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The following is excerpted from The Huffington Post's article Mythology and Science; Or, What Do We Want From Popular Science? by Gregory Schrempp.
In my allergist's office, a flashy poster announces "10 myths about allergies." It's a common format. The internet is littered with infomercials shouting, "the five myths of weight loss," "a dozen myths about organic food," "dangerous myths about pet care" — all followed by widely-circulating beliefs that modern science deems false. These announcements have deep roots, for millennia before it became a foil for science, myth served as foil for the nascent movement called philosophy. But some intellectual historians — notably Luc Brisson in How Philosophers Saved Myths – have shown how those early philosophical opponents of myth had trouble letting go of their own mythic impulses.
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Popular science writers often refer to archaic mythologies as though these are entirely uninterested in empirical truth; but in fact most traditional mythologies offer astute (for their time) observations about nature. It would be more accurate to define the "mythic" as a readiness to parlay the best empirical understanding of the cosmos (of whatever time and place) into aesthetically and morally compelling visions.
Is myth good or bad? Since Plato we have been profoundly ambivalent. Still, to an academic mythologist — one who is vocal in support of science and science education — the tendency of popular science writers to proclaim a stark dichotomy between science and myth, only to employ mythic strategies in service to their moral visions — these features are profoundly irritating. The fashionable opposition of mythology to science — whether boldly asserted, then undermined in a book of popular science or plastered onto an eye-catching poster — does little to bolster the authority of its authors and in the end undermines the call to critical rigor they proclaim.
Further Reading
The Ancient Mythology of Modern Science
A Mythologist Looks (Seriously) at Popular Science Writing
By Gregory Schrempp
Humans have long been captivated by mythology and theorized about the lessons embedded in their tales. In The Ancient Mythology of Modern Science, Gregory Schrempp brings a mythologist's critical eye to popular science writing, a flourishing genre that forms a key link between science and popular consciousness. Schrempp argues that the defining and appealing characteristic of this genre is not simplification or "dumbing-down," but the attempt to parlay scientific findings into aesthetically and morally compelling visions that offer guidance for humanity.
To learn more about The Ancient Mythology of Modern Science or to order online, click here.
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