Towards a Better Definition of Myth

While searching for job openings, I've been browsing the course offerings of English departments at various schools I think I might be interested in. In particular, I'm interested to see what kinds and how many (if any) electives departments offer, as I would very much like to continue teaching an sf&f course, or something similar, either by proposing and starting a new elective wherever I end up, or taking on a preexisting course.

One course I'm always happy to see offered is Mythology, or some such variation. I'd love to teach such a course, but even if I never get to, I'm happy about a school where kids can study myths and mythology in a dedicated class. What upsets me is the misleading, oversimplified, and imprecise definition of "myth" that I've seen in more than one course description:

"Myths are stories ancient people created to explain what they didn't understand."

Not really.

Here's what I imagine when I read that definition:

Ancient Man 1: Hmm... I wonder what that big, bright thing in the sky is?

Ancient Man 2: That's the sun.

Ancient Man 1: I know it's the sun. But what is the sun? How did it get there and what's it made of? Why does it move across the sky like that?

Ancient Man 2: Hmm.

Ancient Man 1: I know, right? I just don't understand. I'm not really sure there's any way of knowing from way down here.

Ancient Man 2: Oh, well. So what?

Ancient Man 1: Well, my kid was asking.

Ancient Man 2: Oh, well why don't you just make something up?

Ancient Man 1: Good idea! I can say it's a golden chariot pulled across the sky by a team of horses and a god named Apollo!


It's an okay definition for elementary school, but it really sounds to me more like a definition of fable (a story created to explain something). The crux of the issue is this: ancient man didn't know he didn't understand natural phenomena like the sun, or death, or earthquakes, or thunderstorms, or the inner workings of the human soul. Myths were how he understood these things, much in the way that science is how we now understand these things.

I mention science because the problematic definition is one that reeks of scientific egotism. It's a definition for a modern, scientifically educated American who likes feeling superior in intellect to countless preceding generations of humanity. ("Those poor ignorant fools!"). But it's utterly wrong to see myth as some infantile, ancient human predecessor to science, as if those pitiable ancients couldn't comprehend our science, so they had to settle for myth. On the contrary: they did not know myth as we know it. To them myth was as inevitable as the human impulse to wonder. That's what I mean when I say that myth is how they understood--it was not consciously constructed to fill a void of ignorance. It was their knowledge.

If one accepts such a conception of myth (I don't assume it's inevitable that you do), then something surprising happens: myth and science become quite closely related in the human psyche. They become analogous modes of understanding the universe. I love science. I love myths too. They each offer greater understanding and opportunity for wonder in their own ways. To me, an infinite, ever expanding universe is just as magical and marvelous as the notion of planets on musical spheres or a god driving a flaming chariot across the sky. On the other hand, myth is as ill-equipped to explain the atomic (and sub-atomic) nature of the material universe as science is to explain death.

I'm well aware that hard-core, religiously scientific thinkers will disagree with me on that last point--theirs is the view that there is nothing that science does not have the potential to explain. Who am I to say that they're wrong? Like the ancients, I cannot even perceive what I don't understand. But I will say this: on the day in the far-flung, mystical future when science becomes omniscient and explains all, it will not have replaced myth in our imaginations. It will have become one with it.