Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Myth for MacCormac is “the mistaken attribution of reality to a diaphoric
metaphor,” in other words, to those sorts of metaphors, even scientific ones,
that are incapable of reduction to any merely nonmetaphorical form.
40
It is
when cognition is most dependent upon seeing one thing through another
that we lose sight of the fact that we are looking “through” anything at all.
The transparency that sustains myths, in other words, is of a different order
from that which is at work in many everyday metaphors. While the identi-
fication of dissimilar things may be recognized by conscious reflection, as
in the “level” example above, we are more resistant to such awareness when
more vital meanings are at stake. Diaphoric metaphors, whether mythic or
not, cannot be cast off without eradicating the meanings they sustain, and
in consequence those who most depend upon them will be less likely to
recognize their figurative character. The “universe as machine” metaphor
in science, I would surmise, is an example. While contemporary physicists
often say that this metaphor was made obsolete by relativity and quantum
theory, in reality it seems as pervasive as ever. The term “mechanics” (as in
“quantum mechanics,” for instance) still governs physical thought simply
because it is impossible (or at least nearly so, since an “organism” metaphor
might accomplish much the same meaning) for modern science to think of
nature other than as a kind of vast mechanism. To abandon it altogether
would be to make it difficult to think of nature as having an intelligible
order, and this is a vital presupposition of science.
MacCormac's understanding of myth enables us to appreciate what is
symbolically necessary when evolution becomes evolutionism. However, I
wish to suppose that myth is more than a particular operation of metaphor.
Traditionally myths are also regarded as having sacred significance, and
some metaphors that invite the collapse of tenor and vehicle do not achieve
this. For example, Aristotle's use of “air” or
aether
as a metaphor for space
seems to fit MacCormac's definition of myth, but I am not aware that this
idea ever had any significance reaching beyond science. A better example
from classical science might be Aristotle's notion that the earth was the
“center” of the natural universe. If those interpreters are right who believe
that Galileo was persecuted because his unseating of this physical truth was
taken as an affront to Catholic notions of human dignity, then we might say
that geocentrism truly was a myth. It involved a collapse of vehicle and tenor
(physical “centrality” and the “centrality” of humanity's place in the created
order), and the resultant meaning had to do with the usual substance of
myth, the “sacred, exemplary, [and] significant,” as Eliade describes it. Eli-
ade's more conventional view takes into account the important recognition