Myth and Human Behaviour

Can Myth enlighten our understanding of Human Sciences?

What is (a) myth? definitions

A purely fictitious narrative usually involving supernatural persons, actions of events, and embodying some popular idea concerning natural or historical phenomena OED

A story.... offering an explanation of some fact or phenomenon; story with a veiled meaning Chambers

"A myth, in its simplest definition, is a story with a meaning attached to it other than it seems to have at first; and the fact that it has such a meaning is generally marked by some of its circumstances being extraordinary……...“ John Ruskin

Myth (continued)

Myth and Anthropology True myth may be defined as the reduction to narrative

shorthand of ritual mime performed on public festivals, and in many cases recorded pictorially Robert Graves

Myth and Semiology Can anything be myth? Yes, I believe so, for the

universe is infinitely suggestive. Each object in the world can pass from a closed, silent existence to a state where it speaks Roland Barthes, Mythologies

Cassandra’s paradox

The most beautiful of Priam’s daughters

Apollo fell in love with her and granted her the

gift of prophecy

She did not return his love

Apollo placed a curse on her so that no one

would ever believe her prophecies

At the fall of Troy

If only she had not been cursed

She would have been believed

And ………..

And of course Troy would have been saved And we would have been saved the film

What if? If she had the gift of foresight.... Surely she would have known the

consequences... and she would not have been raped by Ajax,

and killed by Clytemnestra

But then of course...

She knew!

So did she have a choice?

C’est écrit là-haut!

How did they meet? By chance, like everyone else.

What were they called? What does that matter to

you? Where were they coming from? From the

nearest place. Where were they going? Who knows

where they were going? What were they saying?

The master was silent and Jacques was saying that

his captain in the army used say that all the good

and bad that happens to us down here on earth

was already written up there.

Oedipus He knew (because of a

prophecy) theat he would kill his father and marry his mother

To what extent did his knowledge of the prophecy affect his behaviour and choices?

Why does he punish himself?

Why does he blind himself as a punishment?

The Oedipus effect.

“ …… the oracle played a most important role in

the sequence of events which led to the fulfilment

of its prophecy. … For a time I thought that the

existence of the Oedipus effect distinguished the

social from the natural sciences. But in biology, too

—even in molecular biology—expectations often

play a role in bringing about what has been

expected. ”

Karl Popper

Self fulfilling prophecy - psychology. A person who expects people to be friendly, may

smile more and thus receive more smiles

A person expecting to be lucky, may enter many more competitions and thus increase their chances of winning.

Children randomly allocated to a group labelled ‘bright’ did better in an experiment than a similar group labelled ‘less bright’

BUT you may also do your utmost to ensure a prediction made by a psychologist does not happen!

Self fulfilling prophecy - Economics Told that a bank was in trouble, people rushed

to take out their money thereby causing the bank to fail.

Bear and Bull markets – expectations of market rises and falls tend to make them rise or fall.

Predictions of depression make people behave in a way which (at least) hastens it

Placebo and Nocebo A patient given a pill expects it to make him

better (placebo) and often does

In a classic nocebo experiment conducted in the early 1980s volunteers were told that a mild electrical current would pass through their head, and although no electrical current was used, two-thirds of the volunteers complained of a headache after the experiment.

Particularity of human sciences Man is the subject and the student Compare Martian as student

The car engines

malfunction when

the lights go red!

Wir verstehen!

Wir verstehen

Wir verstehen

Wir verstehen

The “verstehen” position Understanding from the inside

“A man who lacks common intelligence can be a physicist of genius but not even a mediocre historian”

Isaiah Berlin Compare:

Why a leaf flies in the wind

Why a man flies from a mob

Let us remember however,

Confirmation bias

Question(er) bias

Difficulties in measurement

Observation of people may affect their behaviour

Problem of (no) controlled experiments

Human sciences often affected by moral issues

Limitations on willingness to experiment

Human science laws suggest the ‘probable’

Uncomfortable with falsification

Do we trust predictions?

If the apple will fall to the ground

The weather forecast

A forecast of future economic growth

The future portrayed in a Sci-Fi novel

What I tell you will happen at the end of the

lesson

And lastly

What decisions do we make and how do we behave faced with predictions? (Oedipus and Cassandra)

You are told you have 6 months to live – what decisions do you take?

The prediction turns out to be false........