Science and myth
It is worth noting that it is hard to say that science has replaced myth. Although science has squeezed out a form of myth, it does not exclude the form of "myth" itself; Perhaps myth is the science of the ancients, and science is the "myth" of today. For example. Creation has always been the theme of myth, and now this theme has not been buried by myth, but is still alive, only taken away by science and raised. In mythology, God created the world or Pangu created the world, and explained the origin of the world through some power of personality. Physics and cosmology have the big bang theory, which comes down to the explosion of singularity. Whether the creative power is personality or natural law is the dividing line between myth and science. However, science has brought the world into some kind of power, and this way of thinking is actually the blood of myth. Myth and science are like telling the same thing in two dialects. On the surface, they sound completely southern accents and don't understand each other. However, people who know two dialects do not feel separated. "Myth" thinking dominates scientific thinking.
Neither the creation myth nor the Big Bang theory pays attention to the existence of God, and the singularity and its laws still need to be explained. The far-reaching problem of creation must also include the explanation of the creative power itself. Where did it come from? You can't be a baby without a mother. Myth and science thus encounter the same paradox: no matter what is used to explain the world, the origin of the thing itself is always unknown and must be traced back; The presupposition of creative power actually presupposes the existence of the world. In the existing conceptual system, creation is an unsolved problem. This situation has an excellent hint in myth. Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time begins with a story. A scientist gave a lecture on astronomy, telling about scientific knowledge such as the earth going around the sun. At this time, an old woman, the spokesman of the myth, stood up and retorted: what you said is all nonsense. The world is actually carried on the back of a turtle. The scientist smiled and asked, "So what is this turtle standing on?" The old woman said, "Young man, you are very clever. You are really smart, but this is a group of turtles that have been going on! " "This myth reminds people of another myth somewhere in the west, saying that the earth is on the back of a big whale, and the whale will shake when it moves. The myth of the tortoise exposes the old problem that both myth and science are harmful and incurable: the explanation of creation is only equivalent to counting turtles, and the last turtle must still be standing on something. It is a turtle with no turning back. It is particularly interesting to think that scientists wear big glasses, carry astronomical telescopes and hold particle colliders, and count turtles with an illiterate old woman all day. Science is puzzled by paradoxes on the origin of "being" or "being", the end of the universe, the beginning and end of time and space, and even the separability of elementary particles. Scientific cleverness is only equivalent to an old woman.
Hawking is a bit conservative when commenting on anecdotes about scientists and old women. He said that about the origin of the universe, the nature of time and other issues, perhaps one day the answer will be as obvious as we think that the earth goes around the sun, and of course it may be as ridiculous as a turtle tower. He is eager for time to judge. My idea is pessimistic. Creation is an unsolvable problem not only in the existing concept system, but also in the possible concept system in the future. All this possible knowledge and understanding has a pre-existing presupposition: the world is causal. Understanding is just a one-to-one correspondence between cause and effect. Without causality, the world is unknowable. Therefore, all conceptual systems cannot escape the presupposition of causality, so all existing states must exist before existing states. No matter what kind of conceptual system will eventually follow this principle, it is the basic form of cognitive ability. Logically speaking, those turtles who have gone and never returned have only one end: they believe in "making something out of nothing" and regard the world as a product of nothingness. This belief conforms to the superficial form of the law of cause and effect, and it gives a state of being the first in the world. However, it actually cancels the law of causality, because the state of "nothing" only means "nothing". Out of nothing, we don't need to find the correspondence between cause and effect, and the world simply can't understand it. We stare at the world and its origin, and turtles are still breeding there without restriction; Seeing that we are so incompetent, this animal, which is famous for its cowardice, will have nothing to hide, and will not even retract its head and laugh at us with pride.
Science not only wants to interpret the world as some kind of power like a myth, but more fundamentally, it feels that the world has not been explained and is determined to explain it instead of throwing it aside calmly, which is no different from myth. We also have to say that knowledge itself is a "myth". We don't know what the world itself is, we can only see the world through knowledge, and we can't confirm its relationship with the world. Understanding is to make up a myth for the world, and any knowledge is a myth about the world. Of course, science is just a version of "myth".
Although the mythical era has passed, the "myth" still has a hard time with any era, so we should hold on to it. People use "myth" to understand the world, and people's own actions are equal to the actual performance of "myth", and people's existence is originally a "myth". We often feel that people have an impulse to seek the meaning of life, which is a symbol of myth carving the soul. The basic meaning of myth is to provide "meaning" for the world. Pure natural objects, or natural disturbances, will not take the initiative to deliver goods to our door and sell them to us. Therefore, the myth personifies them, takes them as the goal and tells them to act like human beings; In other words, myth integrates the world with "meaning". Otherwise, the world will become incomprehensible and unreasonable. People take the initiative to go to the world for their own survival, and they have to distinguish whether external things and things are harmful or beneficial to them; On the other hand, people's own behavior has a purpose and intention; So people judge things and things by meaning. The natural revelation and extension of this mental state is the integrated world of myth, as if all external things have their own interests and purposes, and the whole world is commanded by meaning. Originally, the so-called meaning was only meaningful to human life, but since the world has been shrouded in meaning, human life itself can and should ask about meaning; Just like the old saying goes, if you spit all over the world, you will eventually get infected with yourself. In order to give the mind a thorough training of meaning, it is also necessary to require that life itself is meaningful; Just like all external things are not just comfortable existence, human survival needs to judge their interests, and human survival cannot be just survival. It must have another purpose and can be judged by another scale-life must conform to myth. Myth also provides meaning for life. Life is dominated and guided by God, who judges and supervises our life with a ruler of measurement and a ruler of punishment. Even if the myth does not provide such a clear account meaning and design such a supervisor with clear responsibilities, as long as all external things are personal and live like people, then human life has gained meaning because it is integrated into the whole nature. At least it will give people a vague sense of meaning. Life is harmonious with the outside world, normal and reasonable, and does not feel abrupt and eccentric. In this way, we are coaxed not to delve into the meaning of this existence-deliberately pursuing meaning on the rational level, just because we lack a sense of meaning; It's just that people feel one of their organs because it's sick and uncomfortable.
Science has taken the natural things away from the soil of meaning, and the external world is no longer individual and purposeless, but a cold and rigid law, like a wall waiting for us to hit the wall-it is no longer close to people and loses the "meaning" as understood by myths. The great achievements of science make it expand to cover the whole world, even people are spared, and it has to be regarded as an example. It still studies people and society according to the law. The relationship between man and science is somewhat similar to the relationship between the carpenter in the coffin shop and the coffin he made. Carpenters make coffins for others all their lives and put them in coffins. Finally, he himself was inevitably stuffed into his coffin. Thus, people stand alone in a vast and meaningless world with an ancient myth; No matter how big the world is, it is only equal to a three-foot coffin, and you are alive and kicking, which is only equal to a stiff dead body in the coffin. Because people belong to the world, whether people's own survival is meaningful immediately becomes a problem. It is at this time that we begin to look for the meaning of life. From all indications, the ancients did not have such a strong sense of urgency about the meaning of life as they do today. If the modern version of the scientific "myth" can finally conquer the ancient version of the "myth", then perhaps the meaning of life will die, and the mind can be content with the meaningless life. However, the last corner of ancient myths seems to be hard to break. In any case, as long as we still need to draw energy from the outside world to survive, then our basic perspective on things and things will always lie in whether they are beneficial or harmful to life, and our actions will always inevitably have goals and intentions. As long as we are still outside the general animals, and the means of obtaining external energy are not completely mastered by instinct, but are partially manipulated by reason and ideas, then we will not only seek advantages and avoid disadvantages, but also be trapped in our own purposes and intentions and be completely driven by them; We will also stand outside them to think and understand them, knowing that we are the kind of things that tend to avoid harm and have a purpose. For such things, foreign things should gain meaning through their relationship with such things. Therefore, no matter how narrow the scope is, people always need and always maintain a "meaningful" space, which is determined by people's lifestyle-and thus by nature-and we can't change it before we survive. If we can't get rid of the framework of "meaning", the mind will stubbornly demand that life itself has meaning. "What is the meaning of life" and "What is the meaning of life itself" live too close and too tight. The villagers in the village next door finally meet and even share the same bed, and the couple will inevitably worry. These two meanings are simply inseparable. This is just like the situation in science. We know that all existence has its origin, so we can't help asking the origin of "existence" itself. The more urgently science attacks the last barrier of myth, the stronger resistance it will arouse. Didn't you say that the dog is desperate and the enemy can't be chased? The last point of capital is always the most stubborn. The more science does not let go of meaning, the more urgent and painful it is for people to ask about meaning. The soul is struggling between science and myth.
Since the rise of science, some people have tried to describe social development as a movement strictly controlled by some almost natural law, and even determined its stage with a deterministic attitude; At the same time, life itself is a purely chemical and biological process. This kind of attempt has always been rejected by people's psychological instinct-even those theories themselves often can't help but make some compromises, leaving some initiative and initiative to people against the logic of the theory itself, or bringing some teleology in through the back door-this kind of attempt is rejected, on the one hand, because it threatens people's self-proclaimed free will and hurts people's dignity of megalomania; On the other hand, it may be because it indirectly bypasses the territory of "meaning", and its way of speaking does not leave a place for the meaning of existence, which will eventually end the old camp of meaning.
The success of science is really great. It cultivates people's admiration for it, and its technology dominates people's lives, making people regard it as an objective thing outside the mind and forget that it is just the creation of the mind. In this way, the mind enslaves things and submits to them. Chinese and foreign myths are all about creation, and nature is often said to be the product of human beings. Ancient books include Pangu's "dying incarnation", eyes turning into the sun and moon, limbs turning into four poles and five mountains, blood turning into rivers and so on. Even people themselves are from Pangu, but they have the lowest rank. Man's ancestors were only insects in Pangu-the ancients once said that man was a native louse. From this myth, we can't help thinking that human beings have now become moths of the earth, biting the earth riddled with holes-Pangu is a god, but he is a projection of human beings. The ancient Indian Rigveda divided primitive Broussats into many pieces when it talked about the worship of gods. The moon is produced by primitive mind, the sun by eyes, Indra (God) and Ani (Fire) by mouth, wind by breath, space by navel, heaven by head, and the whole world by feet. There is a basic idea here: the world is not outside people, but inside people; Man is not behind the world, but in front of it. From the genetic point of view, this concept is unfounded, and from the epistemological point of view, it is very reasonable. We know the world and actually created it. India's Idolia Upanishads says that at first there was only one "self", which created a person. This person's verbal language made a fire, his nose was angry, and he was angry. His eyes saw the sun, his ears heard everything, his skin was covered with hair, his hair was covered with vegetation, his heart was business, and his mind was born with the moon. The umbilicus is angry, it stops life and death, and the kidney produces sperm. Fire, geomantic omen and air are the five elements of the world in the eyes of ancient Indians. This passage is both genetic and epistemological. The ancestors were simple and chaotic, and they never separated the two. Knowledge is established by the mind with the help of eyes, ears, nose and skin-the so-called "six roots" or "root help" in Buddhism. The world we can perceive is the creation of human mind, and as for the world itself, there is no way to examine it. Edo clearly regards "self" as the creator of the world and understands it from the perspective of Genesis. Then, some kind of self-consciousness or "absolute spirit" created the world itself; According to epistemology, the world we perceive is the creation of the mind. The world described by science is only the creation of the mind. However, science attributed it to the world itself and declared it to be an objective thing-we don't discuss individual scientists' own philosophical opinions, but only look at the popular concept advertised by science in the eyes of the world-and the role of the mind was concealed. Science has occupied life in theory and practice, so the mind raises the white flag, obediently surrenders to things and takes things away as slaves.
With the support of science, through the colored mirror of science, we can't help but despise the naivety and absurdity of myth. However, we can't find our inner heart from scientific life, and only when we read the myth can we suddenly face it. Our uncontrolled hearts are jumping in the myth, as lively as live fish in living water. We can't help feeling surprised and ashamed. By contrast, the heart at present is like a fish in an abalone. After draining the salt, it is not only tasteless, but also stinky. Of course, this heart is not dead. In science and civilization, it just feels suffocated and depressed. Just like the "fish in dry season" written in Zhuangzi, they finally yearn for the freedom and comfort of the rivers and lakes. We are eager to put it back into the water, then learn from Zhuangzi and watch its happiness with friends on the bridge. Myth is a little attached to the water, and we need to put our hearts back into the game from time to time. Of course, it is not necessary and impossible for us to completely replace modern myths with ancient myths and contemporary life with ancient life. However, we should at least convince our hearts to adopt a mythical attitude towards science, not to take it too seriously, and to relax its bondage to our hearts. For a long time, the mind has created science, and science has clamped it down, a bit like a hunter digging a trap to catch animals, and as a result, he fell into a trap. We can also find an example from myth: the fisherman fished up a bottle from the sea and set the devil free, but the devil stuffed people into the bottle-but myth is smarter than us. In the end, it didn't ask the devil to imprison people, but asked people to put the devil back in the bottle and throw it back into the sea. This story is not a strict myth, and we don't have to follow suit and abandon science.
From this point of view, Mao's attitude towards the myth of workers can be deeply tasted. We noticed that his heart was not rigid and pedantic, nor was it crushed to death by myths, but he happily created new myths-his heart was much freer than ours.