Myth: A Very Short Introduction 2004

Let me be clear from the outset: this book is an introduction notto myths but to approaches to myth, or theories of myth, and itis limited to modern theories. Theories of myth may be as oldas myths themselves. Certainly they go back at least to thePresocratics. But only in the modern era – specifically, only sincethe second half of the nineteenth century – have those theoriespurported to be scientific. For only since then have there existed theprofessional disciplines that have sought to supply truly scientifictheories of myth: the social sciences, of which anthropology,psychology, and to a lesser extent sociology have contributed themost. Some social scientific theories of myth may have earliercounterparts, but scientific theorizing is still different from earliertheorizing. Where earlier theorizing was largely speculative andabstract, scientific theorizing is based far more on accumulatedinformation. The differences summed up by the anthropologistJohn Beattie apply to the other social sciences as well:Thus it was the reports of eighteenth- and nineteenth-centurymissionaries and travellers in Africa, North America, the Pacific andelsewhere that provided the raw material upon which the firstanthropological works, written in the second half of the last century,were based. Before then, of course, there had been plenty ofconjecturing about human institutions and their origins . . . Butalthough their speculations were often brilliant, these thinkers were