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elisagogogo's picture

Scientific Theory VS Classic Myth

Studying in a seminar is a brand-new experience for me. In China, never have I ever get a chance to sit around the table with my other classmates, freely raising our own opinions and enlightened by other’s view at the same time.

The most interesting question I found in last week’s discussion was: will current scientific theory become classic myth in the future? I do think that current scientific theory might become myth in the future. Let me try to demonstrate my opinion to you.

As we can see in the myths from different sources, even though they took place in different times, different situations and had different names, they more or less have something in common: they want to explain why some specific thing or idea exist in the world.( like why there are seven days in a week, why do we have day and night, etc.)

Here is an example. Say, people in China used to think the earthquake demonstrates the diminishing power of the empire or the end of an epoch. It not hard to understand this idea: people thought that the empire is a person who could give them the happiness. If an empire did not have a leading position any more, something bad like an earthquake would happen (see, they are trying to figure out why earthquake happened.)

Nowadays, people use scientific data to demonstrate that it is because of the movement of the crust that causes the earthquake. And we are also trying to understand why the earthquake happens.   If we retrospect the chinese people's old opinion with our knowlege and scientific background, we might consider it confused and bewildered cause it has no current scientific theory to support.

If we apply this "earthquake thing" to the myth and science. It's easy to find that people tend to create a story to explain something they want to understand base on their knowledge. As the people become more and more knowledgeable, some old-fasioned views, stories might be called myth.

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