The Myths We Live By

Summary

Philosopher Mary Midgley argues that myths are everywhere, and that they aren’t lies or idle tales but webs of imagery through which we make sense of the world. She traces them through political theories of human nature, economics’ faith in self-interest and the seventeenth-century picture of humans as machines – myth, she insists, sits inside science, not opposite it.

Rationale

Much of our vocabulary for what lies beneath belief comes from the sciences. Midgley offers ‘myth’, and a check: science runs on myths of its own.