Wednesday, November 4, 2009

A Memorial Quote

Claude Levi-Strauss, a giant in the study of anthropology and culture, passed away yesterday at the age of 100. As a tribute, let me share the conclusion to his hugely influential essay "The Structural Study of Myth" from 1963:

"...the kind of logic in mythical thought is as rigorous
as that of modern science, and... the difference lies,
not in the quality of the intellectual process, but in
the nature of the things to which it is applied. This is
well in agreement with the situation known to prevail
in the field of technology: What makes a steel ax
superior to a stone ax is not that the first one is better
made than the second. They are equally well made, but
steel is quite different from stone. In the same way we
may be able to show that the same logical processes
operate in myth as in science, and that man has always
been thinking equally well; the improvement lies, not
in the alleged progress of man's mind, but in the
discovery of new areas to which it may apply its
unchanged and unchanging powers."

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