Myths are found in all cultural regions of the Ancient World. Mythology – a systematized, universal form of social consciousness and a spiritual and practical way of mastering the world of primitive society. This is historically the first attempt to give a coherent answer to people’s ideological questions, to satisfy their need for world understanding and self-determination. Any myth is a narrative on one or another ideological topic - about the world order, about the origin of the human race, about the elements, gods, titans, heroes.
Ancient myths are widely known - detailed stories of the ancient Greeks and Romans about gods, titans, heroes, and fantastic animals. Research by scientists has shown that myths are represented in one form or another among all peoples of the world. Individual elements of mythological creativity, as well as branched systems, have been discovered among the ancient Iranians, Indians, Germans, and Slavs. The myths of the peoples of Africa, America, and Australia are of great interest from the point of view of cultural history.
As the oldest form of spiritual life of mankind, myths, first of all, represent the earliest, corresponding to primitive society way of perceiving the world , interpretation of the surrounding reality and the person himself. Almost all the basic elements of ideological consciousness as such are reflected here - the problems of the origin of the world ( cosmogonic myths ) and human ( anthropogonic myths ), problems of birth and death, fate, the meaning of life, human destiny ( meaningful life myths ), questions of the future, prophecies about the “end of the world” ( eschatological myths ) etc. Along with this, an important place is occupied by myths about the appearance of certain cultural goods : about making fire, agriculture, the invention of crafts, as well as the establishment of certain social rules, customs and rituals among people.
Mythology is characterized by its own spatiotemporal structure. Any event discussed in this type of narrative refers to the distant past - to mythological time. Thus, sacred ( "sacred" ) time is strictly separated from "profane" , i.e. empirical, “real” time . In the history of culture, the period of dominance of archaic consciousness is characterized by the fact that in myth the separation of the ideal and the material, the image and the object, meaning and meaning was removed.
Concept by A.F. Losev
A. F. Losev (1893—1988)
One of the outstanding researchers of mythology is the Russian philosopher and philologist Alexey Fedorovich Losev . Arguing that now “it is already illiteracy to identify mythology with poetry, with science, with morality, with art,” A. F. Losev tries separate mythology from religion , myth from religious beliefs, consider myth outside the context of religious ideas and actions: “Myth, taken by itself,” writes A.F. Losev, “has no significant relation to religious beliefs, although it is connected with them as a primitive era, and in later times." It is from such non-religious mythology that, according to A.F. Losev, philosophy arises. Its only source is pre-philosophical myth.
The philosopher questions the cognitive function of myth. In the article “Mythology” A.F. Losev writes: “It has become customary to understand myth as an attempt to explain or understand nature and society by primitive man. This is incorrect, since any explanation of nature and society, even the most mythological one, is already the result of rational knowledge and thereby differs sharply from myth, which has anything but a cognitive function.”. According to the philosopher myth is “a living, animate and ultimately anthropomorphic understanding of existence ". But, being an understanding of existence, myth is still not its explanation. It arises not at all as an attempt by primitive man to explain the mysterious phenomena of the real world around him, but as “the outward projection of primitive communal relations based on the absolutization of tribal life.” Myth - this is an “explanation” through the transference of relationships between people characteristic of a primitive communal formation (tribal sociomorphism), as well as human properties (anthropomorphism).
A.F. Losev also touches on the question of how philosophy arises . He writes about the emergence of philosophy as the transformation of myth into its opposite: “Clan life created mythology - what does the slaveholding formation create? With the transition to slavery, the myth, obviously, must also turn into its opposite.” On the pages of the same book it is repeatedly emphasized that philosophy differs from mythology in content only in that the first is not anthropomorphic, while the second is anthropomorphic.
In his work “Dialectics of Myth” A.F. Losev identifies six theses that alternately phenomenologically detail the concept of myth :
«... 1 . Myth is not an invention or fiction, is not a fantastic invention, but - logically, i.e. first of all dialectically, necessary category of consciousness and being me in general.
2. Myth is not an ideal being, but a vitally felt and created material reality.
3. Myth is not a scientific, and in particular, primitive scientific, construction, but - living subject-object interaction, containing its own, extra-scientific, purely mythical truth, reliability, fundamental regularity and structure.
4. Myth is not a metaphysical construction, but - real, materially and sensually created reality, which is at the same time detached from the normal course of events, and, therefore, containing different degrees of hierarchy, different degrees of detachment.
5. Myth is neither a diagram nor an allegory, but symbol; and, already being a symbol, it can contain schematic, allegorical and life-symbolic layers.
6. Myth is not a poetic work, but its detachment is the erection of isolated and abstract things in an intuitive instinctive and primitive biological sphere related to the human subject, where they unite into one inseparable, organically fused unity."
According to the above theses, the thinker identifies the following definition of myth: “...Myth is such a dialectically necessary category of consciousness and being (1) , which is given as a material-vital reality (2) subject-object, structurally executed (in a certain image) interaction (3) , where life, detached from isolated abstract thingness (4) symbolically (5) transformed into a pre-reflective-instinctive, intuitively understood intelligent-energetic face (6) » . In short: myth is an intelligently given symbol of life, the necessity of which is dialectically obvious. Even more clearly: myth is the symbolically given intelligence of life. And for Losev, the symbolically realized intelligentsia is a personality, and, therefore, a myth is a personality, a personal being or an image of a personal being, the face of a personality.
Myth in Losev's understanding – the identity of the ideal and the material, ideas and matter. Myth – the formation of an idea as being in a symbol, and this symbolism is applicable to any fact-phenomena that fall into the field of conscious activity of the researcher. External manifestation of myth – a symbol, and if a symbol is manifested in a person, it becomes a name. The meaning or essence of an idea, formalized as a name, is synthesized in the personality; the idea, myth, symbol, the personality itself, the energy of the essence, the name are inextricably linked in it... So, a myth is always a word, “myth is in words this personal story » .
In such a concept of myth (hence – world) in a unique way mixed and synthesized, at first glance, opposite, contradictory and irreducible teachings, the understanding of which leads researchers to various conclusions « Losev's main formula » . This unusual confusion leads Losev to synthesizing in one category the concepts of personality, history, words , ...and this category – "miracle » . Dialectics of myth as a miracle – here is a pure description of the phenomenon of myth in itself, considered from the point of view of myth itself, where the miracle – the coincidence of the randomly occurring empirical history of the individual with his ideal task. "Myth is a miracle » – This is the formula that covers all the antinomies and antitheses considered.
Thus, the category of myth by A.F. Losev is a synthesis of four concepts – personalities, stories, miracles and words . The close connection between Losev's doctrine of name and the doctrine of myth is obvious: one cannot exist without the other, and because of this we can say – the dialectic of myth in Losev’s teaching is nothing more than his teaching in itself, his teaching as a myth, as “in words this wonderful personal story » .
Concept by K. Lévi-Strauss
C. Lévi-Strauss (1908—2009)
A modern idea of the structure of myth was first given by a French ethnographer, sociologist and cultural scientist Claude Lévi-Strauss . In his understanding, myth always refers to events of the past, but the meaning of myth is that these events, which took place at a certain point in time, exist outside of time. Myth equally explains the past, present and future.
To understand this diversity underlying myths, the thinker turns to a comparison of mythology with political ideology: “So what does a historian do when he mentions the French Revolution? He refers to a whole series of past events, the distant consequences of which, of course, are felt by us, although they reached us through a number of intermediate irreversible events. But for the politician and for those who listen to him, the French Revolution corresponds to the other side of reality: this sequence of past events remains a scheme that retains its vitality and makes it possible to explain the social structure of modern France, its contradictions and predict the path of its development. This dual structure, at once historical and ahistorical, explains how myth can simultaneously relate to speech (and as such be analyzed) and to language (in which it is expressed). But beyond that, it also has a third level, at which it can be considered as something absolute. This third level also has a linguistic nature, but different from the first two.".
K. Lévi-Strauss notes that the place that myth occupies among other types of linguistic utterances is directly opposite to poetry, whatever their similarities. Poetry is extremely difficult to translate into another language, and any translation entails numerous distortions. The value of myth, as such, on the contrary, cannot be destroyed even by the worst translation. The fact is that the essence of a myth is not the style, not the form of the narrative, not the syntax, but the story told in it. “Myth is a language, but this language operates at the highest level, at which meaning manages, so to speak, to separate itself from the linguistic basis on which it was formed ».
C. Lévi-Strauss expressed the following the hypothesis that the essence of a myth is bundles of relationships and as a result of combinations of these bundles the constituent units of the myth are formed , acquiring functional significance. The relations included in one bundle may appear, if we consider them from a diachronic point of view, at a certain distance from each other, but if we can combine them in their “natural” combination, we will thereby be able to present myth as a function of a new system of temporal reference, which satisfies the initial assumptions. In fact, following Vladimir Propp, he tried to establish the structure of myth, grouping it by function.
The structure of myth about Oedipus is decomposed by him into four columns (see Fig. 1), in each of which the relations included in one bundle are grouped. If we want tell myth, you need to, without paying attention to the columns, read the rows from left to right and from top to bottom. But if we want it understand , then one of these directions, associated with diachrony (top to bottom), loses its functional significance, and we read from left to right, column by column, and consider each column as a single whole.
Rice. 1. The structure of the Oedipus myth
IN first events occurred that can be described as a revaluation of family relationships. This is, for example, « Oedipus marries his mother Jocasta » . In second column presents the same relationships with the opposite sign, this underestimation of family relationships, for example « Oedipus kills his father Laius » . Third the column talks about monsters and their destruction. IN fourth The bad thing is that three heroes have difficulty using their limbs (there is a lame man, a left-handed man, and a thick-legged man). All this gives him the opportunity to answer the question: why is the constant repetition of situations so significant in unwritten literature? He gives the following answer:
« Repetition has a special function, namely, it reveals the structure of the myth. Indeed, we have shown that the synchronic-diachronic structure characteristic of myth allows us to organize the structural elements of myth into diachronic sequences (rows in our tables), which must be read synchronously (in columns). Thus, every myth has a layered structure, which on the surface, so to speak, is revealed in the very technique of repetition and thanks to it» .
However, the thinker notes, the layers of myth are never strictly identical. Assuming that the purpose of the myth – give a logical model for resolving a certain contradiction (which is impossible if the contradiction is real), then we will have a theoretically infinite number of layers, and each will be slightly different from the previous one. The myth will develop as if according to spirals , until the intellectual impulse that gave rise to this myth is exhausted. Means, height myth is continuous, unlike its structures , which remains intermittent. Lévi-Strauss explains his emphasis on structure as follows: « The structure does not have a separate content: it itself is content, enclosed in a logical form, understood as a property of reality» .
Literature:
1. Shulyatikov V. Justification of capitalism in Western European philosophy. From Descartes to E. Mach. M., 1908, p. 6.
2. Losev A.F. Mythology. – Philosophical Encyclopedia. M., 1964, vol. 3.
3. Losev A. F. History of ancient aesthetics (early classics). M., 1963.
4. Losev A.F. Dialectics of myth. // Losev A. F. Myth. Number. Essence. M. 1994.
5. Levi-Strauss K. Structural anthropology. - M., 1985.
6. Levi-Strauss K. Structure and form. Reflections on one of the works of Vladimir Propp // Foreign studies on the semiotics of folklore. - M., 1985.
B – 24. Origin and essence of myth.
There is no generally accepted concept interpreting the origin and essence of myths. Evolutionist theories dominated in the second half of the 19th century. Their development is associated with the names of O. Comte, E. Durkheim, L. Levy-Bruhl, E.B. Tylor and others. Then a scientific myth arose, based on the mythology of “primitive society,” the general stage of development of all peoples. In evolutionist theories, myth appears to be a form of undeveloped consciousness characteristic of this early stage of human development. The myth seemed to be a purely historical phenomenon, from which humanity, in the process of maturing, growing up, had gone far ahead in the process of continuous progress, the transition from simple to complex.
Eugerism. The founder of this theory, Euhemerus of Messenia, is an ancient Greek. writer and philosopher IV – III centuries. BC. It is named after him. Euhemerus looked for objective content in myths. He proceeds from the assumption that there are two categories of deities: idle gods who do not interfere in human affairs, and folk gods who participate in the life of the world. These folk gods are actually just ancient people. In Europe, Euhemerus' ideas were revived in the 19th century. They were developed by him. uch. O. Kaspari. The 20th century scientist R. Graves explained the myths of Greece in a similar way. In his interpretation, the plot of the abduction of Europe by Zeus conceals the history of the raids of the Hellenes - the Cretans on the Phoenicians, etc. In the Egyptian myth of Osiris, euhemerists saw a reflection of the ancient struggle of kingdoms in the Nile Valley. Some myths have a historical basis. For example, myths about the Trojan War and the death of heroes. After the discoveries of Heinrich Schliemann, the world was convinced that Troy was not fiction. Critics of Christianity A. Drews, D. Strauss, B. Bauer declared the gospel story to be fiction in the 19th century, doubted the historical existence of Jesus Christ, and other scholars. – A.D. Loman and others. But at present, few scientists doubt that Jesus Christ is a historical figure, despite the fact that His essence was understood in different ways. There is an orthodox idea: Christ is the God-man; there is a skeptical view: Jesus is a man (L. Nikolsky and others). Eugerism suffers from a lack of evidence. In the 20th century, eugerism as a way of explaining mythical imagery received unexpected support. It turned out to be quite useful in the interpretation of ideological myths. Superbeings in such myths (Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, etc.) can certainly be correlated with historical figures born Ulyanov, Dzhugashvili, Schicklgruber, etc.
Naturalistic theory. Myth is an allegorical depiction of natural phenomena and objects. This idea was first formulated in antiquity and was revived in Europe at the end of the 18th century. K. F. Dornedden believed that the myths of Egypt are images of the annual movement of the sun and the natural processes accompanying it. K. F. Vilney and C. F. Dupuis said that the deities of myth are deified forces of nature, especially the sun in its cyclical movement.
In the 19th century In the science of myth, the “mythological school” of scientists - evolutionists (M. Müller, A. Kuhn, A. Afanasyev, O. Miller, A. Kotlyarevsky), who rejected the supernatural basis of myth-making, declared itself. Thus, the myth of Osiris was interpreted as a myth of farmers, the history of grain. Naturalists assumed that the content of the myth was connected with the everyday circumstances of an ancient man included in the natural environment. Myth is a reflection of man’s dependence on this environment; it is a consequence of man’s fusion with the natural world.
Linguistic theory connected with the naturalistic one, it was proposed by M. Muller to explain how myth actually arises. The origin of the myth is connected with the characteristics of the language, first of all, the ancient language. Man needed to name phenomena and things, but the resources of language were limited.
Scientist theory. The question of the origin and role of myths was solved in its own way by the English. Anthropological school of the 19th century. (E. Lang, E.B. Tylor, G. Spencer). The scientistic theory is evolutionary in nature and is associated with the positivist philosophy of history. The myth was interpreted as a historical phenomenon. Myth is a specific means of understanding the world for ancient man - the “savage”; expression of his needs to explain reality, curiosity. Myth is an attempt to rationalistically explain difficult-to-explain things, to grasp logic in the chaos of existence. Myth is a science, it is a conscious, intellectual activity. Man had very few means of knowledge. This is a primitive science showing the fantastic genesis of things. In its content it is rather primitive natural philosophy. Hence the non-selectivity of the logic of myth (several versions of cosmogony, in Egypt the sky is a cow, a river).
Non-evolutionist theories of the origin and essence of myth. Back in the 18th century. Enlightenment scientists (B. Fontenelle and others) interpreted the myth as a fruit of ignorance, as a bizarre fiction. Voltaire declared myth to be the fruit of deception and self-interest. Great influence on the theories of myth of the 20th century. provided by F. Nietzsche. He said that myth is not a rationalistic abstraction, allegory, etc. Myth does not solve cognitive problems. He does not express a desire for truth. Myth, according to Nietzsche, is the homeland, the mother's womb of humanity, a way of being, the law of life. Anti-evolutionist theories dominated the 20th century.
Ritualistic theory. The founder of this direction in the explanation of myth is D.D. Frazer, author of the enormous work The Golden Bough. His views were developed in the Cambridge school of researchers (D. Harrison, F. Raglan, A.B. Kuhn, H.G. Esther, etc.). In Russia, V.Ya. was close to this theory. Propp. Scientists of the ritualistic school in the 20th century argued that myth-making is not a cognitive activity. It is in vain, from their point of view, to look for something reliable in myth and historical realities. In the ritualistic theory of myth, two phenomena are associated - myth and ritual. Lord F. Raglan said that shaking hands is a ritual whose myth is the word “goodbye”. Ritual is an extremely significant cultural form. It is a way of communicating with some external forces, with another being, a way of entering another reality, communion with something else, often with the highest. Ritualists proceeded from the fact that word and action are fused, and that ritual is primary. A myth is a record, a transcript, a verbal cast of a rite, a ritual; accompanying text for the ritual; verbal imitation of the ritual. The disadvantage of this theory is that it leaves aside the spiritual content and meaning of myths. The true meaning of the ritual is usually not explained. The whole point comes down to stating the connection between myth and ritual.
Psychoanalytic and psychosubjectivist theories of myth. Myth is a creation of the human soul. These theories are based on obvious facts. Myth exists in the human mind and is inseparable from mental processes. And at the same time, myths have a certain obligatory nature. A person does not invent them, but takes them from somewhere as if ready-made. One of the largest representatives of this trend, D. Campbell, wrote that mythological symbols are not a product of arbitrariness; they cannot be brought to life by the will of reason, invented and suppressed with impunity. They are a spontaneous product of the psyche, and each of them carries within itself in the germ untouched all the power of its original sources.
Freud's theory. Freud suggested that in the human soul there is such a deep layer of consciousness called the subconscious, unconscious. This is the lowest floor of human consciousness, an irrational, unconscious element. Of course, even without Freud it was known that the human soul is not reducible to reason, that it is fraught with mysteries, but Frey gave this understanding a form that satisfied the scientific taste of the era. Frey concludes: it is precisely this element of the unconscious that comes out, is objectified, embodied in figurative fabric with images of sleep and dreams, images of myths. Thus, it is not dreams and fantasies that are the source of myths, as Wundt said, but dreams, fantasies and myths are a product of the unconscious. On the one hand, Freud’s myth turned out to be a product of the individual psyche (psyche is, in fact, a pseudonym for the concept of “soul” in the science of the 19th – 20th centuries). On the other hand, this psyche is fundamentally universal. The similarity of myths of different peoples is a reflection of the universality of this element of the unconscious. Freud absolutized the idea that the content of myths is exclusively a reflection of a person’s unconscious desires, fears and conflicts. He saw no other meaning in the images of myth. For him, mythology is an external, objectified psychology, and nothing more (libido energy comes out, the Oedipus complex, the Electra complex). It is believed that Freud's teachings arose from the practice of treating the neuroses of modern man. By analogy, Freud considered ancient man to be neurotic, and archaic rituals to be mass neurosis. Freud considered myth a transitional form of consciousness. Which should be replaced by strict science (the idea of three phases: in the animistic phase, a person ascribes power to himself, in the religious phase, he submits to the gods, in the scientific phase, he admits his insignificance and humbly submits to death). In the last period of his activity, Freud identified two basic instincts that initiated myths: the instinct of self-preservation (Eros) - and the instinct of destruction, the death drive (Thanatos).
Jung's theory. A popular version of the psychosubjectivist theory was proposed by K.G. Jung. Myth is, according to Jung, the language of the soul. It is like a dream. Jung, like Freud, believed that myths are involuntary statements about events in a person’s unconscious. The unconscious, Jung said, has two levels. 1st – superficially – personal, associated with personal experience and being a container of psychopathological complexes. 2nd – collective inherited layer – deep subsoil. The collective unconscious belongs to all people, more or less equally in each and every person, and has an innate character. This is the third tier of consciousness, its bottom. It no longer contains complexes, but archetypes; it is a storehouse of archetypes, the number of which is equal to the number of “typical life situations.” Taxonomy of the main archetypes - shadow, persona, self, Anima and Animus, wise old man/child. Jung said that the archetypal basis of myths is the process of individualization. Myths are the story of a miraculous birth, growing up, achievements and adversities of the main character, marriage and the trials that accompany it, death, immortality, rebirth. At a certain moment in a person’s life, one or another myth, through one or another actualization of the archetypes of the collective unconscious, reveals to him the truth of himself and comes to the aid of a person. The myth of Oedipus, according to Jung, is a myth of human self-knowledge. Unlike Freud, Jung considered myth a constant spiritual force in human life. Thanks to myths, man has withstood the trials of thousands of years, and myths will never be replaced by science.
Psychoanalytic interpretation of the myth by J. Campbell. For him, myth is a product of the unconscious; in this it is similar to a dream. A dream is a personified myth, and a myth is a depersonalized dream; Both myth and dream symbolically express the dynamics of the psyche in the same way. But in a dream, the images are distorted by the specific problems of the dreamer, while in the myth their solutions are presented in a form that is directly unambiguous for all humanity. Campbell connects myth-making with the spiritual maturation of a person; he emphasizes the stepwise penetration of a person to the universal, generally significant sources of being. A person goes through this path alone, but the truth revealed to him is universally significant where he becomes a “man of eternity.”
Sociological theory. This theory, still popular today, somehow connects myth and society. What does the myth reflect? Their answer to this question was given at the turn of the 19th – 20th centuries. E. Durkheim, L. Levy-Bruhl, E. Cassirer and others. According to their views, fantastic images of myth are a transference of social norms and collective delirium of the community onto the surrounding world. Durkheim said that myth is formed and modeled by a self-sufficient collective soul, the collective consciousness of a particular social organization. He explained the appearance of myths by the need to unite and discipline the team, giving it a common faith and an explanation for the rituals performed together. Durkheim believed that the main function of myth is to adapt the behavior of an individual to a group norm.
Functionalist theory. The creator of the strictly functionalist theory of myth is the English. ethnologist and mythologist 1st half. XX century Bronislaw Malinowski. He reasoned that culture is a means of satisfying basic human needs. It serves three basic needs: basic (in ensuring the physical conditions of existence), derivative (in the distribution of food, division of labor, protection, regulation of reproduction, social control) and integrative (in mental safety, social harmony, the purpose of life, the cognitive system, laws, religion, magic, art, myths). Accordingly, myth must be understood in accordance with the function it performs, with its purpose, and be linked to the needs that generated it. Myth is an active force. It plays a practical role in society. Myth is very important for social life. Myth is a law in words. A myth is a collection of legal norms. And in this capacity it is brought to life by the needs of public improvement and the sustainability of society. The task of myth is to consolidate cultural habits, develop ideas, and value orientations. Myth strengthens public morality, proves the expediency of ritual, and contains practical rules of human behavior.
Symbolic theories of myth based on idealistic foundations. They proceed from the fact that myth is intimate evidence, a projection of the world in images. Myth is not a fiction, not a human creation at its core. Myth is reality, not a phantom of human consciousness. The origins of this approach are I.V. Goethe, F. Schiller and others, who identified myth, poetry and truth. A symbol has a super-personal meaning. A symbol is a manifestation of the existential absolute, a manifestation of the infinite in a finite and sensual image, a means of divine revelation. The two poles of meaning are the objective image and the deep meaning. The meaning shines through the image. The image has semantic depth and perspective. Usually meaning is opposed to allegory. Allegory is not a direct, but a conditional assimilation to another being, a conditional expression of a projective idea. An allegory depicts either something that never really existed in such a concrete form, or a completely abstract concept.
A.F. Losev asserts in “Dialectics of Myth” that myth is not allegorical, the idea and the image are identical. Myth is not an abstract concept, but “the brightest and most authentic reality.” A.F. Losev spoke about the self-sufficiency of myth: if there is something different between the reality of myth and actual reality, it is that it is “stronger, often incomparably more intense and massive, more realistic and physical.” This quality of authenticity allows us to define myth as a miracle. In him, through it, the miraculous breaks through into the world and the miracle is created continuously. A miracle is the coincidence of existence with the primary idea, the prototype, the expression and fulfillment (at least for a minute) of the prototype entirely, through and through. There is a manifestation of God in the world.
Transcendentalism. This view of myth developed in the 19th century. Its supporters believed that the value of a myth is relative. A person has to liberate himself from myth in order to achieve greater clarity in comprehending the truth. But myth also contains truth - only incomplete, partial. Hegel believed that myth is only a moment of self-disclosure of the absolute spirit. It is being replaced by the pinnacle form of such revelation—philosophy. Schelling substantiated in detail the place of myth in culture. He sees a providential plan in the appearance of myths. Myth is objective, not subjective. It is created by human consciousness with inevitability, and is not invented, not composed by individual representatives of the human race - poets, sages, etc. Human consciousness is realized here involuntarily and not by chance. It moves with inevitability. Man inevitably posits God. Myth is the result of God’s self-unfolding. A theogonic process takes place in human consciousness. According to Schelling, myths reflected the historical moments of the relationship between God and humanity, since the system of myths is not just a doctrine about the gods, but also the history of the gods. Myths are a real theogony, the history of the gods. To find truth in a myth, one must consider not its individual representations, not moments, but their sequence, conjugation. The individual in myth is false.
Symbolic evolutionism. Representatives of this direction are H. Heine, F. Schlegel, J. Grimm, W. Schmidt. According to this version, the most sublime and pure knowledge of God, pure religion, is primary. God was given to man in revelation. Man initially saw God without distortion. In ancient times, knowledge of God was natural; any experience was perceived as divine and was so. Myth is rather a set of delusions of intuition wandering in the dark, the result of separation from God and forgetting Him.
Symbolic mysticism. According to this theory, myth is the result of a person's meeting with God. This meeting takes place according to the will of God, where and how He wants. What is primary is epiphany: the appearance of God. The myth emerges “from the timeless depths above which is the island of men.” Man, the transmitter of myth, is only a medium through which the highest truth flows. According to R. Otto, numinous experience is a spiritual experience, indicating the presence of the Divine, inspiring awe, causing horror; a terrifying and bewitching mystery, unknowable, eternal, alluring and subjugating; standing before the Entirely Other. The numinous does not belong to our world. M. Eliade noted that myth is the “sacred history” of breakthroughs of the transcendental or supernatural into our world. Myth is the recording of mystical, numinous spiritual experience, the sound and light of divine truth, a mystical breakthrough beyond the surface of things, into their essence, a response to a call. Myth - interpretation, exegesis of a symbol. Moreover, from the point of view of myth, “the divine is the most self-evident” (K. Kerenyi).
Symbolic functionalism (myth and religion). The emphasis is on the functional aspects of the myth when understanding it as a symbol of the highest reality. If myths were fiction, lies, or simple psychological projections, then it is unlikely that they could have existed for so long and played such a decisive role in human history. (D. Birline). Myth enables a person to live and survive in an imperfect world and unites people. Myth is part of a stable religious system. Religion connects a person with God. Myth testifies. It captures absolute reality. Myth is the content of faith in a higher being. Myth as part of religion has a directly practical purpose. In this case, its function is emphasized. From the point of view of scientists who saw in myth a symbol of a higher being, myth has a practical task of a special kind, a ritual task. In the middle of the 20th century, symbolism and functionalism were combined by K. Kerenyi and V.F. Otto. Man does not originally belong to this world. He belongs to another world, which he has lost. He strives to “return” to this lost reality, in other words, to join the eternal. The idea of returning through myth was developed in detail by M. Eliade. Archetypally, this plot is depicted in the Gospel of Luke, in the parable of the prodigal son, captured by Rembrandt in his great painting. Return has two main aspects: epistemological and mystical. Return is, firstly, deep self-knowledge. By comprehending myth, a person comprehends himself, the meaning of his existence. Human suffering, in particular, receives justification as long as it corresponds to a certain prototype; it is not without cause and not arbitrary. Myth is, secondly, a way to mystically experience eternity in reality. This happens at the moment of ritual reproduction of the myth; a person is literally included in his world, the world of sacrum. Myth allows you to experience the presence of God, participate in divine life, and be in eternity.
The ability of a myth to self-organize does not mean that it is formed and spreads spontaneously, since its spread is based not only on the properties of mass consciousness, but also on people’s natural interest. But the culture that emerged from the myth and is built on it is in no hurry to reveal this connection, relying on the irrational.
Science is a different matter. It has its own special, logically justified and generally negative attitude towards myths, although it is not completely alien to myth-making. Philosophy also still has a negative attitude towards myths and their influence on the scientific and social process, and judging by the most typical statements, it can be considered a priori decided. An example of this is the harsh assessment of myth as an “insidious”, “poisoned weapon”, a “social drug” leading “to the distortion of the normal perception of personal and public consciousness”, opposing science and playing a clearly negative role in society.
The basis of the attitude of science to myth is the requirement to return to common sense and live according to “scientifically verified theories”, because the world as a whole rests on reasonable foundations (the idea of a rational worldview), and myth as a pre-scientific “primitive” form of consciousness is extra-scientific and should be “scientific” worldview" has been overcome. Thus, relying on evolutionism, reductionism and rationalism, science tried to limit the action of myth to the sphere of culture and hastened to declare itself a zone free from it.
As a result, for most people, myth has become synonymous with non-existence, non-existence, fiction, false fantasy, and science in most cases shares this point of view. And even in those few cases when the origins of myth are nevertheless derived from natural and practically unchangeable processes, immanently characteristic of both society in general and man in particular, the role of myth in society is still generally assessed negatively.
In them, the “lie of myth” is opposed to “scientific truth,” which is not only “pure” of it, but is also fundamentally incompatible with it. The only exceptions in this case are certain areas and branches of the social sciences placed at the service of the authorities. These sciences are subject to mythologization to the extent that they serve the authorities that are opposed to the masses and interested in deceiving them.
In other cases, science vigilantly stands guard at the threshold of truth, cognizing it and reserving for itself the exclusive right to determine the truth of certain hypotheses, theories and ideas. This generally accepted point of view points to a serious misconception in the “scientific” methods of studying mythology in general, and social mythology in particular. In fact, “in art and science... not only is myth-making possible, but it literally overwhelms them.” And this is explained not only by the inevitable limitations of science, but also by the need for its control over the volitional and mental processes, in its constant assessment and revaluation of the content of mass social and political orientations, which force science to actively intervene in the process of myth-making and constantly engage in it.
Being a sphere of human activity for the development and theoretical systematization of objective knowledge about reality, science has become a special productive force of society and its social institution. Structurally, it includes activities to obtain new knowledge (science-research) and the sum of scientific knowledge that together form a scientific picture of the world (science-worldview).
Based on the results of ongoing scientific research, philosophy performs in science the functions of a methodology of cognition and ideological interpretation of the facts supplied by science, appropriately explaining the world, its structure and development, forming the so-called. a scientific picture of the world, that is, that system of ideas that will correspond to the level of development of modern science, creating a holistic picture of ideas about the world, its general properties and patterns, resulting from the generalization and synthesis of basic natural science concepts and principles, built on the basis of a certain fundamental scientific theory . There is nothing special in creating such a picture if it were not for the identification of the scientific model with reality. According to the principle: the world is as we now imagine it.
The active involvement of science in myth-making, with its negative attitude towards myth in general, causes some bewilderment, which makes one think that it is beneficial for science not to admit its natural imperfections and persistently demonstrate scientific snobbery. But myth, as a phenomenon immanently inherent in man and society, does not initially carry a negative or positive charge. The person himself gives it such a charge. With your desires, thoughts, words and actions. There are no poisons or medicines, everything depends on the dose, said the great physician Paracelsus. And this applies to myth. The myth itself is not dangerous. It is a natural given, inherent in society and man, their psychology and way of perceiving the world. And it all depends on who set it in motion, for what purpose and on what soil it fell.
Despite the clear and obvious opposition between the world of science and the world of myths and symbols, Science, as a rule, not only does not fight myths, but actively participates in their emergence and formation. And she openly opposes only those myths that prevent her from developing herself and do not contribute to the affirmation of one or another of her ideas. Then words are heard about myths as archaic and prejudices that play a clearly negative role in society. In fact, modern science itself, in the apt expression of J. Orwell, often “fights on the side of prejudice", actively participating in the creation of their own myths, thus becoming both the object and subject of mythologization.
“Due to its specialization, science has turned into a place for the study of endless particulars, which allow it to be manipulated in the same way as social consciousness is manipulated,” H. Ortega y Gasset wrote on this occasion, immediately drawing a conclusion ruthless in its precision: ... Every science ", to the extent that it attempts to explore society or project its research onto society, is an object of manipulation." Let's add manipulations that deny, and often mutually exclude each other. And although for different scientists the same research problem will cause only minor nuances in its consideration, some shift of certain accents, projected onto everything else, they give such an amplitude of disagreements that it often becomes impossible to agree on something. Although they will talk about the same thing. And everyone will be right in their own way.
That is why we have to admit that science not only discovers and studies, but also hides, ignores, silences. She often turns a blind eye to what she does not understand, what violates the usual and threatens the dominance of the established, consciously avoiding those facts that contradict established and generally accepted scientific theories, adjusting the facts she has discovered to the generally accepted principle according to the principle: it was so because We don’t understand it any other way. But still, despite this, no matter what we talk about science, about its modern ideas, no matter how they are criticized and no matter how doubted they are, at the moment we generally have in it what can be considered the highest achievement modern scientific knowledge and human thought.
To what extent is science immune to myth? How susceptible is it to mythologization and what factors determine it? First of all, it should be noted that, using language, in a word, science already, by virtue of this, enters the zone of myth. Its result is information that is more or less perceived personally, more or less symbolized and, therefore, more or less mythologized. But maybe there is a science where personal perception is reduced to a minimum?
Denying mythology to be scientific, its opponents contrast it with “pure” exact science, science as research. Indeed, if there is a science free from myth, then we are talking primarily about such a science: “pure” science is free from ideological cliches and sensory layers, and “accurate” science deals only with numbers and experimentally verified, not subject to interpretation , facts. As for science as research, everything is somewhat different. After all, the zone of scientific research passes where knowledge borders on the unknown, where there is nothing definite and finally established, where thought, based on facts, operates only with hypotheses. But, being born in the “twilight” zone, on the border with the unknown, any hypothesis inevitably finds itself in the space of myth, and will not be subject to mythologization only to the extent that it is considered and evaluated precisely as a hypothesis. For a scientific hypothesis does not provide for conviction and a categorical statement, but for possibility and probability; not feeling, but detachment; not logic, but intuition.
Detachment from everything that makes a scientist a hostage to his own views.
On the other side, arising in conditions of a lack of information, a hypothesis is, to one degree or another, based on conjectures and conjectures. And then it turns out to be closest to myth, since it requires a special detachment (according to A.F. Losev - detachment) - symbolic, which fills the hypothesis with mythical meaning.
Unlike real science, in pure science the scientist would limit himself only to the derivation of the laws themselves, interpreting them only as hypotheses. And the development of such a science can be reduced to the replacement of some hypotheses that do not meet the level of the latest scientific discoveries, and therefore are outdated, with others that take into account the latest discoveries and, therefore, newer ones. In turn, the accumulation of new empirical data will ultimately lead to the fact that these hypotheses will sooner or later be significantly adjusted or completely replaced. And there is no tragedy in this. “For science to be science, only a hypothesis is needed and nothing more. The essence of pure science lies only in setting a hypothesis and replacing it with another, more perfect one, if there is a reason for it,” wrote A.F., analyzing this issue. Losev.
Elsewhere, developing his thought, he notes: “From a strictly scientific point of view, one can only say that now the circumstances, experimental and logical, are such that one has to accept such and such a hypothesis. You can’t vouch for anything else if you don’t want to fall into doctrine and the deification of abstract concepts. And most importantly, nothing more than this is needed for science. Everything beyond this is your own tastes.”
Of course, he was absolutely right, but we know that scientists who managed to make great discoveries in science, as a rule, did not limit themselves to considering them as hypotheses and tried to build on their basis their scientific theory, their model, extending its functioning to as large a region as possible. part of the world explored by science. Why they did this is understandable, but any attempts to go beyond scientific hypotheses are a movement along the path of mythologizing science. In this case, science as research moves into the sphere of worldview, into the area of scientific ideology, the task of which is to defend a new picture of the world until other research and discoveries made as a result of them transform it or destroy it to the ground.
Thus, they invaded the zone of myth and created their own mythology. “All these endless physicists, chemists, mechanics and astronomers have completely theological ideas about their “forces,” “laws,” matter,” “electrons,” “gases,” “liquids,” “bodies,” “heat,” “electricity.” etc. "- stated A.F. Losev. And then it becomes clear that "under those philosophical constructions that in the new philosophy were called upon to understand scientific experience, lies a very definite mythology." The only exception is abstract science; science as a system of logical and numerical patterns, that is, pure science.
One of the fading forms of mythical consciousness is belief in the omnipotence of science. Even at the dawn of the Enlightenment, having won its first victories, science considered that common sense had triumphed and, imagining itself omnipotent, declared a monopoly on the truth, which it could cognize logically m. Acting as objective and reliable knowledge, maximally verified in form and systematized in content, science has tried to fulfill this task. But the reality reflected in the course of scientific knowledge required the compilation of a scientific picture of the world. And on the basis of science-research, a science-worldview has emerged, which rather plays the role of its ideology. Humanity needs a more or less plausible picture of the world. And science fulfills this order.
But to what extent is it fulfilled, to what extent does the scientific picture correspond to reality? Apparently, as much as we will consider it as such. At a certain stage in science there was an impression that such a picture had already been created. Based on this, science, as a worldview, began to increasingly influence the conduct of scientific research, determine its strategy, and decide what is considered scientific in it and what is not. In some countries, this influence became so strong that science could develop as research only where and to the extent where and when it came to the security of society and the state.
So the thought of O. Spengler is that " there are no eternal truths... The permanence of thoughts is an illusion. The point is what kind of person found his image in them", was consigned to oblivion. And then, in addition to the objective reasons prompting voluntary or involuntary mythologization, science received a real incentive to continue this process consciously and purposefully. But the knowledge initially given loses its meaning. Or it no longer has anything to do with science, although may be clothed in a “scientific” (scientific) shell. And then we read, but do not understand. We understand, but do not understand.
The dialectics of the relationship between science and myth especially highlights the problem of the mythological nature of science, its involvement in the process of social myth formation. Analyzing the relationship and relationship between science and myth, A.F. Losev argued that “myth is not science or philosophy, and has nothing to do with them,” that science does not emerge from myth, and myth does not precede science. Without challenging his conclusions in principle, let us try to clarify them.
Firstly, although science is not born from myth and is not identical to it, in real life, understood personally, it does not exist without it and, therefore, is always mythological to one degree or another.
That's why under every direction in science, more or less empirically proven, logically justified(positivism, materialism, etc.) and personally meaningful, lies its own mythology, its own mythological system. And therefore, created by people in a certain historical era, real science acquires and is accompanied by its own mythology, feeding on it and drawing from it its initial intuitions. As for the fundamental differences between science and myth, they do not determine their fundamental incompatibility and incompatibility.
Of course, myth and science are not the same thing, but some of their interconnection and dependence is quite obvious. They are not identical, but compatible and intertwined. Their relationship is dialectically natural and inevitable, because their zone of functioning almost completely coincides. Especially in the field of social and social sciences. And this factor confirms not only their intertwining, but also their periodic interchangeability, when science begins to work for myth, and myths support certain statements of science. Such processes can be denied or condemned, but they cannot be destroyed. And therefore, the most effective way to cleanse science from its inherent myths is to avoid its absolutization, to move away from its categoricalness and rigid certainty, to consider it as a continuous dialectical process, where some hypotheses fight with others, without establishing themselves in science as something unshakable and final. But, unfortunately, real science is different. It not only suggests and proves, but also inspires and propagandizes. But science, used for propaganda purposes with the aim of absolutizing certain abstract principles and hypotheses, itself becomes a myth, because in this case the essential constructions derived from the “primary myth” of the doctrine are as mythological as the particulars accompanying it.
Analysis of the relationship between science and myth leads us to the need to consider the question of whether mythology can be a branch of science? To do this you need to find out:
1) can myth and mythology have properties traditionally considered a criterion and sign of science? One of the criteria for the scientific character of a particular theory is the scientific opposition of “true” and “apparent”, “imaginable” and “real”, “essential” and “insignificant”. According to a number of myth researchers (E. Cassirer, R. Barth, S. Moscovici), myth represents significance and therefore cannot be considered from the point of view of truth. Such attempts by scientists to deny mythology some degree of truth and regularity A. F. Losev called “absurd”". And he had reasons for that. We don’t even take into account in this case the fact that the truth of myth and mythology as a sum of myths has a different character than the truth of mythology as the science of myths. After all, we are talking about truth in principle, and not about its specific form. So, in his opinion, on the one hand, myth does not contrast these categories “scientifically”, since it itself is immediate reality. But it is not correct to deny any possibility of such oppositions in myth. Myth can distinguish the true from the apparent, and the imagined from the real. But he does this not scientifically, but mythically. That is why, when contrasting science with myth, one must not “bring it to such an absurdity that mythology is characterized by absolutely no truth or, at least, regularity.”
And indeed, in any religious and ideological struggle we see our mythical truth, our criteria of truth, our laws. An example of this is, say, the struggle of Christian mythology with pagan, Orthodox with Catholic, atheistic with religious. Each of the above mythologies contains a certain structure - a certain method of the emergence of various myths and mythical images, and is aligned from the point of view of a certain criterion (inherent to it), which is true for it. This criterion is unique to it, distinguishing this mythology from others, and is one of the main arguments in their constant struggle, which, within the framework of mythical consciousness, is possible only if the category of truth is understood and the differences between the real and the imaginary are identified. When one mythological system, fighting with another, considers and evaluates everything from the point of view of “truth”. But not scientific truth, but mythical truth.
How is one different from the other? At first glance, everything is simple here. Scientific truth is based on facts and evidence, while mythical truth is based on faith. The first allows doubt, and the second excludes it. But in reality everything is much more complicated. Why?
Firstly, any system of evidence comes from the ideas of true and false, real and apparent, real and imagined. And we have already seen that a social myth, despite all its external absurdity, is always logical and demonstrative for its bearers. And therefore each of his supporters can say: I believe because I know. And no matter what we think about this, no matter how his views are criticized, he will be completely convinced that he is right until the time comes to exchange one myth for another.
Secondly, the concept of “truth” comes from the possibility of possessing “genuine knowledge” that supports conclusions about the truth of a particular scientific theory. But such “genuine” knowledge is possible only when we consider knowledge not as a complex dialectical process, but as a certain given, as an absolutely indisputable fact; as something that can never be questioned or revised. And of course, there are such facts in science. Their indisputability may not be questioned, but, as a rule, it is not possible to build a cognitive process solely on them. And in new theoretical and associative combinations, they can acquire fluidity and relativity that is not characteristic of them, or they can become meaningless particulars. And then the myth suddenly leaves the zone assigned to it by science between “genuine knowledge” and “unrecognized error” to occupy the entire sphere of knowledge; a sphere where knowledge included in the process of cognition already carries within itself an element of error and ignorance, where myths can become the support of the dominant scientific theory, or prepare its future overthrow. Where myths move (as hypotheses) and support (as a worldview) real science, which is just a product of a certain historical development.
2) are myths capable of using a system of evidence or do they rely only and exclusively on faith? “Mythology has not been proven by anything, is not provable by anything and should not be proven by anything,” says A.F. Losev. And this happens, in his opinion, because science cannot destroy or refute a myth, since it is “scientifically” irrefutable. Thus, unable to destroy the myth, science is trying with all its might to drive it into the sphere of art, into the realm of poetry and unconscious intuitions; into a zone where facts, logical evidence and life experience mean nothing. And where myth is not content with this, where “the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history or science, it is destroyed.”
That is why, according to A.F. Losev, myth is extra-scientific and cannot be based on “scientific” experience. But in our opinion this is not entirely true.
Firstly, myth may not require analysis of concepts, terminological clarity and thoughtfulness of language, conclusions brought into the system and proof of their provisions, but at the same time it is not worth simplifying. The peculiarity of a myth is the simplicity of its direct perception, when the most ordinary and scientifically unprepared person realizes, understands and accepts the myth immediately, directly and sensually. But at the same time, his perception begins with the simplest things, but is not exhausted by them. From the point of view of levels of perception and interpretation, myth is inexhaustible. Or we will exhaust it to the extent that the ideas about it of those people who perceive it are “exhaustible”, accepting it not only with their feelings, but also with their minds.
Secondly, in science itself, the provable is often built on the unprovable and self-evident (versions, hypotheses, opinions), and this or that myth is regularly “scientifically” refuted. Another thing is that these denials in no way weaken him. More precisely, the myth will be absolutely invulnerable for them as long as it is desirable for the masses. But as soon as the masses become disillusioned with him, all the previously presented evidence will become convincing and irrefutable for them.
Third, examples of modern social and political myths show the opposite. Thus, modern social and political myth is perceived not only extra-scientifically and intuitively, it is based on the social and political “experience” of states, classes, peoples and can be fully proven.
Evidence of this is the social and political myths about the leadership and guiding role of the CPSU, about the advantages of socialism and its victory in the USSR; teachings about communism, progress and universal equality; slogans in the spirit of US messianism, the doctrines of Nazism and the Cold War. These myths were not simply based on feelings, but were proven by many examples, statistical data, scientific provisions and calculations.
This situation, unfortunately, depends not only on the authorities, but also on society, which wants to “know the answers to the main problems of our time,” and after the overthrow of the church that played this role, science inevitably had to replace it to one degree or another. Based on this, it is clear that all social and political mythology, any ideology, every political doctrine, although designed for feelings, is always built on a certain kind of evidence. We can believe them or doubt them, prove them or refute them, understand that they focus not on logic, but on conviction, not on reason, but on the subconscious, but for those for whom they are designed, they will be indisputable evidence of their obvious historical and scientific correctness.
Fourth, denying the scientific nature of myth and mythology as a science, A.F. Losev himself created his own scientific theory of myth, his own mythology, logically verified, evidence-based and scientifically convincing.
3) can mythology go beyond myths? Is it capable of abstracting from them or should it be considered only as a certain sum of myths, a mythological worldview limited by the boundaries of its own mythological system? The famous expert on comparative mythology J. Campbell argued that “as a science or history, mythology is absurd.” According to A.F. Losev, mythology is not a science, but a “vital attitude towards the environment.” “Myth is not scientific in any way and does not strive for science, it ... is extra-scientific,” because it is “absolutely spontaneous and naive” [Ibid.]. It is visible, tangible, but concerns the external, sensory, private, figurative and real.
Such conclusions of A.F. Losev are in no way compatible with his other conclusions, where he claims exactly the opposite, because to reduce a myth to something “absolutely” naive, superficial, immediate means not to understand it at all. Any most spiritual, most profound mythology operates with outwardly simple sensory images, which does not negate their symbolically filled significance, the endless symbolic interpretation of their deep meaning, symbolically outlined for us. We can consider myths in themselves, as the concrete, figurative content of the worldview and worldview, and then they are concrete, immediate, sensual. And we can - as the basis of a worldview, which has its own code, its own language, its own structure, its own way of perception and understanding, as a form and way of seeing the world, where the degree of development and fullness of consciousness determines the level of depth and richness of perception.
And thus, the myth is simple and complex at the same time, superficially naive and spontaneous and at the same time symbolically inexhaustible and universal. He makes the simple complex, the ordinary extraordinary and mysterious. It turns every functionally specific thing, every person, every phenomenon into an inexhaustible microcosm, constantly appearing and hidden, appearing in everything, obvious and incomprehensible, breaking the usual connections and connecting the incompatible. It allows us to produce symbolic interpretations of everything that is significant for a person, endowing it with the symbolic meaning that it never had outside of our perception, outside of our sensations and feelings.
But in this case that is not the case. And if myth is “extra-scientific,” is all mythology doomed to be extra-scientific? In our opinion, as a collection of myths, mythology retains their characteristic features, and therefore cannot be science. But as a section that sees myths as an object of study, studying myths, their properties, the peculiarities of their emergence and functioning, the degree of their impact on people, mythology is a science and in this form will always be a science.
Bibliography
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2. Takho-Godi A. A. A. F. Losev. Integrity of life and creativity // Losev A.F. The very thing: Works. - M., ZAO Publishing House EKSMO-Press, 1999. - P.5-28.
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Origin of the Earth. Myths and theories
As long as humanity has existed, the question of how and when the Earth was formed has interested everyone. The oldest myths - ancient sacred religious tales always began with stories about the creation of the world. Perhaps the question of how and from what the Earth was born was one of the first questions with which primitive man turned to himself, barely able to take a breath and look around in the brutal struggle for existence.
Today, the explanations invented by our distant ancestors may seem naive. But if you think about them, putting aside arrogance, there is so much insightful wisdom on the yellowed pages of ancient books.
Each time put forward its own hypotheses. Why did such a seemingly abstract topic as the formation of the planet excite and continue to excite people? Let's think: where do human sciences begin? From studying the child, from the mystery of his birth. From the moment a person is born, leaving an indelible imprint on the rest of his life. Isn’t it the same thing that biology is for human life, the science of the origin of celestial bodies is cosmogony for the fate of our planet? After all, only knowing the past can you correctly plan the future. That is why each time put forward its own hypotheses, corresponding to the level of development of society, to what people knew at that time.
Timemyths
At first, our ancestors’ ideas about the world were not too different from the ideas about the area in which they lived. Except that the world seemed bigger. Mountains - more houses and huts. And mighty rivers are wider and more abundant than the streams that fed the fields.
But if the world was larger than houses and villages, then creatures stronger than humans, that is, gods, had to create and build it! How to build? The ancient Egyptians, for example, believed that the great god Khnum, like a potter, once molded a large egg from clay. The Earth and everything that surrounds it hatched from the egg.
The island peoples who lived by fishing claimed that the gods fished their islands out of the ocean.
Perhaps the most complete picture of the birth of the world was created by the ancient Greeks. “In the beginning there was Chaos - a great abyss filled with a mixture of earth, water, air and fire. - Greek rhapsodists sang, moving from village to village, from city to city. - In Chaos, full of creative forces, lurked the source of all the life of the world... - Neither the listeners nor the rhapsodes themselves understood these lines very well, and therefore the singers quickly moved on to more concrete things. - Everything arose from boundless Chaos - the whole world and the immortal gods. From Chaos came the Earth - the goddess Gaia and the Sky - the god Uranus. They spread wide and gave life to everything that grows, moves, lives and fusses..."
This was approximately the meaning of the ancient Greek myth about the beginning of the world. Not very clear, but that's how it should be. After all, where there are gods, there are secrets. While the ancient Greek gods were busy with their work - building and improving the Earth, everything went as it should. This is not an easy or responsible task; you don’t really think much about it from outsiders. But, having built the world, the celestials climbed to high Olympus and, having nothing better to do, began to interfere in human affairs, began to revel and quarrel. According to the myths, they turned out to have very eccentric and careless characters.
Meanwhile, every morning the sun rose without delay. And his path did not depend at all on the affairs that the Sun God, Helios, was doing. Also, the guardian of the night, the Moon, faithfully kept the calendar of the shepherds, not caring about the feelings of the goddess of the Moon, Selene.
A contradiction arose. On the one hand, a rather stupid company of celestials who cannot even come to an agreement among themselves. On the other hand, there is a harmonious system of the universe with an unchanging and eternal order. It is clear that doubts began to appear in the minds of some sages: “Could this undignified heavenly public even create such a perfect mechanism of the world?” And from doubt to denial there is only one step!
No, no, the ancient Greek sages did not at all attempt to deny the existence of gods. The sages perfectly understood the advantages of myths about them. After all, the gods are omnipotent and their will and deeds can explain everything for which there was not yet enough specific knowledge. And therefore the ancient Greek sages did not deny the gods. They only tried to explain the structure of the world without divine help. The questions “How and when did the world come into being?” they replaced it with the question: “How does the world work?” Here they gave free rein to their imagination and built all kinds of models...
Today it is even difficult to imagine what heights our knowledge would have reached if science had continued to develop as it began in Ancient Greece. But the path of civilization is difficult.
A new religion came to the European world with a new, harsh and formidable single god in three persons. He alone, said the Holy Scriptures, created the world and alone is right in everything. Consequently, the teachings of the ancient sages and philosophers are false and should be prohibited. That's what they did. At one “wonderful time” these teachings were consigned to oblivion and the books were burned.
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” said the holy book, the Bible. - The earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the abyss, and the spirit of God hovered over the water. And God said: Let there be light. And there was light...” The Christian god himself divided the water and the land, sowed the land with herbs and planted it with trees. He made stars and planets, the Moon and the Sun. He populated the seas with fish, and the dry land with animals, and finally created man: first he created a man named Adam, and then a woman, Eve. This is what the monks taught, and everyone had to believe this tale. “The way God created the earth,” said the holy fathers, “that’s how it will remain until the end of time!” True, not everything in this statement was logical. The monks themselves often found fossilized shells and stones with imprints of ancient fish in the mountains. “Who brought them to the high peaks?” - they asked each other and immediately ran to look for the answer in the same Bible. And there was a suitable fairy tale for this occasion.
When there were too many people on earth, they became mired in sins and forgot that they need to thank, praise and constantly fear God for everything. Forgot about him! And the great creator became angry. He sent a flood to the earth: “And the flood continued on the earth for forty days (and forty nights), and the water increased... so that all the high mountains that are under the whole sky were covered: the water rose above them fifteen cubits... »
Here is the answer to the question of who brought shells and fish to the peaks. Is not it? And whoever does not believe is a malicious heretic. Doubts from the devil-Satan. For them - to the stake!.. Try to doubt here.
Not everyone, of course, could be intimidated by fires. No, no, and someone will ask: “What did the Lord God create the earth from?” The great experience of the people clearly suggested: you can’t make anything out of nothing. And then he “created” and that’s it... And then stories began to appear that complemented the sacred history. At first they went from one storyteller to another orally. Then they started recording them. Whole books appeared. These works were called apocrypha. This meant that the plot in the stories was biblical, but the content did not coincide with the officially accepted version. The Church did not recognize the apocrypha and forbade them not only to print, but also to read.
However, readers did not want to take into account such prohibitions. They copied forbidden books by hand, rewrote them, supplemented them, introduced their own heroes, and endowed the incomprehensible god and the devil-Satan with completely human character traits, and they became closer and more understandable
“It was a long, long time ago. In those days, there was no land in the world, and there was only one boundless sea spread out all around. God was tired of such a deserted picture, and he decided to create dry land.
God called the demonic prince Satan and ordered him to dive to the bottom of the sea and bring him sand. Satan was proud, arrogant, but he did not dare to disobey God. Dive! I got to the very bottom, took my hands full of sand and went up. While I was floating up, the water washed away all the sand from my fists, leaving only dirt under my nails. He gave the dirt to God and dived again. He held the extracted sand tightly in his palms. He emerged, looked, and God created an island in the sea from the dirt that was under his nails. The land on the island was flat and smooth, and grass was already beginning to emerge here and there. Satan envied God: what a good idea he came up with. Well, wait, I’m no worse... I gave away the sand and went to the bottom again. He barely made it through. But now I not only got sand into my hands, but also into my mouth. Full cheeks filled. Barely swam out. He looks, and God built a sandy beach near the island, and it’s so cheerful, so soft...
Satan gave away the sand he had brought in his hands and turned away. Greed overcame him. “I’ll bury it behind my cheek and keep it for myself. Afterwards I will also make the land, even better, for myself alone...” And God finished the work and asked: “Well, did you give everything?”
Satan wanted to answer, but forgot that his mouth was full of sand and stones, he choked, coughed, and spat. Stones flew out of his mouth. Wherever one falls, there a mountain will be made. Wherever Satan spits, there is a swamp. The demon got scared that he had ruined God’s work and started to run. Wherever he puts his hoof, a hole or ravine will be dug. It got even worse. God turned him back. He didn’t scold him, he even pitied him: he was so unlucky...
And it was already getting light. The workers are tired. We went to bed and rested. God fell asleep in a righteous sleep, but Satan does not sleep, his anger is tormenting him. He began to slowly push God with his back to the cliff. He will push, push and hide. Didn't you wake up? No, God is sleeping, he’s tired. And again Satan will push him. I pushed all night, I even lost weight. And in the morning the sun rose. Satan looked, and around, as far as the eye could see, boundless steppes stretched. It was he who pushed and pushed God, and the earth grew under him: so that God would not fall into the water.
And so our mother earth came into being with feather grass steppes and soft sea beaches, with demonic mountains and swamps. And then animals, birds, and people populated it.”
Againstmisconceptionsreason
If you look at Bacon's portrait, you will immediately say: this man lived at the end of the 16th - in the first half of the 17th century in England. A high forehead and attentive eyes speak of his innate intelligence and observation. And luxurious clothes and a hat speak of his wealth and aristocratic origin. But there is also some kind of contradiction in his appearance. Maybe you can guess behind the artist’s brush and the engraver’s chisel hidden ambition and unsatisfied vanity, as well as indiscriminateness in the means of achieving the goal? Everything will be right. Who is he, this man, as if woven from the contradictions of the era?
Sir Francis Bacon is the youngest son of the Lord Privy Seal, a solicitor - solicitor of the court under Queen Elizabeth and a favorite, the first person in the state under King James I. The fate of Bacon's rise to the pinnacle of power and cruel fall is amazing. But his scientific fate is even more surprising... However, let's take things in order...
Francis Bacon was born in 1561. Having learned in his early youth that, as the youngest son in the family of an English aristocrat, he would not be entitled to inherited nobility and wealth (they legally went to the eldest heir, that is, the elder brother), he decided to devote his life to science.
Bacon outlined a grandiose plan for the “great restoration of the sciences,” which, in his opinion, had fallen into complete oblivion since antiquity. And in this he was not so wrong...
At that time, universities taught the old fashioned way. The main importance was given to what was written or confirmed by the Bible. And if a question came across that was not addressed by the myths of the holy book, then the works of ancient philosophers, recognized by the church, were called upon to help. But it must be said that theologians have long since chosen from these writings everything that did not contradict Christian doctrine. And the chosen ones were declared the immutable truth... Any fact, any phrase, even if they contained obvious errors, had to be accepted by students on faith without doubt.
And, of course, none of these revelations needed proof. It was getting ridiculous. For example, when describing a fly two thousand years ago, Aristotle was wrong. He wrote that she has ten legs. As luck would have it, it was precisely this work of his that was included in the list approved by the church. So what would you think? Century after century, venerable philosophers repeated his mistake in Aristotle’s book, and no one even thought of catching the annoying insect and counting its legs. Moreover, if anyone noticed a discrepancy, he would say with conviction that in front of him, of course, he was a freak of a fly, but the great Aristotle was still right!
Such blind admiration for authority greatly hindered science from moving forward. And from time to time one of the scientists called for abandoning the current practice. But first of all, it was dangerous. The church, supported by the fires of the Inquisition, stood guard over the approved rules. And secondly, no one knew what could be offered in return...
Sometimes Bacon also thought about solving this problem. Then he was distracted from the court tinsel and plunged into serious thoughts. But then the influx of diligence passed, and he again found himself at the mercy of secular passions. After the death of Queen Elizabeth, Sir Francis, through considerable bargaining with his conscience, became the favorite of the next king and achieved supreme power. He received the post of Chancellor and Lord Privy Seal. It would seem that nothing could crush him. But then parliament accused him of bribery and a host of other abuses, sentenced him to a huge fine and imprisonment... True, the king paid his debts and released him from the Tower. But shame and dishonor did not allow Bacon to return to court. He remained on his estate and truly devoted the rest of his life to science.
Why are delusions of reason and false ideas so tenacious, he wonders, and finds “ghosts” or “idols” that lead people away from the path of knowing the truth. To get rid of them means to increase man's power over nature. But for this you need to accumulate true knowledge. Knowledge is power! He was the first to pronounce this motto. And he was the first to proclaim that true knowledge is acquired only through experience. Only many experiments, the results of which are consistent with each other, can explain individual facts. And the sum of the results, processed using logic, will allow one to abstract from the specific content of each experience separately and move on to generalizations, to the general laws of nature. This path of knowledge is called inductive. And Bacon became his preacher.
He divided the sciences according to human abilities. For example, the basis of history was memory. He attributed poetry to the imagination, and philosophy to reason. Bacon attached great importance to the science of nature, dividing it into theoretical and practical parts. At the same time, he believed that theory should explore the causes of phenomena, and practice should explain them.
Francis Bacon was not a real natural scientist and therefore often underestimated some of the scientific discoveries of his time. And he assigned only a supporting role to mathematics. But he correctly understood the spirit and direction of developing knowledge. And his views played an extremely important role in the development of science.
OriginEarthaccording to Descartes
Let us cross the English Channel from England to France, about a quarter of a century after Bacon's time. Here the Jesuits ensure that heresies do not occur. And if new ideas can in any way threaten the church, they are immediately suppressed. The shameful picture of the martyrdom of Giordano Bruno at the stake has not yet been erased from the memory of the inhabitants of the European continent. The trial against Galileo is still ongoing in Italy. In France itself, the Parisian parliament has just condemned Antoine Villon and other opponents of the outdated medieval philosophy - scholasticism. And yet, more and more people are appearing in enlightened circles of society looking for new paths in science.
One day, an important papal official in Paris, a cardinal who was interested in science, gathered guests. He offered to listen to a lecture by one of the experts in medicine and chemistry, who was going to speak against Aristotle. Among those invited was a young man named Rene Descartes. More recently, he left military service and turned to philosophy.
After the end of the lecture, everyone expressed delight at the courage of the scientist who encroached on authority. And only Descartes sat modestly in the corner and was silent. “What don’t you like?” - asked the owner of the house. Then the young man invited those present to put forward some thesis that was, by all accounts, an absolute truth, that is, one that could not be refuted. Well, at least these words of the poet Menander: “...he who knows nothing has nothing to be wrong about.”
To this famous statement, Descartes immediately gave twelve plausible arguments that completely proved the falsity of the statement put forward. "Well done!" - those present praised. And Descartes suggested bringing some false statement. And also, with the help of twelve other arguments, in front of the cardinal’s astonished guests, he turned a false thesis into truth.
“This suggests,” the philosopher modestly concluded his demonstration, “that merely plausible reasoning, such as I have used, should not be too hastily accepted as true.” And in response to questions about how to distinguish truth from fiction, if the latter dresses up in plausible clothes, he answered: “You have to doubt it! Sense evidence, logic, experience and authority all must be questioned and rationally analyzed. Only God does not deceive!” Descartes, brought up in a Jesuit college, was taught to be cautious from childhood.
A few years later, already in Holland, where he moved because there was not such a tense religious atmosphere, he published the book “Discourses on the Method.” In it, Descartes answers in detail the question of how to seek truth, and gives readers four rules of his method:
1. Do not accept anything as truth until you are convinced of its undoubted truth;
2. Break down each difficulty into its simplest parts;
3. From simple and general truths, rise, as if by steps, to more complex ones;
4. Summarize what you have learned so as to always be sure that nothing is missing.
Descartes proposed reasoning by analyzing, and moving from general judgments to specific ones.
You may have noticed that his proposal is the exact opposite of Bacon's method. Descartes' method - from the general to the particular - was called the deductive method. An example of this is the science of geometry, which is well known to us. In it, from general provisions, from axioms, rules are derived for solving many particular problems. In geometry, Descartes saw an ideal for building a new philosophy.
Out of caution, Descartes did not yet abandon God. God, according to the scientist, created matter in the form of primary chaos in motion. But then the philosopher makes a very cunning move. He says that since God is eternal and unchanging, and in nature everything moves and constantly changes, then it is unworthy of God to interfere with changing nature. Thus, Descartes cleverly got rid of God's participation in the construction of the world immediately after the creation of chaos. He writes that, they say, the laws of nature “are quite sufficient to force the particles of matter to unravel and arrange themselves in a very harmonious order.”
What was primary matter, according to Descartes? During its mixing in the initial chaos, the particles were crushed and changed until they reached such a state that they could be sorted into three groups. The first included the smallest ones. They penetrated everywhere and filled the gaps between other particles, forming a light and very mobile element of fire.
The second group combined larger, well-polished particles - they entered the air element.
The third group is the largest and slowest moving particles that make up the Earth element. Clutching tightly, they formed solid bodies. And those that were more mobile and lighter created water.
What laws governed all these masses? Descartes introduced several rules in his work “The Elements of Philosophy”. “The first rule is,” he wrote, “that each part of matter separately always continues to remain in the same state until an encounter with other parts causes a change in this state.”
Read these lines again. Do they look familiar to you? Especially if we add to them the third rule from the same book: “... each of the particles of the body individually strives to continue moving in a straight line.”
But this is nothing more than the law of inertia, which underlies the science that studies the movement of bodies. It is still taught in school today. What was contained in the second rule? “The second rule I propose is this: when one body collides with another, it can impart to it only so much motion as it itself at the same time loses, and take away from it only so much as it increases its own motion.” Look! And this law is familiar to us. It is called the “law of conservation of momentum” and is one of the first formulations of the great law of conservation of energy.
The rules formulated by Descartes formed the foundation of his physics. But in order to create a complete physical picture of the world, he lacked a picture of the birth of the Earth. However, here his interests collided with the interests of the church. Even while studying at the Jesuit college, young Descartes learned: one does not joke with the holy fathers. And in order to acquaint readers with his views on the origin of the world, he writes a kind of “fablio” - a fiction about how it could be with some imaginary world.
He tells how, in the initial chaos, due to the interactions of particles, primary vortices were formed - powerful circular movements, which he often observed in the fields and roads of Holland. Each of these vortices has its own center. In primary matter, crushed crumbs of particles of sky matter, squeezed out by a vortex movement towards the center, form a fiery cycle. From it the Sun is subsequently formed, and in other places - stars. Heavier particles are pushed to the edges of the vortex. There they stick together, adhere to each other and form the bodies of planets. Moreover, each of the planets is drawn into a circular motion around its central star by a vortex. The planets cool, become denser, and become crusty. Below it, the vapor condenses into water. A heavy layer is deposited in the water... And only in the very center of the planet does the original fire remain. Its heat drives the uncooled matter up the cracks and dries the outer crust. The bark collapses, pieces of it fall into the water, pile up on top of each other and form mountains.
The picture painted by Descartes amazed his contemporaries. There was no place for God in it. It turned out that it is quite possible to do without it...
The philosophy of Bacon and the physics of Descartes laid the foundations of a new science. There was no worship of authority here, there were no endless repetitions of boring truths. Only analysis and evidence. As always, the followers spoiled a lot. Thus, Bacon's supporters took his teaching to the extreme, declaring that only experience and induction can give the correct answers to all questions. Those who chose Descartes as their banner sought to build a visual model of the whole world immediately theoretically, using the logic of reasoning, relying on true laws.
The idea of the original fiery-liquid state of the Earth was supported by many naturalists of the seventeenth century. It seemed obvious. Newton said that only from a rotating fluid could a ball such as our planet be formed. The German philosopher Leibniz also believed that the Earth was initially molten and, only gradually cooling, became covered with a crust, and the rains that fell from the clouds filled the oceans.
True, the reason for the emergence of the Earth was still unclear. It also remained unknown how long this entire process took.
Parade of hypotheses
A lot of hypotheses about the origin of our Earth have been put forward. And each of them, one way or another, influenced scientists’ ideas about the internal structure of our planet. Let's try to quickly list the main ones, so that in the future we can always be guided by the era in which hypothesis these or those assumptions were put forward... Let's arrange, as it were, a “parade of hypotheses”.
Even during Buffon's lifetime, many astronomers had doubts that a comet could “knock off a piece of the Sun.” It all started when the English astronomer royal Edmund Halley discovered a century-old error. Three comets that visited the solar system with an interval of seventy-six years turned out to be one and the same celestial body upon careful examination. Halley even managed to predict when the comet would appear in the earth's sky again. With each visit, the orbit of the celestial guest, under the influence of the gravitational forces of the planets Jupiter and Saturn, changed slightly. This meant that the comet was very small in mass. If it were more massive, it would not be the planets that would attract it, but vice versa. But how then could such an insignificant celestial body as a comet, colliding with the Sun, “tear off its edge”? Yes, she should rather have burned in the bright flame of the sun.
In 1755, an untitled work entitled “General Natural History and Theory of the Sky” was published in Königsberg. The unknown author, like the Greek philosophers and Descartes, agreed that the world arose from chaos, from a huge foggy cloud, the particles of which eventually united under the influence of Newtonian force and formed planets.
However, this work remained unknown to the general public. The book publisher went bankrupt, and the brochure of the anonymous author, who turned out to be the young philosopher Immanuel Kant, remained in the warehouse. Only at the end of his life did Kant remember her. But by that time, the hypothesis of the origin of the solar system from a hot gas nebula, put forward by the outstanding French mathematician Pierre Laplace, had gained wide popularity.
Both assumptions were so similar to each other that they were later called by the common name of the “nebular Kant-Laplace hypothesis.” The word "nebular" means "foggy". The new hypothesis was very popular with the reading public. Everything about it was harmonious, everything was explained logically. True, some time passed and new facts obtained by astronomers began to little by little come into conflict with the conclusions of Laplace. But it's inevitable. This is the fate of every scientific hypothesis.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, so many contradictions had accumulated that everyone understood: the time had come to replace the nebular hypothesis with a new one. And this was proposed by Professor F. Multon and T. Chamberlin. They suggested that sometime in distant times another massive star passed by the young Sun. With its attraction, it caused the eruption of matter from the Sun. And from this matter ejected from the depths of our star, planets were eventually formed. This was again the “catastrophic hypothesis,” in which the origin of the planetary system was directly dependent on a cosmic catastrophe, as in Buffon.
The English astronomer J. Jeans supported the new hypothesis, supporting it with strict mathematical calculations. He made it so convincing that in a short time it won hearts and minds, displacing other opinions even from the pages of textbooks. Some inconsistencies that were discovered in it from time to time were immediately corrected with the help of clarification of details and new assumptions.
But in 1931, a small book by Harry Russell, “The Solar System and Its Origin,” was published in America, in which the author, in his own words, “only wanted to outline the current state of our knowledge about the Solar System.” And so he begins to reason: what will happen if, when two stars meet, a long ribbon of matter stretches between them? It should consist half of solar matter, half of stellar matter. In this case, “the middle of the ribbon would remain at this point without movement, equally attracted by the Sun and the star.” Just like that... So, it means that no planets could have formed in an eternal cycle around their star?
Once again, astronomers found themselves without a guiding idea. Russell himself and other specialists really wanted to “save” Jeans’ hypothesis. But nothing came of it.
In 1944, the first articles of the Soviet scientist academician Otto Yulievich Schmidt were published in the “Reports of the USSR Academy of Sciences”. In his opinion, the Sun once met a huge cold gas and dust nebula on its way. There are many such nebulae in space. And meeting them for a star is not such a unique phenomenon as meeting another star. Part of the nebula followed the star and became, as it were, its satellite. According to the existing laws of nature, it began to rotate and flattened. Individual particles merged with each other, and clumps of future planets began to form in the vicinity of the Sun.
Schmidt was not a professional astronomer. During his life, he was involved in many areas of science: mathematics and geophysics, Arctic research and astronomy. At the Geophysical Institute, he organized a group of young employees who enthusiastically began developing his ideas.
At first glance, there was not much new in the new hypothesis. Schmidt carefully studied the ideas of his predecessors and took the most reasonable and justified part from each. This circumstance was one of the very strong points of his hypothesis.
Today scientists do not have a common view on this issue. Everyone or almost everyone agrees that planets began to form from a cold cloud and only then warmed up. As for the rest, there is a lot of disagreement. And despite the giant leaps forward in astronomy in recent years, there is still no end in sight to the debate over the origins of the planetary system.
Literature
1. Chernavsky D.S. The problem of the origin of life and thinking from the point of view of modern physics. – M., 2002
2. Spirich A.S. Biosynthesis of proteins and the origin of life. – M., 1999
3. Eskov K.Yu. History of the Earth and life on it. – M., 1996
4. Markov A.V. Origin of life. – M., 2004
5. Dawkins R. God as an illusion. – M., 2001
3. Reliable knowledge or mythological thinking?
3.1. How myths are formed
In the author's opinion, it is the absence reliable knowledge about seids, obtained as a result of serious scientific research, and led to the formation of numerous and still existing myths about seids. In order to objectively talk about myths and mythology, it is first necessary to consider what myth, and how it differs from hypothesis and reliable knowledge?
In scientific literature, the definition of “mythological” is applied to the type of knowledge that is based not on rational evidence, but on faith and belief. Beliefs may be prescribed by cultural traditions, religious or ideological systems, false or outdated scientific beliefs, and other reasons. But the most important thing is that myths have a special logical structure that is different from reliable knowledge. Differences in the structure of myths can be as follows:
1. The form of a phenomenon is confused with its content;
2. The essence of the phenomenon is replaced by its origin;
3. Obligatory interaction is attributed to events independent of each other;
4. Random proximity in time or space is taken as a cause-and-effect relationship;
5. Insufficiently verified or deliberately manipulated facts are accepted as initial ones in subsequent conclusions, etc. .
If myths underlie a person’s basic ideas on which his worldview is built, their combination is called mythological picture of the world, and the consciousness of a person – the bearer of such a picture – is called mythological consciousness.
It is a mistake to believe that mythological consciousness was inherent only to ancient people. We all remember how developed the mythological concept of the Soviet Union was. It included the cosmogonic act of creation of a new world (Great October Socialist Revolution) and its cleansing from demonic forces (Continuation of the class struggle, Triumphant March of Soviet power, Collectivization, Industrialization) and the battle of the Gods (Civil and Great Patriotic War). From early childhood, fairy tales about “Good Grandfather Lenin” and “Father of the Nations Stalin” were studied, ritual revolutionary holidays, party congresses, fueled by the revolutionary magical energy of the masses, etc. were held.
Myths have not disappeared anywhere. The departed Soviet one has now been replaced by new mythological system, the most powerful tool of which is the media. Modern myths are no less sophisticated than past ones. Here and now, we will not consider the standard set of myths “about freedom and democracy”, “about the most democratic state of the USA”, let’s look at a simpler example.
Today, one of the widespread myths is about the formula for success and happiness of a modern person. Its essence lies in the fact that a successful person is happy, that is, one who does not deny himself anything, has a lot of money, a standard set of material goods and entertainment (cars, apartments, country houses, holidays at prestigious resorts, shopping in fashionable shops, education abroad), etc. This seemingly harmless myth has a clear logical structure and a specific source of origin. The purpose of its dissemination is to form the consciousness of the consumer, which, as a result, significantly simplifies the management of consumer society.
The methods of spreading modern myths have become even more sophisticated. For example, one of the most effective ways is the following. On the Internet, on frequently visited pages, we can see the standard phrase: “Scientists have proven that...”. Next comes some nonsense, for example that the world will end soon, or that chocolate is very good for the liver. Of course, the information is completely untrue, but the reader, insufficiently familiar with scientific research methods, when repeated many times a feeling of reliable knowledge can be created.
3.2. Myths and hypotheses in science
Myths in science are formed in a similar way. To create them, it is enough just to not check very well, or simply falsify the facts, uncritically use the works of “scientific luminaries,” or rely instead on scientific knowledge on personal preferences, fashionable theories or accepted political views. But the most effective way to form scientific myths is still repeated unproven repetition and statements like: “it’s obvious...”, “scientists have proven...”.
Myths in science should not be confused with scientific hypotheses. A hypothesis (Greek “foundation”, “assumption”), like a myth, is an unproven statement, assumption or guess. But, unlike a myth, a hypothesis is a form of development of knowledge and is a reasonable assumption that is put forward in order to clarify the properties and causes of the phenomena under study, but not yet confirmed or denied. Unlike a myth, a hypothesis presupposes either subsequent confirmation, and then turns as an established fact, or a refutation that transfers it to the category false statements. Myths, unlike hypotheses, do not require reasonable confirmation, since they are initially based not on rational evidence, but on faith and belief.
