1111 2 3 4 5 THE MYTHS WE LIVE BY 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3 4 5111 In The Myths We Live By, Mary Midgley argues in her customary brilliant 6 prose that myths are neither lies nor mere stories but a network of powerful 7 symbols that suggest particular ways of interpreting the world. She spells 8 out how we go wrong about several of the most powerful, such as the 9 myth of the Social Contract, and points out how profoundly some of our 20111 strongest myths today are shaped by our favourite technologies, notably 1 the microscope and the computer. There is also the myth of progress – 2 now disguised as evolution – the myth of a body quite separate from the 3 mind, and the myth of omnicompetent science. 4 Drawing shrewdly on a wealth of examples such as the unhelpfulness of 5 memes – the alleged genes of culture – as explanations of social change 6 and the way in which current hopes for biotechnology are repeating the 7 errors of the alchemists, she spells out what goes wrong when we try to 8 apply the atomistic metaphors of science to the large-scale problems of our 9 lives. She does not, however, blame science itself for this. Instead, she deftly 30111 shows how its name is unfairly blackened when we pressgang it into the 1 wrong places. 2 A tour de force of clear thinking on why we are more than the sum of 3 our molecules, The Myths We Live By is essential reading for anyone 4 concerned about how we should understand the world today. 5 6 Mary Midgley is a moral philosopher and the author of many books 7 including Wickedness, Evolution as a Religion, The Ethical Primate, Science 8 as Salvation, Utopias, Dolphins and Computers, and Science and Poetry. 9 All are published by Routledge. 40111 1 2 3 44111 1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3 4 5111 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 44111 1111 2 3 4 5 THE MYTHS 6 7 WE LIVE BY 8 9 1011 1 2 3 4 Mary Midgley 5111 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 I~ ~~o~f!;n~~~up 2 LONDON AND NEW YORK 3 44111 1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3 4 5111 6 7 First published 2003 by Routledge 8 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 9 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA 20111 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business 1 © 2003 Mary Midgley 2 Typeset in Galliard by 3 Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon 4 5 The Open Access version of this book, available at 6 www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. 7 8 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library 9 30111 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data 1 Midgley, Mary, 1919– The myths we live by / Mary Midgley. 2 p. cm. 3 Includes bibliographical references and index. 4 1. Myth. 2. Symbolism. 3. Philosophy. I. Title. 5 BL304.M53 2003 6 191–dc21 2002037168 7 8 ISBN 13: 978-0-415-30906-6 (hbk) 9 40111 1 2 3 44111 1111 2 3 4 5 FOR EVA 6 IN RETURN FOR MANY 7 WONDERFUL MYTHS 8 9 1011 1 2 3 4 5111 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 44111 1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3 4 5111 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 44111 1111 2 3 4 5 CONTENTS 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3 4 5111 Acknowledgements ix 6 7 8 1 How myths work 1 9 20111 2 Our place in the world 7 1 3 Progress, science and modernity 13 2 3 4 Thought has many forms 21 4 5 The aims of reduction 29 5 6 6 Dualistic dilemmas 36 7 8 7 Motives, materialism and megalomania 43 9 8 What action is 47 30111 1 9 Tidying the inner scene: why memes? 56 2 3 10 The sleep of reason produces monsters 61 4 11 Getting rid of the ego 68 5 6 12 Cultural evolution? 75 7 13 Selecting the selectors 82 8 9 14 Is reason sex-linked? 88 40111 1 15 The journey from freedom to desolation 94 2 16 Biotechnology and the yuk factor 102 3 44111 17 The new alchemy 108 vii CONTENTS 1111 18 The supernatural engineer 114 2 3 19 Heaven and earth, an awkward history 122 4 20 Science looks both ways 128 5 6 21 Are you an animal? 135 7 8 22 Problems about parsimony 142 9 23 Denying animal consciousness 146 1011 1 24 Beasts versus the biosphere? 153 2 25 Some practical dilemmas 158 3 4 26 Problems of living with otherness 163 5111 6 27 Changing ideas of wildness 169 7 8 Notes 176 9 20111 Index 185 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 44111 viii 1111 2 3 4 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3 4 5111 The theme of this book is the crucial importance of symbolism in all our 6 thought and the resulting need to take our imaginative life seriously, even 7 when we are dealing with what seem to be prosaic subjects. 8 Because I wanted to concentrate on this issue of symbolism, I have 9 brought together here a number of articles in which I have previously dealt 20111 with that topic, re-working them in a way that I hope will bring out its 1 importance. Since the sources of these articles are rather widespread, I 2 would like to thank a wide variety of people who have helped me in my 3 efforts to understand it. I have had a great deal of help from many colleagues 4 who attended the very interesting conferences out of which several of these 5 papers grew. Many good suggestions have come from the staff of the 6 Hastings Center, to which I have made a couple of visits, and especially 7 from Strachan Donnelley. My son David and my colleagues at the now- 8 defunct Philosophy Department of Newcastle University have always helped 9 me greatly, and in recent times I have learnt a great deal from discussions 30111 with John Ziman, Steven and Hilary Rose, James Lovelock, Evelyn Fox- 1 Keller, Anne Primavesi, Martin Lockley, Raymond Tallis and Andrew Brown. 2 Finally I would like to thank the editors and publishers of the books 3 and journals in which these papers first appeared – not just for giving 4 me permission to reprint them, but for their help and support during the 5 process of publication. 6 7 These sources are as follows: 8 The first four chapters are based on a lecture called ‘The Myths We Live 9 By’, which I delivered as part of an Amnesty Series, ‘The Values of Science’, 40111 in 1997. It was published in a book with that name, edited by Wes Williams, 1 in 1999 by the Westview Press, Colorado. 2 Chapters 5 to 7 on an article called ‘Reductive Megalomania’, which 3 appeared in Nature’s Imagination: The Frontiers of Scientific Vision, edited 44111 by John Cornwell and published by Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995. ix ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 1111 Chapter 8 on ‘Do We Even Act?’ which is forthcoming in a Symposium 2 Volume, ed. D. A. Rees and S. P. R. Rose, to be published by Cambridge 3 University Press, 2004. 4 Chapters 9 to 11 on ‘Why Memes?’, which appeared in Alas, Poor 5 Darwin: Arguments against Evolutionary Psychology, edited by Hilary and 6 Steven Rose and published by Jonathan Cape, London, 2000. 7 Chapters 12 and 13 on ‘The Evolution of Cultural Entities’, published 8 in the Proceedings of the British Academy, no. 112, 2002, pp. 119–33, and 9 in The Evolution of Cultural Entities, edited by M. Wheeler, J. Ziman and 1011 M. Boden and published by British Academy and Oxford University Press, 1 London and Oxford, 2002, pp. 119–132. 2 Chapters 14 and 15 on ‘The Soul’s Successors: Philosophy and the 3 “Body”’, which appeared in Religion and the Body, edited by Sarah Coakley, 4 Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997. 5111 Chapters 16 to 18 on ‘Biotechnology and Monstrosity: Why We Should 6 Pay Attention to the “Yuk” Factor’, which appeared in the Hastings Center 7 Report for September–October 2000, vol. 30, no. 5. 8 Chapters 19 and 20 on ‘Heaven And Earth, an Awkward History’, which 9 appeared in Philosophy Now, December 2001–January 2002. 20111 Chapters 21 to 23 on ‘Are You an Animal?’, which appeared in Animal 1 Experimentation: The Consensus Changes, edited by Gill Langley and 2 published by Macmillan, London, 1999. 3 Chapters 24 and 25 on ‘Beasts versus the Biosphere?’, which appeared 4 in Environmental Values, vol.