Evolution, embodiment, mythology, philosophy

July 5th, 2006 Fred McVittie

These things we share:

• shared evolutionary experience, which have given us all the same hands, eyes, and brains
• shared ontogenic developmental experience, which has introduced us all to the same basic features of the world at the same rate
• shared knowledge or propensities that we all seem to be born with
• shared knowledge and practices we all seem to generate culturally, usually expressed as ‘human universals’
• shared knowledge we all create about our experiences in the world, usually expressed as ‘folk science’
• shared mythic structures, narratives, and archetypes
• shared religious and philosophical frameworks, usually expressed as ‘ perennial philosophy’

It is quite likely that there is a relationship across these commonalities, that, for example, our ‘perennial philosophy’ is ultimately related to our shared evolutionary experience.

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Myth and Theory

November 17th, 2006 Fred McVittie

A myth is a theory of how some aspect of the world works, put overtly into the natural and embodied languages of narrative and image. This is not to say that myth is a poeticised, and therefore less accurate description of the workings of (some parts of the world) compared to other, more ‘rigorous’ theoretical descriptions; only that the metaphorical and embodied nature of myth is overt, whereas in other theoretical forms these qualities and techniques are covert.

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