The term logos, the root word of ``logic,'' refers to the sum total of our
rational understanding of the world. Mythos is the sum total of the early
historic and prehistoric myths which preceded the logos. The mythos
includes not only the Greek myths but the Old Testament, the Vedic
Hymns and the early legends of all cultures which have contributed to our
present world understanding. The mythos-over-logos argument states that
our rationality is shaped by these legends, that our knowledge today is in
relation to these legends as a tree is in relation to the little shrub it once was.
One can gain great insights into the complex overall structure of the tree by
studying the much simpler shape of the shrub. There's no difference in kind
or even difference in identity, only a difference in size.
Thus, in cultures whose ancestry includes ancient Greece, one invariably
finds a strong subject-object differentiation because the grammar of the old
Greek mythos presumed a sharp natural division of subjects and predicates.
In cultures such as the Chinese, where subject-predicate relationships are not
rigidly defined by grammar, one finds a corresponding absence of rigid
subject-object philosophy. One finds that in the Judeo-Christian culture in
which the Old Testament `Word' had an intrinsic sacredness of its own,
men are willing to sacrifice and live by and die for words. In this culture, a
court of law can ask a witness to tell ``the truth, the whole truth and nothing
but the truth, so help me God,''and expect the truth to be told. But one can
transport this court to India, as did the British, with no real success on the
matter of perjury because the Indian mythos is different and this sacredness
of words is not felt in the same way. Similar problems have occurred in this
country among minority groups with different cultural backgrounds. There
are endless examples of how mythos differences direct behavior differences
and they're all fascinating.
The mythos-over-logos argument points to the fact that each child is born as
ignorant as any caveman. What keeps the world from reverting to the
Neanderthal with each generation is the continuing, ongoing mythos,
transformed into logos but still mythos, the huge body of common
knowledge that unites our minds as cells are united in the body of man. To
feel that one is not so united, that one can accept or discard this mythos as
one pleases, is not to understand what the mythos is.
There is only one kind of person, Phædrus said, who accepts or rejects the
mythos in which he lives. And the definition of that person, when he has
rejected the mythos, Phædrus said, is ``insane.'' To go outside the mythos is
to become insane. --
My God, that just came to me now. I never knew that before.
He knew! He must have known what was about to happen. It's starting to open up.
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. By Robert Pirsig.
5
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9 comments
Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.Having studied some ancient Greek, I find this shit to be gibberish. It is trying to take an ancient Greek word, then apply it in ways it was never meant to be applied.
It says: "The term logos, the root word of ``logic,'' refers to the sum total of our rational understanding of the world."
Directly from "A Beginner's Guide To Ancient Greek" by John Williams White, Ph. D. Harvard:
λόγος - word, saying, statement, speech, discourse, debate, rumour, narrative.
It says absolutely nothing about "sum total of our rational understanding of the world."
What was his source, a cracker-jack box?
Archeus_Lore
Level 7
Oct 24, 2019
2
I don't know. Do you have an axe to grind?
No need to grind it, it has already come down.
@Archeus_Lore okay. I guess I'm a little unclear on the point you're trying to make here. Can you help me to understand?
What I said is clear, concise, and to the point. If you are unable to comprehend it, that is not my problem.
@Metahuman I think the point is clear and I agree whole heartedly with Archeus_Lore
If you want to philosophyse about the mean of words, then have the courtesy to determine the actual meaning of the words you want to discuss, it's not hard these days to do some informal research.
"logos" means word.
@OneTrueDog hey, it's really cool that you have that concept boil down to a single word. Or, is there something a little deeper going on?
That we are all conditioned by our culture, and that it is impossible for the cultural antidote, scientific rationalism, to completely remove it from our system, though the effects can be made quite small if we try. Is the main theme of much modern thinking, including such things a R. Dawkins meme theory. But obviously it goes back a long way into, ironically, human culture, is useful and heartening to know, and it sounds quite smart when you use the old Greek. Certainly mythos is more general and better sounding than meme, but whether the difference between it and the word culture, is worth the worry, questionable.
Fernapple
Level 9
Oct 23, 2019
1
You're assuming the old myths still apply, but our knowledge of the world is expanding at an exponential rate, especially with the computer and man's mushrooming interconnectedness. The old myths are certain to dissolve into one new, common myth and one culture as the world shrinks.
This will seem like it's happening overnight, but it's been proceeding apace and will seem like it's always been that way. Sort of like the cell phone...remember when they didn't exist? Seems like a long time ago, doesn't it? Remember when the internet didn't exist? How did we ever do without it? And smart phones! Indispensable!
It'll be like that, and thoughts of Armaggedon will seem like something straight out of the Stone Age.
In my opinion.
Storm1752
Level 8
Oct 23, 2019
1
It is not that they do or don't still "apply". It's that they are what the current worldview grew out of. Myths evolve. Do you think you don't believe in myth? You do, I wager. Read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.
@Metahuman I have read Ishmael and other books by Daniel Quinn but I can't remember much about it. May pick it up again.The only quote I can remember from him is about the environment being like a brick wall and every time we kill of a species it is like taking a brick from the wall. We can do this for years but eventually the wall will come tumbling down. Sums it up nicely
I always took it that mythos was the primal expression of logos - the early attempt to rationalise the world around us. I see mythos becoming subsumed into the concept of logos during the Axial Age and then adopted into Christianity. I'm very unhappy with one particular public intellectual, the very Catholic E. Michael Jones, appropriating logos for his faith and confining the understanding and expression of logos to his religious doctrine.
brentan
Level 8
Oct 23, 2019
1
Ohhh don’t know him! I’ll try and keep it that way!
I have read the book several times and really enjoyed but on reading this extract I have to disagree with his analogy.. A shrub and a tree are quite different. A shrub retains it's bushy form throughout it's life whereas a tree gradually grows to a much greater height . A young tree is not a shrub,but maybe he does accidentally hit on the truth. The study of a shrub is interesting but does not tell us anything about a tree and the study of ancient beliefs is interesting but does not really tell us much about the reality of the physical world as we now know it.
Moravian
Level 8
Oct 23, 2019
2
I think you are confusing apples and oranges with your argument. He just picked a convenient word that sounded good. Don't nitpick over the words, and miss the point.
If it pleases you, replace the word shrub with the word sapling.
Would you please, just kindly dig it, man
@Metahuman Nope, I am not confusing anything. All I am saying is that it is a poor analogy but on reflection the fact that the study of ancient wriings is fascinating they do not tell us much about the actual physical world as we now know it ,so maybe the analogy is correct after all.
Dig it man
Anyway who bother copying and pasting an extract from a popular book if that's all you have to say
@Moravian because that particular phrase is deeply related to one of the main key points in the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and I suppose it was a sort of meta point. Sorry.
Classic worldview vs. Romantic worldview split there. Rational versus intuitive. Yin and yang.
And yes you are confusing it. Everything grows from something simpler and smaller. Whatever name you want to give to the smaller thing is irrelevant to the point that everything from atoms to universes are made up of little things making-up up bigger things.
No, that's the wrong way to say it. It is little things growing into bigger things.
There's part of the problem in perception, big things are aren't made of little things, they grew from little things.
John 1:1 In the beginning was the word (logos) the word (logos) was with God and was God.
John 1:14 ... the word(logos) become flesh.
Word
Level 8
Oct 22, 2019
0
Word:
Science, according to big bang myth, believes that the word in the beginning was the word bang and they theorize it was a big word?
Word:
@OwlInASack something like that
Someday, Fred, Jesus will take his place in the pantheon of obsolete gods and we'll all laugh about it all as ignorant mutterings, as we all do those of a silly, innocent baby gurgling in it's crib.
And you can see them there
On Sunday morning,
Singin' all about, what it's like up there.
They call in paradise.
I don't know why,
Call something paradise,
Kiss it goodbye.
Go tell it to someone who cares, my friend.
Word:
@Storm1752 The logos scripture interested me even when I was a Christian. Then after having my supernatural experiences and finding out Jesus is Lucifer the devil, i have some better understanding about things and the connections of words or logos.
I have spent time considering the physics of words, air molecules given an intellegentable pattern of kinetic energy. I see that if a person would consider the Genesis "myth" allegory of "the almighty one" saying " let there be light" ... then there was light, it would not be for off for being an allegory for the big bang myth.
I know people especially illogical atheist sees biblical scripture and automatically assume dogma. And, I underst6most people are not interested in things of physics and chemistry.
I personally find it interesting to consider the allegorical implications that are of something of simular complexity to modern physics.
But, anyhow, you have no interest in the physics of cognitive ability, then I do not try to push my thoughts of it on people.
Well, either insane...or enlightened.
Heraclitus
Level 8
Oct 22, 2019
3
That's a very good point. Do we just stay within our logos and continuously work at making it make more sense to us? Or do we do what Jordan Peterson says about entering the world of chaos, the world guarded by a dragon that has a mighty treasure for us to take if we can defeat the beast?
@brentan Fascinating. Reminds me also of Shiva who both a creator god/goddess and a destroyer god/goddess.
What is the ‘Old Testament’ word for Word?
Geoffrey51
Level 8
Oct 22, 2019
0
Hebrew word for word:
Dabar
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The word dabar (Hebrew: דָּבָר) means "word", "talk" or "thing" in Hebrew. Dabar occurs in various contexts in the Hebrew Bible.
The Septuagint, the oldest translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, uses the terms rhema and logos as equivalents and uses both for dabar.
In Christianity, the Old Testament concept of "word event" represented by dabar carries over to the New Testament where revelation can be seen as events explained by words.[clarification needed]
Modern languages adopt the term "Word", although it is often used transliterated but untranslated in theological discourse.
@Allamanda I’m asking the poster for the word that is translated to mean ‘word’ in the Old Testament. Is the primary text from which the translation comes Hebrew or Aramaic?
@Geoffrey51 That sounds right to me. Anything I've read about creation in the OT on the metaphysical plane seems to be an allusion to the old Babylonian idea of Tiamat the dragon of chaos being slain and the world arising, if I remember right, from her body. If that's true, I'm going to guess that the idea came from the Greeks. They say the Greeks robbed everything from the East but maybe logos is their own. I don't know if this Greek influence crept into the OT at any stage.
@brentan Exactly. Logos means reason in the NT context and the Hebrew in Strong’s for reason is סיבה or Sybh, therefore Danbar is not a correlation.
@brentan Can’t see the Greek lexiconically encroaching into OT as the rabbinic tradition was set up well before Greek interference, and though Greek may have been the lingua franca of the Levantine populace, i am sure it would not have found a place in ritualistic Judaism.
I find this mythos-over-logos 'argument' presented on the blog of F.A. Waaldijk.
There are other logos/mythos "discussions".
FearlessFly
Level 9
Oct 22, 2019
1
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