Mikaela Martinez Dettinger: Science Creates Myths: Out of the Silent Planet

     In our class discussion of Out of the Silent Planet we discussed a line which had stood out to me when I had read the book on my own: "he found it night by night more difficult to disbelieve in old astrology".  This quote stood out to me because it seemed obviously connected to our idea of Myths contains Truths. The old astrologists were pointing out some of the same simple truths that current scientists also point out: there are stars in the sky, they move and dance around each other, and the universe is much bigger than humans. Now, however, science has taken it much further than the astrologists and perhaps has tainted the cosmos by asserting that it can be defined by laws of science. This brought me back to Gadamer, I think, who asserted that scientific facts are just observations of happenings that keep happening, not actual facts. This is what Lewis touched on in this quote. Though science has defined laws of the universe that does not means that the old sciences and beliefs hold less truth. I think in some context this can be applied to many different areas of thought today including religion. Just because science can tell us that a man names Jesus of Nazareth lived, but that this man does not fit exactly the story of the Jesus of the Bible, this does not mean that the Gospels do not contain truths. 

    Furthermore, this idea that science has turned outdated beliefs into myths fits into the concept of my paper. I am writing about the place of technology in the philosophy of phenomenology and this is a great place to start. Just because Technology gives us answers that are based on human knowledge, that does not mean that it is the only Truth about the world that surround us. Rather, as much truth can be learned about the sunrise from Native American legends as can be learned from Wikipedia. Both give ideas of what others believe the sunrise to be, but neither is equal to experiencing it.