The Ancient Mythology of Modern Science

Here Schrempp (folklore & mythology studies, Indiana Univ.) analyzes selected scientists who have found wider, nonscientist audiences and criticizes them for their use of techniques, ideas, metaphors, and patterns of presentation found in ancient myths. Schrempp postulates that the genre of popular science writings represented by astronomer John D. Barrow, paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, astronomer Carl Sagan, philosopher Daniel Dennett, and several other eminent writers is actually a form of mythology. Comparing science with myth is risky in a nation where science is not valued and where myths are commonly considered merely fictional stories, albeit older ones. One could ask whether the subjects are interpreting contemporary science for the general reader and thereby creating myths, as Schrempp posits, or whether they are using science to illustrate the stories they want to tell. The concepts of anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism keep reappearing throughout, as does the separation of metaphor from myth. Morality and religion, from their origins in myth, color the ideas presented.