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Embracing Mythos in a Culture Devoid of Meaning
Reprioritising mythology as a rejection of modern monopolies of truth
We live in an age where in order to be able to be taken seriously we must provide a scientific basis for our assertions. Whether that be in sociology, politics, psychology or anthropology, researchers work assiduously to assert their scientific credentials and strain to prove that their own personal biases remain at the door.
Yet in a world of infinite provable facts, the conclusions we draw from data are very much driven by our philosophy and the narratives that shape how we see the world.
In the social sciences, the correlations that we focus on are deeply influenced by our philosophies. In any given study there will be a multitude of correlations and so the ones that the researcher chooses to focus on are deeply influenced by the story they want to tell or the stories that the institutions funding the research want to tell. Sometimes this is a deliberate attempt to prove a hypothesis but it can also be the result of unconscious biases.
Even in the hard sciences, where double-blind experimentation attempts to remove such biases, we are still deeply limited by perspective. For example, Newtonian physics gave us an understanding of the way in which the material world works. Using this model we could confidently assert…