The previous post cleared away a set of persistent misunderstandings about myth. It showed that myth is not bad science, not a set of beliefs, and not a failed attempt to represent reality.
This post addresses the deeper problem that sustains those misunderstandings: the assumption that explanation is the primary function of meaningful stories.
What explanation presupposes
Explanation is not a neutral activity.
To explain something is to assume that:
there are stable objects to be explained,
that these objects stand in determinate relations,
that causes and effects can be identified,
and that an explanation improves orientation by accurately describing those relations.
These assumptions are not universal. They belong to particular practices — most notably scientific ones.
Explanation works when those conditions are already in place.
Explanation comes late
Explanation is never the first thing a culture does.
Before explanation is possible, there must already be:
a sense of what counts as a thing,
a sense of what matters,
a background of relevance and salience,
and a shared orientation that renders some questions intelligible and others nonsensical.
Explanation presupposes this orientation.
It does not create it.
The mistake of retrofitting
Modern readers often approach myth as if it were an early attempt to answer questions that we now answer better.
But this retrofits myth into a conceptual space it did not inhabit.
The questions myth responds to are not “what caused this?” or “how does this work?”
They are questions like:
Where are we?
What kind of situation is this?
What matters here?
What calls for action, restraint, fear, or care?
These are not explanatory questions.
They are orientational ones.
Why explanation distorts myth
When myth is read as explanation, it is forced into a frame that distorts its function.
Elements that are crucial to myth — symbolic repetition, narrative compression, archetypal figures, ritual resonance — appear redundant or irrational when judged by explanatory standards.
What looks like excess from an explanatory perspective is often precisely what stabilises orientation.
Explanation strips myth of its operative force by treating it as an answer rather than as a field within which answers and actions become possible.
Explanation and control
There is another reason explanation dominates modern thought.
Explanation is closely tied to prediction and control. To explain something is often to render it manageable.
This has enormous practical value.
But it also encourages the idea that all meaningful practices must justify themselves by their explanatory power.
Myth resists this demand — not because it is irrational, but because control is not its task.
A category error
To ask what a myth explains is therefore a category error.
It is like asking what a compass explains, or what a map believes.
Myth does not explain the world.
It orients us within it.
Opening the way forward
Once explanation is set aside as the governing frame, myth can begin to appear on its own terms.
The next post develops this positive account directly, introducing myth as a practice of orientation — one that operates prior to belief, explanation, or representation.
Only then can the work myth actually does come into view.
No comments:
Post a Comment