this paper, we (a) briefly review some of the diverse scholarship within science and technology studies, and (b) discuss associated curricular implications in terms of educational aims, learning experiences, and resources. These implications are directed toward a vision of scientific literacy as preparation for competent participation in scientific laboratories, activist movements, the judicial system, or other locations/communities where science is created and used. This vision implies a reformulation of what can be considered "authentic" science (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989) and provides a natural continuity from participating in science in schools to participating in science in professional practice or activist movements. We argue for science education as a starting point for trajectories of legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991) in science-related discourses and practices.

Having It Both Ways: Self-Subversion in Western Popular Classics by Forrest G. Robinson

Reviews 315 Nature’s Kindred Spirits: Aldo Leopold,Joseph Wood Krutch, Edward Abbey, AnnieDillard, and Gary Snyder. ByJames I. McClintock. (Madison: University ofWisconsin Press, 1994. 180 pages, $39.50/$12.95.) In Nature’s Kindred Spirits, James I. McClintock points out that with a few notable exceptions, “[c]ontemporary American nature writers . . . have received almost no extended study,”an oversight that thisworkisintended in partto remedy. In this slim but carefully researched and documented study of Aldo Leopold, Joseph Wood Krutch, Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, and Gary Snyder, McClintock makes no pretense about writing the definitive critical history of modern American nature writing, limiting the terms of his inquiry to the ways in which these five writers have derived some of their deepest spiritual insights from their experiences in nature. McClintock argues convinc­ ingly that despite obvious differences, these writers share a common worldview, one based on a “mythic view—an integrated worldview in which their experience and knowl­ edge of the natural world are consistent with their social and political vision, their spiritual lives, and their aesthetic.” McClintock’s proposition that these writers share acommon spiritual worldview isa challenging one. Despite their shared love ofnature, there are clear differences between the affirmative ChristianityofDillard, the pantheism ofLeopold, and the Zen Buddhism ofSnyder. Itisoften these differences in spiritualworldviewthatstandout mostclearly, as illustrated byaletter that EdwardAbbeywrote to GarySnyder: “Dear Gary, Iadmire your work too, except for all that Zen and Hindu bullshit.”However, as McClintock discusses the themes of myth-making, religion, and nature study that link these writers, it becomes evident that their common spiritual experience in nature can be—indeed, should be— construed broadly enough to accommodate widely differing religious perspectives. Nature’s Kindred Spirits will undoubtedly appeal to those who approach nature writing from a literary or historical perspective, but McClintock’s intended audience is primarily “readers drawn to these essays, poems, and fiction because individually and collectively the literature, based upon experience in nature and written in the last halfof the twentieth century, offers acritique ofmodernity and apositive vision.”AsMcClintock points out, the perspective offered by these writers isa literaryand spiritual alternative to that generally presented in our mainstream literary tradition. This alternative vision offers away to turn thoughts of despair to those of beauty, as McClintock illustrates with a wonderful passage from Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, describing an instance where her thoughts of mortality and nature’s pervasive cruelty were transformed by the sight of a maple leaf twirling in the wind: “[i]f I am a maple leaf falling, at least I can twirl.” DANIEL G. PAYNE Cottekill, Nejo York Having It Both Ways: Self-Subversion in Western Popular Classics. By Forrest G. Robinson. (Albuquerque: University ofNew Mexico Press, 1993. 158 pages, $25.00.) Robinson defines “self-subversion”as “bad faith, the reciprocal deception ofselfand other in the denial of departures from leading public values” and maintains that the unresolved contradictions account in large part for the popularity of the works he 316 WesternAmerican Literature discusses: TheLast oftheMohicans, The Virginian, TheSea-Wolf, and Shane. Robinson argues that Cooper displays deep and unconscious ambivalence about race and that the Virginian is in conflict about the code of friendship vs. the rule of law and the opposite pulls of oblivion vs. responsibility. No serious reader should question the second judgment (Robinson and I would both exclude Jane Tompkins from this category);the firstseems, on Robinson’sshowing, self-evidentafterveryfew ofthe twentyseven pages he devotes to it, some ofwhich are written in prose clotted byprepositional phrases. The writing isclearerand the argument more compelling in Robinson’sdiscussions of London and Schaefer. If London’s narrator is self-deceived about his own and the heroine’s capabilities, as Robinson demonstrates, generations of critics have missed the ironies ofwhat only seems to be a conventional romantic ending. And Bob, the narrator of Shane, so firmly enforces his incomprehension that, Robinson argues, a careful reader should realize that Shane is not quite the savior he seems but rather “the answer in fantasy to the disillusioning spectacle of domestic disenchantment submerged in his superficially untroubled portraits of home and mother and dad.” The final chapter, “Theoretical Postscript,”isperhaps the most clearlywritten in the book...

Theorizing the Collaborative Self: The Dynamics of Contour and Content in the Dictated Autobiography

... narrative discourse, far from being a neutral medium for the representation of historical events and processes, is the very stuff of a mythical view of reality, a conceptual or pseudoconceptual content which, when used to represent real events, endows them with an illusory coherence and charges them with the kinds of meanings more characteristic of oneiric than waking thought. Hayden White, The Content of Form

The Prehistory of the Federal Republic

Continuity versus change is a sensitive and frequently a politically charged theme in every national history-and so it is in Germany. Nineteenthand twentiethcentury Germany has indeed experienced an unusual number of ruptures: 1806, 1848, 1918, 1933, 1945, 1989. The dramatically rapid collapse of the GDR and the accelerated process of national unification has raised a new version of an older question. Before 1989, as well as after, analysts had asked skeptically whether clean starts are really possible in a nation's history-or, more encouragingly, whether the myth of a new beginning (even if it be a myth) is not an important part of a process of coming to terms with historical change. West Germany was one of the most stable and successful of modem European states. This achievement appeared puzzling in the light of German history before 1945, which was marked by domestic instability and radically destabilizing external policies. Defeat in 1945 seemed to have ended this era of the German past and to have ushered in a new age in which a new history could be shaped-so at least went the sanitized myth that many in the Federal Republic deemed essential to its existence. In an apparently similar way the GDR's politicians and theorists argued that a new state on a new class basis had been formed there. This mythical view is summed up in one phrase, the designation of 2300 hours on May 8, 1945 as the Stunde Nullthe zero hour at which the clock of German history started ticking afresh.

Andrew Johnson: A Biography.

On April 14, 1865, just as the American Civil War came to an end, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by a Confederate actor. The next morning Andrew Johnson was suddenly elevated to the position of president of the United States at a time when the nation was still suffering from the effects of war. This biography explores the enigma of the homeless and uneducated tailor whose spectacular rise to power ended in disgrace. It relates how his term in office undermined the process of reconstruction and left a legacy of racism. Over a century later, Johnson remains the only president of the United States to have been impeached. The author explores Johnson's undeniable skills as a political leader and his stubborn attachment to a mythical view of the America of his youth, which proved to be his undoing.

Myths and the Fantastic

onslaught of Enlightenment thought has been filled with stories, and the which have so far been the closest to myths are fantastic stories: this is the basic proposition which I want to argue and discuss. Realistic stories, too, have been produced in an attempt to reactivate some mythic view of the world, as in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain or Joyce's Ulysses, but the closest to being mythic are those of Frankenstein, Dracula, Captain Nemo, Tarzan, and the like. This is curious, since myths are stories for an original audience,' whereas fantastic are palpably untrue. I am proposing, therefore, to compare two different kinds of stories, one true, another untrue, and do it without any intention to bridge the gap in the name of literature or art. The distinction between true and untrue implies classification. The further distinctions which I will introduce here

One or Several Pioneers? The Discovery of Noble‐Gas Compounds

AbstractFor the general public, science history and restaurant menus share a labeling style. Like Melba peach, Soubise sauce, or tournedos Rossini, many a scientific discovery is credited to a single thinker or tinkerer. Such ultrasimplification rubs into oblivion other important contributors or codiscoverers. The discovery of noble‐gas compounds conforms to such a stereotyped and mythic view: according to the standard account, Neil S. Bartlett, then at the University of British Columbia, made it a quarter of a century ago on March 23, 1962. We do not attempt here a full and definitive history; it would be premature and we do not have the space. Rather, we shall document the concept and the earlier attempts at synthesis–they antedated Bartlett's success by three decades. The motivation for this note may be summarized in the following questions: (1) What sort of insight and input were those of Linus Pauling? (2) What were the likely causes for failure of the attempt by Yost and Kaye to synthesize noble‐gas fluorides in the 1930s? (3) Were there other researchers who envisioned a noble‐gas reactivity?

Aristotle's Physics, Books 3 and 4 (review)

loo JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 23:1 JANUARY 198 5 ing cosmic energy. So in neither case does it seem meaningful for Plato to say that we are immortal: the eternal which we sense is no more us than it is anything else. Although it is of course possible that Plato did not intend this consequence of his arguments, Dorter thinks otherwise. In support he invokes literary features of the dialogue to argue that Plato operates on one level for the less sophisticated (who wish to be persuaded of personal survival) and on another for the philosophically reflective reader. Dotter treats the textual evidence for this claim with an appropriate modesty, and tries to justify Plato's apparent duplicity as an attempt to convince the weak by a 'noble lie' (95-97). Nevertheless this leads Dorter to mix together too quickly for this reader popular religion, myth, and metaphor. To the fact that Plato does not espouse the language of popular religion literally, Dorter adds his own view of myth as an imaginative appeal to emotion that can be translated without loss into rational discourse (7, 165, a95). So the accounts of the afterlife at 8oc-84 b and 1o7c115a are best treated as metaphors for what we make of ourselves in this life for all time (78-82, 162-75 ). Then all Plato's language of survival, whether in the literary form of myth or not, becomes metaphor to be translated into the doctrine of immortality outlined above. But there are other explanations not fully considered by Dorter. Popular imaginings may indeed cover immortality with the bedclothes of metaphor. It does not follow that, when we attempt to strip metaphor away, there will be nothing recognizable left in the bed. Dorter compares the Phaedo's arguments with arguments for God's existence (72); but just as the believer may not be dismayed to find that reason yields less than the God of worship, so Plato's reader may regard reason as not fully potent to deliver immortality in the requisite sense. Perhaps eschatological myth may function more like music than Dorter allows: he himself has interesting things to say in an appendix about the ability of art to point to the transcendent. These comments only demonstrate that other interpretations of the Phaedo will find much to challenge them in Dorter's book. It is a valuable contribution, sensitive to the complexities of Plato's text and serious about the enduring philosophical importance of the dialogue. In spite of misprints the book is handsomely produced. PAUL W. GOOCH University of Toronto Scarborough College Aristotle's Physics,Books 3 and 4. Translated with Notes by Edward Hussey. Clarendon Aristotle Series. Oxford: Clarendon Press and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Pp. xlix + 226. $26.oo, cloth; $12.95, paper. This is a worthy addition to the series. It follows its predecessors in presenting Aristotle thinking in twentieth-century English. For example, kin~sis (the Greek alphabet appears in the volume only in two pages of textual notes and four pages of a Glossary of Greek words) is translated as change, not, as previously, as motion. The translation is faithful and equipped with carefully keyed standard numbers. BOOK REVIEWS 101 A thirty-page Introduction outlines the five topics that Aristotle deals with, change, infinite, place, void, and time. 12o pages of running backnotes comment on individual difficulties and offer help with references to other authors and commentators , outlining in detail Aristotle's lines of argument. There is a full bibliography and an excellent index to the Introduction and Notes. An Additional Note, on Aristotle's dynamics, shows that, mistaken as it is in part, the dynamics is far more systematic and complete than most commentators, ancient and modern, have made out. A second Additional Note, of which Mr. Hussey promises a longer version, is on Aristotle 's philosophy of mathematics. He describes Aristotle as "determinedly realist" and as a "finitist," and shows the importance of realizing that it "is precisely part of Aristotle's finitism that he would refuse to treat, as something existent, a collection of which not all the members were existent at the time of speaking" (xx...

Platonic love, transference love, and love in real life.

Plato and Freud transformed our way of looking at love. In Plato's Dialogues one can trace the transition and transformation of the mythical view on love into philosophical conceptualizations. The waning of the mythical point of view created the demand for man to know himself, and love became a puzzle. Plato was the first to propose that erotic impulses can undergo sublimation to higher and desexualized aims. Freud was not a Platonist, but if we trace the history of certain ideas it becomes evident that Plato's influence on Freud went further and deeper than was assumed by previous psychoanalytic writers. Freud's conceptualization of the libido can be seen as a Latinized version of Plato's Eros. Some of the difficulties associated with the psychoanalytic use of the term sublimation go back to the Platonic origin of the term. Freud's conviction that tender and aim-inhibited love was a later transformation of sexual impulses also went back to Plato, as did his belief that aim-inhibited love endures longer than sexual love. Because erotic love impulses can be sublimated, transference love can be harnessed in the service of cure based on insight. Erotized transference is not based on the refinding of an early love object and therefore is less capable of yielding the therapeutic climate required for psychoanalytic treatment. Freud's treatment procedure confirms Plato's belief in the plasticity of Eros.

Joseph Campbell's Theory of Myth: An Essay Review of his Oeuvre

Joseph Campbell has been writing about myth since 1943, and his most recent book, The Mythic Image (1974), is the culmination of his lifelong study of the subject. Since 1943 Campbell's view of myth has remained not only virtually unaltered but also virtually unproved. Campbell offers no arguments for any of his various assertions about myth: that modern society is in turmoil because modern man finds life meaningless; that modern man finds life meaningless because he has no myths, which alone give life meaning, that modern man has no myths because science precludes his acceptance of myths at the literal level; that the real meaning of myth is not, however, literal but symbolic; that the symbolic meaning of myth is psychological; that the psychological meaning of myth is Jungian; that when so understood, myth is acceptable to modern man; and that when accepted, myth can give life meaning and thereby end the turmoil of modern society. Rather than arguments, Campbell offers examples, but, subject as all of them are to alternative interpretations, they do not suffice. Finally, Campbell at times contradicts or qualifies his own otherwise dogmatic interpretation.

Euripides' Bacchae: Conflict and Mediation

For theBacchaeLévi-Strauss' view of myth as concerned with the mediation of fundamental polarities is both fruitful and fruitfully inadequate. The conflicts between Pentheus and Dionysus clearly involve an opposition of city and wild, culture and nature, rationality and emotion, male and female. Further in the background stands another series of antitheses: mortal and immortal, man and beast, Greek and barbarian, heavens and earth, fire and water. Like much of Greek literature, theBacchaeis founded on the proportion, mortal: immortal :: beast : man. That proportion, in turn, is part of an encompassing cosmic order which distinguishes the three basic categories of animate beings: god, man, and beast. What is unique and disturbing about this play is the thoroughness and violence of the reversals which take place in a situation in which god fuses with beast and beast with man.

Cause and Prevention of Dust from Automobiles

IN reply to Mr. Elsden, I agree that it is of no use to hold mythical views. I think, however, that he is really mistaken in his views that the slag in “Tarmac” is not penetrated by the tar. Possibly it may not be penetrated by the most viscous constituents, but upon examining a broken piece of “Tarmac” I have found that the surface is distinctly darker than that of slag which has not been treated. The difference is very noticeable under the microscope, and if a bit of slag from the interior of a treated portion is heated the tar is readily seen, which fact appears to be conclusive evidence that penetration by the tar takes place. I do not, however, suppose that the penetration is very uniform, as slag is not a very uniform material, and therefore in some parts the effect might not be so evident.