1 From mythos and irrationality towards logos

and rationality

1.1 Mythos and logos

Already in ancient Greece it was recognised that there were two distinct ways
of thinking and acquiring knowledge. One was ‘mythos’, which relied upon
narrative (fabula) and folk knowledge, and the other was ‘logos’, which
referred to logical and rational analysis of the phenomena in question. From
the very beginning the distinction between mythos and logos created con-
troversies. Geoffrey Lloyd (1990) argued that the dispute between mythos
and logos was not based on sound analysis of these two kinds of mental
processes but that it was a battlefield in which contestants defended their
philosophical territories and confronted their political rivals. According to
Cassirer (1946), the first philosopher who attacked mythical conceptions was
the historian Thucydides, who, despite knowing that the lack of fabula and
romance in his writing would detract the attention of readers, nevertheless
proclaimed that he desired to present exact historical knowledge. Rationality
and methodical procedures characterised Greek thought in all domains of
knowing, ranging from the cosmos to the study of nature and self-knowledge.
When we come to Plato, we find that he attributed a higher degree of reality
to non-material and abstract ideas acquired through rational thought than to
knowing the world through sensations and experience. According to Plato,
mythos – or muthos – was always subjected to logos (e.g. Halliwell, 2000).
Analysing Plato’s citations from numerous poets, Halliwell (2000) finds that
imaginative or fictive status or muthoi (mythos) in poetic texts and in Platonic
dialogues was always subsumed under logoi (logos). It meant that assertions in
Platonic dialogues had to be appraised in terms of truth and falsity, although it
was well acknowledged that truth and falsity were difficult to separate. Yet
other scholars, like Dodds (1951), argued in considerable detail that even in
Plato’s thinking we can find cross-fertilisation of rationalism and magical-
religious ideas of shamanistic culture and of the occult nature of the Self.
Plato strongly argued against images and imagination. For him, imagination
was no more than imitation of ideal or true forms, as he explains in the Republic
(Plato, 1991, pp. 283–284). Referring to poets, and specifically to Homer, Plato

15

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 16 ‘Superior’ and ‘inferior’ thinking and knowing

called him an imitator who copied images of virtue, but he could never reach
the truth of God. Equally, a painter makes images of things about which he
knows nothing and he is admired by those who know even less than he does.
Poets and painters make images, but they know nothing of real existences, only
of appearances.
In contrast to Plato, Aristotle thought that widely held beliefs, theories,
stories and opinions of the public (endoxa) carried rational insights, even if
some of them belonged to mythos rather than to logos. While he took a polemic
approach to mythologies, Aristotle recognised the significance of myth
(Johansen, 1999) and acknowledged that myth had the same explanatory
intentions as had science and that therefore one cannot simply reject mythol-
ogies as irrational. Concerning imagination, Aristotle placed it between the
capacity to perceive and the capacity to think and stated that therefore imagina-
tion could facilitate the transformation of sensory impressions into thoughts.
A casual inspection of the literature on the history of ideas shows that the
belief that ‘mythic imagining and logical thinking are contraries’ (Nestle, 1942,
p. 1) has always been widespread. In his influential book on ancient Greek
thinking entitled Vom Mythos zum Logos, Nestle characterised mythical ima-
gining as involuntary and as based on unconscious processes. Throughout the
history of thought, this idea has been commonly accepted (cf. Cassirer, 1946,
p. 282). Nestle thought that, in contrast to mythos, logical thinking is conscious
and conceptual. Giving numerous examples from ancient Greece, Nestle
pointed to evidence that humans, on their road towards logos, have gradually
replaced mythical thinking by rational reasoning.

1.1.1 Merging logos and mythos

Not everybody has been convinced by the idea of the unidirectional road from
mythos to logos. For example, the question mark in the title of the volume From
Myth to Reason? (Buxton, 1999) expresses some scepticism with respect to this
view; indeed, Buxton describes such a road as full of problems. And there have
been many others who have likewise raised doubts concerning the idea of the
path from mythos to logos, both in ancient Greece and in contemporary
societies. Tracing the history of Greek philosophy, as well as referring to
modernity,1 Guthrie (1962, p. 2) criticises the contemporary preoccupation
1
The term ‘modernity’ has become a catchword the meaning of which is usually assumed and
therefore rarely ever explained. Charles Taylor’s (2002, p. 91) comprehensive definition refers to
the post-Mediaeval period in Europe and it captures a ‘historically unprecedented amalgam of
new practices and institutional forms (science, technology, industrial production, urbanization),
of new ways of living (individualism, secularization, instrumental rationality), and of new forms
of malaise (alienation, meaninglessness, a sense of impending social dissolution)’. Moreover,
Taylor argues that we need to speak about multiple modernities to capture developments in
non-Western cultures.

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 From mythos and irrationality towards logos and rationality 17

with rationality, arguing that the philosophical vocabulary is often no more than
a superficial mask hiding unconscious and irrational modes of thought. He
warns that the danger begins when humans believe that they have left behind all
mythical thinking and they rely solely on scientific methods based on observa-
tion and logical inference: ‘[t]he unconscious retention of inherited and irra-
tional modes of thought, cloaked in the vocabulary of reason, then becomes an
obstacle, rather than aid, to the pursuit of truth’. Equally, Glenn Most (1999)
argues that despite rationalisation in the history of humankind, the path from
mythos to logos is often complemented by that from logos to mythos.
The Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, as well as the trends that
followed, was marked by the conviction that the development of sciences
would dispel the irrational thinking of the public. The growth of the sciences
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries influenced literature, art and public
imagination (Levine, 1993). Sciences had a profound effect on public educa-
tion, but they did not eradicate myth. Indeed, there is evidence that the creation,
invention and reinvention of myths in modernity form a powerful force in
human thought and that the scientific progress itself often contributes to the
creation of myths. Gillian Beer (1993) specifically refers to the discoveries in
solar physics and their influence on Victorian society, noting that the public
reinvented old myths about the forthcoming death of the sun. Physical sciences
also influenced the general public indirectly, through the media of art and
literature. Scientific findings encouraged the poetic imagination of Coleridge,
Yeats, and Emerson and subsequently stirred the phantasy of the public (Beer,
1993). The discovery of X-rays at the end of the nineteenth century inspired
artists’ and the public’s fantasies about the invisible and extrasensory world and
stimulated ideas of the occult, like images of immortality or of the imminent
death of the universe (Marková, 2003a). In this vein, Virginia Woolf was
preoccupied with the persistent question ‘what is meant by reality?’ She tried
to answer this by using ideas derived from the theory of relativity and quantum
physics.
A recent volume on Mythical Thinking and Social Representations, which
relates ideas from anthropology and the theory of social representations
(Paredes and Jodelet, 2009), shows that mythical thinking continues to be
present in daily life. It permeates everyday reasoning and daily practices, in
which ancient myths about gods and humans, justice and injustice, and ‘we’
and ‘them’ have been reactivated, and myths have been transformed into the
search for contemporary cultural and political identities. The authors of this
volume show that the formation and transformation of myths also facilitate
understanding and interpretations of events or objects in social life and in social
relations.
The mixture of myth and reason, however, is not only a feature of the
thinking of ordinary citizens and scientific popularisers; scientists too, whether

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 18 ‘Superior’ and ‘inferior’ thinking and knowing

with or without awareness, are prone to propagate ‘scientific myths’. In his

article on ‘The psychology of scientific myths’, Moscovici (1992) provides
evidence that one and the same scientist may produce both a scientific dis-
covery and a myth. Moscovici refers to cases such as the death of the universe,
the Big Bang, the right and left hemispheres and to some evolutionary mis-
conceptions, among others. While science rejects making compromises and
attributes them to social thought as its exclusive feature, scientific myths ‘are
neither pseudo-sciences whose unreality is unmasked at a given time, nor false
sciences which entangle the link of thought to reality’ (Moscovici, 1992, p. 5).
Rather, they are ‘cognitive operators’ that aim at transforming incompatible
pieces of knowledge into one another.
The French Nobel Prize biologist François Jacob argues that fixing bound-
aries between myth and science would be a hopeless task. He shows (Jacob,
1981/1982, pp. 9–10) that during the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries it was religion that made space for science. Specifically,
Jacob suggests that the structure of the Judeo-Christian myth made possible the
rise of modern science in the seventeenth century due to similarities in these
two domains in their search for coherence. Just like the monastic doctrine was
based on the idea of the orderly universe that was created and governed by God,
the budding modern science searched for order and coherence of the universe
guided by natural laws (Jacob, 1981/1982, p. 10). Therefore, according to
Jacob, scientific reasoning and myth fulfil, at least in some respects, similar
functions: both are products of imagination, representations of the world and of
the powers that rule it. Both science and myth fixed boundaries of what they
considered as possible (Jacob, 1981/1982, p. 9). Yet, Jacob argues, while both
scientific and mythical thinking begin by inventing a possible world, they run
along diverse paths.
Mythical thinking preserves the idea of the coherence of the world: it aims at
explaining fundamental questions of the creation of the universe, and the origin
of the matter, among others. In contrast to scientific thinking, mythical thinking
fits reality to its own scheme (Jacob, 1981/1982, p. 12). It has a moral content;
its meaning tallies with social values; and it remains connected with people’s
everyday experience. The human mind searches for stability in understanding
the world around it, and it seeks single and satisfactory explanations. Mythical
explanations serve this purpose.
In contrast, science systematically explores details of a particular phenom-
enon in order to explain it ‘objectively’. In its attempt to confront the possible
and actual, science creates many possible worlds, and so it fragments itself into
small pieces. Using new instruments, it uncovers phenomena that could not
have been seen previously. When, in the nineteenth century, science diversified
and became fragmented into sub-specialities, it created a problem for the public
understanding of science, because single and coherent explanations were no

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 From mythos and irrationality towards logos and rationality 19

longer possible. As modern science became a science of singular phenomena,

of discontinuities and instabilities, the concept of omniscience based on the
unity of universe disappeared. The physicist James Clerk Maxwell, discussing
questions of determinism and free will, and of predictions and contingencies,
commented that the intelligent public must learn to cope with diversity in both
human nature and science. It must be led ‘to the study of the singularities and
instabilities, rather than the continuities and stabilities of things’ and must no
longer assume that ‘the physical science of the future is a mere magnified image
of that of the past’ (Campbell and Garnett, 1982, p. 444).
Today’s world, perhaps even more than ever, is accompanied by staging new
images and by inventing new myths in politics, economy and education. Visual
images in the press, television, posters and photographs are powerful means of
the creation of myth by associating objects with frightful ideas. Our own
research during the HIV/AIDS epidemic has shown that dentists, appearing
in a ‘space suit’ during dental treatments, reinforced patients’ fears of HIV/
AIDS spreading into the community (Marková, 1992; Wilkie, 2011). And of
course, the same happens with the contemporary fear of Ebola. Joffe’s (2008;
2011) research has shown the impact of visual images on changes of social
representations of health and risk by creating fear and anxiety of newly emer-
ging and re-emerging diseases. Staged photographs capture public images
about genetic engineering. For example, the press has encouraged the creation
of public images by presenting pictures of tomatoes being injected with ‘genes’
that make them grow bigger (Wagner, Kronberger and Seifert, 2002). Wagner
and Hayes (2005, p. 181) comment that metaphors of this kind recall ideas of
inoculation and injections of foreign materials into human bodies that have
been transported from medicine and chemistry. An associated belief of infec-
tion that passes from one organism to another evokes the myth of ‘Frankenstein
foods’.
These examples make it obvious that the two opposite explanations of phe-
nomena in terms of either science or myth are not separated by any fixed
boundaries. Instead, they provide accounts in which reason and myth, or logos
and mythos, merge together in ways that are difficult to disentangle from one
another. Even an attempt to create fixed boundaries between them could amount
to a myth, because the criteria for what is and what is not science provide no
guarantee for any true separation. Instead, in science, education, politics and
technology – indeed in all human enterprises of our modern world – science and
non-science inspire the merging of logos and mythos and their mutual transfor-
mations. Importantly, neither scientific discoveries nor political changes diffuse
themselves into daily knowledge as simplified versions of science or of historical
and political facts; instead, such transformations are accompanied by the creation
of new ‘figurative schemes’ (Jesuino, 2008; Moscovici, 1961; 1976/2008) and by
the invention of rich narratives.

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 20 ‘Superior’ and ‘inferior’ thinking and knowing

In order to make this point more concrete, let us consider two examples of
a complex merging of logos and mythos in recent history and in contemporary
science. The first example revolutionised human thought and action and pro-
mised Heaven on Earth but failed to deliver even the slightest form of antici-
pated outcomes. The second example attempts to scientify complex human
social phenomena by reducing them to physiology or by localising them in
brain cells.

1.1.2 Logos and mythos in Marxism and Nazism

While proclaiming its fundamental allegiance to universal reason, Marxism–
Leninism as an ideology in practice disseminated the greatest myths in the recent
history of humankind (Marková, 2012; 2013). Mythical characteristics of
Marxism–Leninism as applied in the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc have
been of considerable interest to philosophers (e.g. Morin, 1959; Tucker, 1967).
Mysteries of ceremonial confessions have puzzled politicians and historians (e.g.
Abramovitch, 1962; Conquest, 1990; Halfin, 2003; 2009; Souvarine, 1939;
among many others). On the one hand, Lenin claimed that science could not be
accepted as a ready-made dogma. According to him, the nature of Marxism was
scientific and therefore it should be critically evaluated. At the same time, and
quite paradoxically, any doubts about the correctness of the Communist Party
line would threaten the unity of the Marxist thinking. Therefore, we arrive at
an absurdity: co-existence of the mystique of the Party and of the Marxist
scientific thought. Yet the paradoxical or contradictory nature of this
co-existence has not been questioned by revolutionary Bolsheviks. The
mystique and incontestable faith in the Party was accepted from the very
beginning of the Marxist movement in the Soviet Union. Among numerous
examples of faithful Bolsheviks, let us mention Leon Trotsky, who, in 1924,
expressed his view of the Party and its accompanying ethics. Knowing about
the undemocratic ways of electing Party members, Trotsky retracted any
possible criticism by professing a total faith in the Party: ‘None of us desires
or is able to dispute the will of the Party. Clearly, the Party is always right [. . .]
We can only be right with and by the Party, for history has provided no other
way of being in the right’ (Souvarine, 1939, p. 362). Arthur Koestler’s (1940/
2005) book Darkness at Noon reflects the author’s own experiences with the
Soviet revolution and political trials. The fictive main hero of the book
Rubashov, in whose personality Koestler encapsulates views of numerous
persons of his acquaintance who perished in the Stalinist trials, states his faith
in the Party: ‘The Party can never be mistaken [. . .] You and I can make
a mistake. Not the Party. The Party, comrade, is more than you and I and
a thousand others like you and I. The Party is the embodiment of the revolu-
tionary idea in history’ (Koestler, 1940/2005, p. 40).

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 From mythos and irrationality towards logos and rationality 21

1.1.2.1 The State religion Analysing the sacralisation of politics in totali-

tarian regimes like Nazism and Bolshevism, Gentile (2000, p. 40) maintains
that Nazist political authorities explicitly appealed to irrationality as
a political force, emphasising the necessity of the ‘primacy of faith’ and the
‘primacy of the myth’. While Bolshevism never proclaimed that it was a State
religion and continued to emphasise its atheistic and scientific nature, Gentile
observes that in the eyes of foreign visitors Bolshevism was recognised as
having all the signs of a State religion not because of the cult of Lenin but
because of the ways in which the regime practised politics. After his visit to
the Soviet Union in 1920, the British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1920,
p. 8) declared that ‘Bolshevism is not merely a political doctrine; it is also
a religion, with elaborate dogmas and inspired scriptures’. Russell explained
in some detail what he meant. There are different religions and Russell
thought that Bolshevism was more similar to Mohammedan religion, which
is practical and social, than to Christianity or Buddhism, which are mystical
and contemplative.
Following his visit to the Soviet Union in 1925, the British economist John
Maynard Keynes (1925/1931; 1926/1931) wrote two articles summarising his
impressions on the Soviet economy and politics. In the first of the two articles
(1925/1931, pp. 297–298) he asked, ‘What is the Communist faith?’ and
explained that ‘Like other new religions, Leninism derives its power not
from the multitudes but from a small number of enthusiastic converts whose
zeal and intolerance makes each one the equal in strength of a hundred indif-
ferentists.’ A long paragraph follows, in which each sentence starts with ‘Like
other new religions . . .’; each sentence describes Leninism in specific epithets,
like being colourless, persecuting without justice, unscrupulous and so on.

1.1.2.2 Nikolai Berdyaev on the Russian soul Among the first analysts of the
mixture of science and religion in the Soviet form of Marxism was the Russian
religious and political philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1931). He focused on the
dichotomy between a strong emphasis on the Marxist science – or the ‘prole-
tarian science’ (see Chapter 3) – and at the same time on the use of symbolism,
ceremonies and rituals that arose from the Orthodox Church. The fundamental
feature of the Russian intellectual and literary history was Nihilism, which, in
its Russian form, preoccupied itself with human suffering and injustice.
Nihilism was steered by the consciousness of guilt, contrition, feelings of
offence from others, and of oppression and serfdom, and it called for a total
restructuring of the society. As Berdyaev notes, these feelings became incar-
nated in the works of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Turgenev, among others. All
this paved the way to the intermingling of religious issues with social ones and
to a specific form of the idea of Russian socialism which, Berdyaev comments,
‘was not a political but a religious question’ (Berdyaev, 1931, p. 6). Socialism,

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 22 ‘Superior’ and ‘inferior’ thinking and knowing

therefore, became the dominant religious faith of Russian intelligentsia and it

also affected intelligentsia’s moral judgements. Berdyaev (1931, p. 6) explains:
‘The Russians’ interpretation of Saint Simon, Proudhon and Karl Marx was
a religious one; they took to materialism also in the same religious spirit.’
Here we come to another issue in Russian history: the relation between
religion and science. As Berdyaev maintains, while in the West the separation
of science and religion was a major problem, in Russia this was not an
important issue. Being troubled by the conviction that religion supported
injustice and social untruth, Russian intellectuals transformed the concept
of science by adapting it to social feelings. Nihilism and atheism in science
became ‘an object of religious faith and idolatry, and . . . this only confirms
the fact that it is not a question of mere objective science’ (Berdyaev, 1931,
p. 11). And thus, for Russian Marxists, the mixture of logos and mythos was
not viewed as being inconsistent. While normally science and reason are
subjected to doubt, reflection and uncertainty, and so enabling the creation of
new knowledge and change, ‘in Russian Nihilism science was never a wholly
objective research; it became an idol, an object of religious faith’ (Berdyaev,
1931, p. 19).
Although Marxism called itself a scientific theory, Berdyaev argues that it
became a religious symbolism. The irrational gained power and the image that
masses are irrational was widely exploited and encouraged by the regime.
Religions thrive on symbolism, miracles, magic and myth; these phenomena
are transmitted through reading biblical texts and through oral diffusion.
The State religion was diffused to masses of citizens above all through cere-
monies, public gatherings, songs and marches and the cult of personalities of
Lenin and Stalin. The dogma was perpetually restated in various forms of
written and visual communication using vocabulary and images with emotional
and passionate meanings.

1.1.2.3 Mixing of myth and science as a strategy of totalitarian regimes It was

in the name of science that the emphasis on the primacy of faith and myth
became the main strategies of both grandiose totalitarian systems of the
twentieth century, Nazism and Communism. The anthropologist Ruth
Benedict drew attention to the mixing of science and myth, that is, the study
of race and racism, which she compared to a religion. She stated about racism:
‘Like any belief, which goes beyond scientific knowledge, it can be judged only
by its fruits, its votaries and its ulterior purposes’ (Benedict, 1942, p. 97; see
also Moscovici, 2011). In his life-work, Eric Voegelin (1933/1997) has shown
that throughout the history of humankind, race theories have always played an
important role in politics. Ernst Cassirer (1946), too, in his historical treatment
of The Myth of the State showed that contemporary political myths like racism
have their long past but that, in Germany after the First World War, the threat of

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 From mythos and irrationality towards logos and rationality 23

a complete economic and political collapse formed the basic nourishment for
racism. He commented that while myth had been usually described as an
unconscious process of imagination, racism in Germany was a planned strategy
using the magical power of language and charging words with new meanings
and creating new rituals. Just like Marxism attributed a scientific status to the
myth of the Communist Party, its leaders and the concept of class, the Nazi
Party attributed a scientific status to the faith in ‘superiority’ of one race over
another. Voegelin commented that Nazism manufactured, quite arbitrarily, the
idea of ‘superior’ characteristics that were granted to the ‘Nordic race’. Among
these were ‘creative mental powers, high intelligence, outstanding character
traits, steadiness of will and caring foresight, self-control, pursuit of objective
goals over the long term as well as a talent for technology and mastering of
nature, love for the sea . . . aristocratic reserve, honesty, sincerity’ (Voegelin,
1933/1997, p. 85).
In aiming at the restructuring of society and transforming the world, both
totalitarian systems, that is, Nazism and Communism, used politics, daily life,
culture and all forms of art to these ends. Communist ideology promised to
end the injustice between the rich and the poor; it created the myth of the
construction of ‘a new man’ that was the necessary condition for the glorious
vision of Heaven on Earth. Nazism, in contrast, created the myth of a ‘pure
race’ and the vision of a nation and of national consciousness. In analysing
these issues, Voegelin (1933/1997, p. 149) refers to the German philosopher
of the nineteenth century Fridrich von Schelling, who studied the origin of
myth in the creation of community. Schelling thought that myth does not arise
within a people but that, instead, a people emerge from its myth: ‘A people’s
or nation’s ground of being . . . and its unity is its myth’ (Voegelin, 1933/1997,
p. 149). Voegelin comments that it is myth that determines the history of
a nation by creating ‘a community of consciousness’, ‘a common world
perspective’ and ‘a shared mythology’. The resources that create such mix-
tures of logos and mythos usually do not require any reflection or analysis on
the part of the devotee; commitment to the dogma and to the leaders creating
the dogma seems to be the necessary and sufficient conditions for the con-
struction of myths.

1.1.3 Mixing of science and myth to explain human social phenomena

1.1.3.1 Social science married to neuroscience The Decade of the Brain
initiated by the American President George Bush in 1990 has inspired
a tremendous increase of interest and funding of brain sciences and various
brain projects. This has also contributed to technological expansions in
computer simulation of the brain and techniques of neuroimaging. These
developments have had a high impact on social psychology, which started

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 24 ‘Superior’ and ‘inferior’ thinking and knowing

seeing itself as one of the sciences that would make significant contributions
to the understanding of complex social phenomena and social activities
through brain functional behaviour. The main aim of functional brain imaging
is focused on the identification of specific regions/neuronal systems in the
brain and their temporal relationships with the performance of well-designed
tasks. The end result is a detailed picture of the processing architecture of
brain networks. Such scientific programmes have fuelled the imagination of
social psychologists. One of the first topics that drew the attention of social
psychologists to study brain activities was political behaviour. A special issue
on social neuroscience and political psychology in the journal of Political
Psychology, published in 2003, attempted to fulfil these aims. Social neuros-
cientists Albertson and Brehm (2003, p. 766) maintain that they did not study
‘political attitudes in the brain so much as what kinds of political stimuli
activate which systems’ in people who are and who are not politically
sophisticated.
Some dialogical researchers did not lag behind. For example, Lewis (2002,
p. 178) speculates ‘how a dialogical self might actually be housed in a
dialogical brain’. Lewis attempts to model an internal monologue, hypothe-
sising that it forms the basis of a dialogical Self. The model assumes a link
between an attention system in the orbitofrontal cortex and between asso-
ciated affective and premotor systems in the brain. Any internal monologue
has a dialogical character because I-positions await responses from others;
from a neural perspective, the brain has the capacity to switch rapidly
between subjective positions, and this is supposed to be similar to dialogical
exchanges. This means, Lewis (2002, p. 187) concludes, that ‘the vitality and
creativity of internal dialogues can be squared with the constraints of biolo-
gical realism’.
Prejudice and discrimination have become important topics of study in social
neuroscience and they have had a profound effect on media reports (O’Connor
and Joffe, 2014; 2015; O’Connor, Rees and Joffe, 2012). In her article
‘On prejudice & the brain’, Fiske (2007) argues that learning about uncon-
scious prejudices which culture puts in the human brain opens up the road
towards reducing them. How can a social psychologist reduce prejudices? First,
one needs to understand how prejudices reveal themselves: ‘Within a moment
of observing the photograph of an apparently homeless man, people’s brains set
off a sequence of reactions characteristic of disgust and avoidance’ (Fiske,
2007, p. 157). The psychologist can correlate impulses in the brain with certain
prejudices, and getting information about this is the first step to reducing
prejudice: ‘If we recognize prejudice’s subtle yet inexorable pressures, we
can learn to moderate even unconscious prejudice . . . And this is the substance
of social science married to neuroscience’ (Fiske, 2007, p. 159). Ideas like
these capture the attention of the media and of institutions struggling for racial

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 From mythos and irrationality towards logos and rationality 25

equality, as well as of institutions providing funds for social neuroscience. They

also capture the imagination of social psychologists struggling for their share of
the pot of gold.
It is hardly surprising that mass media jump up at these sensational findings
and contribute their own insights. In her perceptive study, Cliodhna O’Connor
(2014) provides some examples that inspired the media and appeared on
newspapers’ websites. They show the diversity of topics motivated by brain
research.
O’Connor (2014) considers two main patterns in the headlines she selected
(see Figure 1.1). One of them attempts to provide the public with topical issues
of neuroscience, for example whether there is something wrong with the brain
of the Norwegian murderer Breivik. The other attempts to explain why a
particular category of people differs from another one; for example, it spec-
ulates about the neurobiological traits of criminals, politicians, etc. And such
speculations take us back to the ideas of nineteenth-century psychiatrist
Lombroso, who studied the biological and genetic traits of criminals and
anatomically defined properties of the cranium.

Scientists discover brain’s ‘misery molecule’ Can brain scans explain crime?
which affects stress, anxiety and
depression Brain shape ‘shows political allegiance’
The clue to Breivik’s cruelty lies
in his brain Racism is ‘hardwired’ into the
human brain – and people can be
Neuroscience could mean solidiers prejudiced without knowing it
controlling weapons with minds

Rioters may have ‘lower levels’ So THAT’S why you can’t resist those new
of brain chemical that keeps shoes: scientists discover emotion and
impulsive behaviour under value are handled by the same part of the
control brain

Did your brain make you do it? Can neuroscience challenge Roe V. Wade?

Where evil lurks: neurologist discovers Bankers and the neuroscience of greed
‘dark patch’ inside the brains of killers and
rapists The brain on love
Neuroscience, free will and determinism: ‘I’m just a
machine’ ‘Neuromarketing’: can science predict what we’ll buy?

Figure 1.1 Neurosciences in the media

1.1.3.2 Trust reduced to the effect of oxytocin Another historical reminder is

the search for biological and physiological correlates of social behaviour which
goes back to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (e.g. Marañon, 1924;
Riddle, 1925). In the 1960s, this search was revived by the Schachter and
Singer experiment (e.g. Schachter and Singer, 1962) that explored the relation
between physiological arousal by drugs and emotions (for a review, see Shapiro

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 26 ‘Superior’ and ‘inferior’ thinking and knowing

and Crider, 1969). More recently, extensive explorations of physiological and

neurophysiological correlates of emotions, empathy, sympathy, motivation and
of many other social phenomena have been described and reviewed in the
handbook of van Lange (2006). Highly prestigious journals including Nature
and Scientific American bring forward sensational news that researchers have
begun to uncover how the human brain determines changes in social phenom-
ena like trust, justice, influence or generosity. In his recent explorations, the
neuroeconomist Paul Zak treats trust as a transparent phenomenon not requir-
ing any further analysis. Using an experimental task of ‘the trust game’ in
a series of studies, Zak (see, e.g., 2008) and his colleagues (e.g. Morhenn et al.,
2008) have shown that oxytocin (the substance that is produced in the body of
pregnant women), when administered through a nasal spray, plays a major role
in increasing one’s trust of others and cooperating with them. Zak’s article in
Scientific American (2008, p. 88) is introduced by a persuasive claim: ‘Our
inclination to trust a stranger stems in large part from exposure to a small
molecule known for an entirely different task: inducing labor.’ Although Zak
conducted his studies with an experimentally based ‘trust game’, the article in
the Scientific American begins with a generalised claim about trusting stran-
gers. In the same article, a number of other papers are advertised, such as
‘Neuroendocrine perspectives on social attachment and love’; ‘How love
evolved from sex and gave birth to intelligence and human nature’;
‘Oxytocin increases trust in humans’; ‘Oxytocin is associated with human
trustworthiness’; and ‘Oxytocin increases generosity in humans’. These over-
generalisations, for which there is no evidence, have inspired many young
researchers to conduct studies about the effect of oxytocin on co-operation and
trust. The media accept sensational reports that trust/distrust can be manipu-
lated by administering oxytocin through a nasal spray, and this tempts young
scholars and the general public to endorse such news as ‘truth’. Oxytocin has
even obtained the name a ‘love hormone’, and disputes about its efficacy and
magic continue to fill pages on the Internet as a joke, myth or serious attempt to
solve problems of infidelity.
In view of these simplifications, let us remind ourselves of an enormous
amount of literature on trust/distrust in politics, religion and diverse socio-
cultural conditions. Chapter 5 is devoted to the exploration of the heteroge-
neous and multifaceted nature of epistemic trust/distrust in inter-personal and
inter-group relations, as well as in associated phenomena such as faith and
solidarity, and in conflicts and negotiations.

1.1.3.3 Mixing social constructs invented by humans with biological/physio-

logical matters Brain research makes vast advances and it attracts enormous
financial support all over the world, and it is not surprising that social neuros-
cientists attempt to make their mark in these developments. Yet both

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 From mythos and irrationality towards logos and rationality 27

sensational reports in the media and researchers in social neuroscience tend to

ignore some fundamental points.
One was noted by the already mentioned François Jacob (1981/1982,
pp. 22–24). He argued that scientists, in their effort to find universal explana-
tions and coherence, sometimes slip into myth by going too far, trying to use
a single theory to explicate a variety of phenomena; as a result, they explain
nothing. Among a number of cases that Jacob presents is sociobiology, which,
nowadays, just as in the middle of the nineteenth century, attempts to localise
morality in ethological and evolutionary considerations and to explain ethical
beliefs from evolutionary codes. In rejecting this belief, Jacob comments that
nobody has yet attempted to find an evolutionary explanation for poetry,
physics or mathematics. However, we need to admit that Jacob was a little
behind his time. Today, we have scholarly articles on neuroanatomical corre-
lates of religiosity and spirituality, on aesthetic preferences for paintings, on
fluid intelligence, on extroversion and introversion, among many others. All
these papers are published in journals with ‘high-impact factors’, such as
Cerebral Cortex, Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology, The
American Journal of Medical Association – Psychiatry, and others. The studies
that localise these complex phenomena in the brain ignore one fundamental
issue. Concepts such as ‘prejudice’, ‘discrimination’, ‘trust’, ‘justice’,
‘co-operation’, ‘aesthetic preferences’, ‘extraversion’, ‘religiosity’ and others
do not refer to biological, brain or physiological matters that can be localised in
the biological/brain tissue by technological means. While ‘disgust and avoid-
ance’ might possibly have some biological correlates in the brain tissue,
‘prejudice’ and ‘discrimination’, ‘religiosity’ and so on, are social constructs
that have been invented by humans to account for human relationships, values,
cultural and semantic preferences. They have been created by humans through
specific historical and cultural processes and transmitted in communication;
they have specific meanings in diverse languages and cultures. Trust, for
example, has been widely explored in human and social sciences in relation
to spirituality, co-operation, solidarity, faith, beliefs and confidence. However,
none of the papers on brain functional imaging mentions any possible differ-
ences between physiological/biological matters and language that refer to such
complex social constructs they pretend to localise.

1.2 Irrationality and rationality

Mythos and logos are associated with another pair of notions: irrationality and
rationality. From the early beginnings of philosophy in ancient Greece, myth
was viewed as pictorial, symbolic, lacking in scrutiny and therefore was
characterised as irrational. Scientific thought (or rather pre-scientific thought
in ancient Greece), by contrast, was supposed to be systematic, logical and

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 28 ‘Superior’ and ‘inferior’ thinking and knowing

rational (Morgan, 2004). However, as we have noted, mythos and logos are
often intertwined; therefore, irrationality and rationality underlying mythos and
logos, too, are intermingled. Yet, despite some interchangeability between
these pairs, that is, mythos and logos, and irrationality and rationality, there
are differences in connotations.
First, while mythos has not been always evaluated negatively and has some-
times been considered as complementary to logos, one can hardly ever find
contexts in which irrationality would be judged positively. To say about some-
one that he/she is irrational always amounts to condemnation, or at least it
implies the devaluation of that person’s thought or behaviour. In other words,
irrational thought and behaviour are always ‘inferior’, while rational thought
and behaviour are ‘superior’.
Second, despite the fact that mythos and logos intermingle, and that the
former is associated with irrationality and the latter with rationality, there is,
nevertheless, at least some agreement as to the criteria that make these forms of
thought different from one another. In contrast, the notions ‘rationality’ and
‘irrationality’ are used in so many contradictory and heterogeneous ways that it
is hardly possible to determine principles that would separate one from the
other.
Forms of rational and irrational thought and behaviour pertain to individuals,
as well as groups, masses and even societies. Notions of ‘irrationality’ and
‘rationality’ are used both in daily language and in the human and social
sciences. One even describes scholarly disciplines as rational and irrational
(e.g. Zafirovski, 2005). What some people call ‘rational’, others may call
‘irrational’. And yet despite heterogeneous and even incompatible usages,
‘irrational’ is bad, while ‘rational’ is good. Let us consider some of the issues
accompanying these heterogeneities.

1.2.1 Rationalities and irrationalities in humans

Since Aristotle, scholars have been providing different answers to the question
whether humans are, or are not, rational. Some scholars presuppose that humans
are born with the capacity for rationality and that, therefore, rationality is a norm.
For example, for René Descartes (1637/1955), individual rationality is based on
the possibility of thinking and doubting, which constitutes the proof of human
existence. If humans do not behave rationally, it is because they are driven to
irrationality by others and by ‘example and custom’ (Descartes, 1637/1955, p. 9).
Carl Rogers’s (1961, pp. 194–195) person-centred therapy, too, is based on the
idea that humans are basically rational. He argues that the tendency towards
rational thought is a fundamental feature of personality, and he does not sym-
pathise with the view that humans are irrational. Rationality rises in favourable
psychosocial conditions; destructive, anti-social and immature behaviour may

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 From mythos and irrationality towards logos and rationality 29

arise in situations in which an individual is defensive and fearful (Rogers,

1961, p. 27).
In contrast, Sigmund Freud (1960) claimed that humans are basically driven
by irrational tendencies seated in the ‘id’, which they cannot control. Although
the ‘ego’ has some degree of rationality, it has to struggle with both the
irrational ‘id’ and irrational demands of the ‘superego’ (Ziegler, 2002, p. 82).
Stuart Sutherland (1992) systematically explored the widespread forms of, and
reasons for, irrationality among people. He discussed diverse forms of irration-
ality among ordinary citizens, medical professionals, judges, engineers and
others; he referred to follies and irrationalities studied by social psychologists,
for example, obedience to authority or in-group and out-group conformities
like stereotypes. Sutherland was careful to make a distinction between acting
irrationally and making mistakes. According to him, irrationality is intentional
and a deliberate act. An error, on the other hand, is acting on the basis of
insufficient knowledge. For example, someone with minimal knowledge of
astronomy would not rationally climb a tree to reach the moon, whereas a child
might try to do that; however, that would not count as an irrational action
because the child lacks the relevant knowledge. Sutherland described multiple
causes of irrationality, ranging from social and emotional causes to cognitive
ones, such as making false inferences, ignoring and distorting evidence, among
many others. In general, his catalogue of irrationalities does not have any
theoretical basis; it is purely empirical and he acknowledges that what he
calls irrationalities would not be acceptable to all readers.
Gustav Ichheiser (1968), an astute and largely forgotten social psychologist,
drew attention to the difficulty of making a distinction between rational and
irrational thought. In his article on six meanings of rationality and irrationality,
he emphasised that while the distinction between these two terms is valid, it
presupposes that cold rationality is ‘superior’ to impulsive intuition. However,
it is impulsive intuition and not cold rationality that instigates generous actions,
spontaneous help like acting on the spur of the moment to save someone’s life,
and even to sacrifice one’s own. Should one call such behaviour irrational?
From the point of view of someone who argues that it is rational to act on the
basis of self-interest, acting on behalf of the other would clearly be irrational.
The most common use of the notion ‘irrationality’ in ordinary language,
Ichheiser claims, is expressive-exclamatory. It amounts to no more than
a disapproval of the action, goal or motive of another person. As Ichheiser
notes, this use of the word ‘irrational’ is rhetorical rather than designative-
logical. Individuals attribute rationality to themselves, while irrationality
comes from others. This conviction is already expressed in Descartes’ glorifi-
cation of thinking of the individual and in rejecting ‘example and custom’
(Descartes, 1637/1955, p. 9). It is others who darken the individual’s reason;
common agreement never provides us with any certainty, which can come only

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 30 ‘Superior’ and ‘inferior’ thinking and knowing

from the thinking Self. Ernst Gellner (1998, p. 3) characterised this view by
saying that ‘[W]e discover truth alone, we err in groups’. The pathological
effect of groups, the work of the collectivity and of crowds, where rational
individuals turn themselves into irrational beings, preoccupied social scientists
like Le Bon, Ortega y Gasset or McDougall. Being captivated by unreason in
crowds, by influences of charismatic leaders, mass hypnosis and the collective
unconscious and impulsiveness of the mob, the individual loses his/her capa-
city to make judgements and to think rationally.
Gustav Ichheiser (1968) finds that Sigmund Freud and Max Weber were
inheritors of both rationalism and irrationalism. As regards Sigmund Freud,
Ichheiser notes, he is a follower of rationalistic Enlightenment as well as
a successor of irrational philosophers like Schopenhauer. As for Max Weber
(1968), who developed one of the most elaborated versions of a formal ratio-
nalistic system of economy and social organisation, he argued that ascetic
Protestantism led to the rational effort to achieve economic prosperity. At the
same time, Weber was convinced that rationalism also involved unavoidable
elements of irrationality due to the conflict of different rationalities in modern
culture (Gronow, 1988). Accordingly, the rationalistic system of economy
cannot escape irrationality.
Ichheiser further notes that societies tend to esteem certain activities, goals,
aspirations and values as more or less rational. The present society worships
above all ‘material welfare, technological progress and enlightened “self-
interest”’ (Ichheiser, 1968, p. 100), while other preferences and values are
considered as less rational or even irrational. Ichheiser’s diagnosis corresponds
to the way in which Ernest Gellner (1992, pp. 136–137) characterises rationality
as methodically augmenting cognitive and financial capital and turning profits
into pleasure, power or status. This Weberian outlook on achieving economic
prosperity in and through rationalisation contrasts with Ichheiser’s (1968, p. 100)
‘higher, deeper, subtle, intangible, purely cultural-spiritual values’ which in
modern society have come to be evaluated as not quite rational.
This little catalogue of irrationalities serves no more than as an example of a
range of meanings of ‘irrationality’, and it should not be considered as exhaus-
tive. We can conclude that like many other human attributes, for example ‘trust’
and ‘distrust’, ‘morality’ and ‘immorality’ and so ‘rationality’ and ‘irration-
ality’ are relational terms; this means that one is defined in terms of the other.
When making a judgement about an action as rational, one is also making
a judgement as to what is considered irrational.

1.2.2 Rationalities and irrationalities in human and social sciences

In the Mediaeval ages and Renaissance, practices that could be called irrational,
such as astrology, magic and alchemy, flourished all over Europe and were

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 From mythos and irrationality towards logos and rationality 31

intermingled with the pre-scientific activities of the time. One can hardly
expect they would suddenly disappear with the rise of modern science and
technological advances in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Even scien-
tists of the seventeenth century, like Johannes Kepler or Galileo Galilei, were
involved in what, today, would be called irrational enterprises, such as
astrology. But the historian John North remarked on Kepler that ‘had he not
been an astrologer he would very probably have failed to produce his planetary
astronomy in the form we have it’ (North, 2008, p. 345). Both Tycho Brahe and
Isaac Newton were interested in alchemy. Commenting on Newton’s achieve-
ments, Keynes (1947, p. 27) noted that ‘Newton was not the first of the age of
reason. He was the last of the magicians [. . .] the last great mind which looked
out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began
to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago.’
Nevertheless, in his treatise of Mystery and Philosophy, Michael Foster
(1957, p. 53) observes that in contrast to the Greek pre-science, modern science
‘does not end in wonder but in the expansion of wonder’. Natural sciences not
only progressed in making scientific discoveries in physics, chemistry or
biology but also developed terminology in a univocal language. Science has
become universally communicable in the scientific community; it established
new methods, and postulated a limited number of laws and concepts, thus
enhancing its general comprehension (Campbell, 2007, p. 10).
Since the seventeenth century, Blaise Pascal’s (1670/1995) concepts of the
‘spirit of geometry’ (l’esprit de geometrie) and the ‘spirit of finesse’ (l’esprit de
finesse) instigated new ideas, leading to two kinds of scholarship. The former,
l’esprit de geometrie, inspired the development of scientific knowledge and
required a rational, systematic and rigorous thought. The latter, l’esprit de
finesse, referred to intuitive and creative features of the mind. Later on l’esprit
de finesse became associated with irrationality.
The Age of Reason or Enlightenment of the eighteenth century pursued the
belief in the growth of universal rationality and the logical capacities of
humans. The rapidly developing science, ruled by Blaise Pascal’s ‘spirit of
geometry’, based on the mechanistic principles of Newtonian physics,
became the leading power of rational thought and technological innovations.
It enabled advancements in astronomy, chemistry and biology. Despite being
intermingled with astrology and alchemy in their beginnings, natural sciences
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, nevertheless, started their careers
as ‘rational’ disciplines aiming to discover the truth about the world and the
universe.
In contrast, social sciences originated in the eighteenth century. Their begin-
nings can be traced to the study of social phenomena such as nationalism,
religion, myth and beliefs, communities and thus to Pascal’s notion of intuition,
or the spirit of finesse. Therefore, as Serge Moscovici (1988/1993) remarks,

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 32 ‘Superior’ and ‘inferior’ thinking and knowing

social sciences commenced their scientific careers as ‘irrational’ disciplines.

Richard Shweder (1991) made a similar comment saying that when the
Enlightenment established natural sciences like biology and physics as objec-
tive and real disciplines, social sciences were considered as soft and unreal,
using jargon rather than scientific terminology. Referring specifically to anthro-
pology, Shweder maintains that notions such as society, custom and tradition
were already humiliated by exposure to the Enlightenment. Therefore, social
sciences started off with a significant disadvantage as ‘inferior’ disciplines.
In Central Europe, the Romantic movements provoked debates about national
languages, communities and the formation of new nations. In Germany, these
ideas were closely related to the philosophy of nature (Naturphilosophie) and to
the movement called ‘expressionism’ (Berlin, 2000b; Marková, 1982; Taylor,
1975; 1989), where they nourished perspectives of development, change, histor-
ical and cultural interests and human agency. They presented alternatives to
rationalism and to the mechanistic philosophy of the Enlightenment.
Among the followers of Pascal, the nineteenth-century French philosopher
Bergson (1907/1998) took up the dichotomy between l’esprit de geometrie and
l’esprit de finesse and developed it further as the distinction between intellect
and intuition. Bergson was a critic of mechanistic philosophy and of materi-
alism; his philosophy was based on the concept of creative evolution and
the uniqueness of human experience. While he characterised intelligence as
the individual’s capacity to think or act with a goal, he referred to intuition
as the experience of entering directly into a thing, or into oneself. It was based
on imagination, memory, emotions and creative impulse.
Natural sciences on the whole do not discuss whether they are rational or
irrational disciplines. In contrast, in human and social sciences we can observe
a split concerning the question as to whether, and to what extent, social sciences
are or are not rational disciplines. Sociologist Milan Zafirovski (2005) observes
that economists and rational choice theorists regard sociology as a science of
the irrational, lacking a conception of rationality. Zafirovski defends rational-
ism (rationalism is good, irrationalism is bad) in sociology, focusing on its
conceptual and methodological pluralism. His historical review gives support
to the existence of the split within social sciences in terms of the divergence
between the Enlightenment and Romanticism, and between universalistic and
relativistic approaches. In fact, many contemporary scholars (e.g. Gellner,
1998; Hollis and Lukes, 1982; Jarvie, 1984; Shweder and LeVine, 1984;
Wilson, 1970) refer to this split often associating it with the distinction between
Gesellschaft as a rationalistic approach based on the concept of society and
Gemeinshaft as an irrational approach based on the concept of community
(cf. Tönnies, 1887/1957).
The breach between the Enlightenment and Romanticism was also
encouraged by Max Weber, who rejected Romantic movements, which were

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 From mythos and irrationality towards logos and rationality 33

seeking refuge in simple forms of life in the past. It was the modernity of the
Enlightenment that placed emphasis on rationality which, Weber claimed,
brought about the possibility for people to live freely as they do in an advanced
society (Weber, 1968). This is why he called the Enlightenment ‘the Ages of the
Rights of Man’.

1.2.2.1 The growth of universal rationality The universalistic meaning of

rationality has become pronounced during the last three centuries. Immanuel
Kant (1784/1996) – in his well-known piece on ‘An answer to the question:
What is enlightenment?’ – claimed that ‘enlightenment is the human being’s
emergence from his self-incurred minority’ (Kant, 1784/1996, p. 17). Kant
characterised the Age of Enlightenment, in which he lived, as a period during
which new possibilities were open to the individual and to the general public.
Each individual has the ability to use his or her own understanding without
being directed by others. Kant believed that the spirit of freedom was expand-
ing through education, political tolerance and freedom of speech and that the
general public should be encouraged to use its rational capacities to speak its
own mind.
The ethos of the Enlightenment to eradicate irrational thinking has
influenced social sciences, various systems of thought, beliefs and ideology,
including the nineteenth-century scientific Marxism. Building largely on
the values of the Enlightenment, Marxism firmly adopted the rationalistic
outlook with respect to theories of historical and dialectical materialism,
economy and politics. Historical materialism was particularly relevant to
sociology and social psychology. It was defined as a science describing and
analysing gradual stages through which society passes on its way towards
a prosperous future. This journey would be accomplished in a communist
society and – at ‘the end of history’ – it would be the final triumph of
communism over capitalism.
But how can humankind achieve universal rationality? Although the ethos
of the Enlightenment embraced the conviction that everybody is born with
a capacity for rational thought, it was also obvious that people differed
with respect to their ability to think and conduct themselves rationally.
Thomas Carlyle considered that people in most societies can achieve rational
and purposeful conduct only under the guidance of charismatic leaders. This
view became internalised in scientific Marxism. Lenin played the role of
a charismatic leader and he carefully read and internalised the view of Carlyle
(Service, 2000, p. 202). His revolutionary spirit incited masses. Although
Lenin appreciated the importance of the initiative of masses, he argued that it
was necessary to combat their spontaneity, maintaining that the masses
needed the guidance of the Party (Lenin, 1913/1977). In order to bring
about universal rationality, one has first to fulfil a sub-goal: to teach the

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 34 ‘Superior’ and ‘inferior’ thinking and knowing

masses materialism and rationality in order to substitute unscientific thinking

by scientific reasoning. Lenin believed that Russian people had been for many
centuries mystical and irrational. They were influenced above all by the
Orthodox Church. According to Marx and Lenin, all forms of religion were
irrational and dogmatic. In his ‘Contribution to critique of Hegel’s
Philosophy of Right’, Marx (1843/1970, p. 131) expressed this conviction
particularly clearly: ‘Religion is opium of the people.’ Therefore, it was
essential to uproot religion and to guide the masses towards rational thought.
As Serge Moscovici noted, this perspective implied that only intellectuals are
capable of rational thinking but ordinary people are not (le peuple ne pense
pas; Chapter 3; Moscovici and Marková, 2000, p. 228) and that, therefore,
their thinking is deficient.
The belief that humankind progresses in an upward continuum was also
assumed by Charles Darwin, who thought that humans differ from animals in
degree but not in kind. In discussing these issues, he claimed that there are no
fundamental differences between non-human and human species: the differ-
ence is quantitative and the gap ‘is filled up by numberless gradations . . .
Differences of this kind between the highest men of the highest races and the
lowest savages, are connected by the finest gradations’ (Darwin, 1859/1874,
p. 157). Ingold (2004, p. 210) explains that Darwin conceived evolution in
terms of humans growing out of nature, with the mind gradually liberating itself
from innate dispositions. Ancestors of people became humans gradually, rising
from primitive savages. And so Charles Darwin presented the phylogenetic
development of species as a continuous progression towards perfection.
Despite the fact that scientific disciplines protect their territories and origin-
ality of their ideas and findings, they cannot avoid being influenced by other
scientific fields. And so we find that the idea of an upward continuous advance-
ment towards rationality has also pervaded the sociocultural development of
the human mind, first in sociology and subsequently in social and develop-
mental psychology.
The sociologist Emile Durkheim made no claims about biological and social
evolution. For him, the point of departure was society, its institutions and the
system of relations that binds members of society together. Durkheim’s ambi-
tion was to develop a sociological theory of knowledge. Collective representa-
tions, through which humans learn to know the world, are outcomes of myths
and beliefs, as well as of the established norms and rituals. They become, in and
through socio-historical development, progressively more scientific and there-
fore more rational. This means that collective representations in primitive
religions gradually transform, in the course of historical process, into modern
scientific representations (Moscovici, 1998, p. 423). According to this view,
representations are social facts; they constitute social reality, and as Durkheim
(1895/1982, p. 34) put it, ‘social life was made up entirely of representations’.

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 From mythos and irrationality towards logos and rationality 35

While according to Durkheim the growth of rationality was a continuous

process, for his contemporary, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, the historical development
of knowledge was discontinuous and it involved different kinds of logic.
Consequently, ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ thinking and knowing could not be so
easily bridged. According to Lévy-Bruhl, what was conceived rational from the
point of view of one culture was not necessarily viewed as rational by another
culture. This perspective implied that the logic of one culture differed from that
of another culture and so it undermined the idea of mental unity of humankind.
Moreover, Lévy-Bruhl’s books on Les fonctions mentales dans les sociétés
inferieures (1910/1926) (translated less expressively into English as How
Natives Think) and La mentalité primitive (1922/1923) (Primitive Mentality)
entailed the idea of ‘superiority’ of Western ‘rationality’ and ‘inferiority’ of
non-Western ‘irrationality’.
Developmental psychologists like Piaget, Vygotsky and Luria integrated the
ideas of Durkheim and Lévy-Bruhl into their own work. Piaget and Vygotsky,
in their studies on child development, were looking for clues of primitive
mentality in children, although each of these scholars adopted different strate-
gies (Moscovici, 1998). Here it is sufficient to point out that Piaget, in contrast
to Vygotsky, followed the line of Durkheim and viewed child development as
a continuous line from pre-logical to logical thinking. Piaget’s concepts of
adaptation and accommodation account for the development in terms of stages.
These are hierarchically organised and result from the restructuring of cogni-
tive elements and so producing higher and more logical stages. This perspec-
tive is also indicated in the titles of works like The Growth of Logical Thinking
from Childhood to Adolescence (Inhelder and Piaget, 1955/1958) or The Early
Growth of Logic in the Child (Inhelder and Piaget, 1959/1964). Just like
Durkheim viewed the sociocultural development of mankind as a continuous
development of rationality, so Piaget viewed child development as a gradual
and continuous development of logic.
The question of universal rationality, its growth in individuals, societies and
cultures, has been widely discussed since the Second World War. It still con-
tinues to be a subject matter of debates, although changing in contents due to
the intermingling of social scientific issues and political agendas. Probably, the
main issue guiding these debates has been the question of how to maintain the
concept of the unique mind given the diversities of human lifestyles, views,
understanding and practices. Ethical questions and ensuing problems of ethnic
groups and of multiculturalism (e.g. Donnelly, 2007; Shweder, Minow and
Markus 2002) continue to dominate disputes concerning universal rationality
versus cultural relativism.

1.2.2.2 Rationality reconceptualised In contrast to researchers who struggle

to maintain universal rationality and cultural relativism as separate concepts,

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 36 ‘Superior’ and ‘inferior’ thinking and knowing

while at the same time searching for possible relations between them, others
propose a total reconceptualisation of rationality, grounding it in alternative
epistemologies.
Shweder (1990, pp. 33–35), who is critical of universalism based on fixed
and abstract ideas of the psychic unity of humankind, proposes a dialectic
concept of ‘thinking through others’. This concept includes intentionality,
reconstruction of the Self and Others in and through transformation of beliefs,
desires, and practices and thereby encouraging ‘an open-ended self-reflexive
dialogic turn of mind’. According to Shweder, cultural psychology explores
dyadic relations between the Self and Others, subject and object, psyche and
culture, figure and ground, practitioner and practice, among others. These
dyads are dynamically and dialectically interconnected because they make up
each other (Shweder, 1990, p. 1).
Like phenomenologists (Chapters 3 and 4), Shweder insists that humans are
intentional and intentionality is the essential feature of the sociocultural envir-
onment. The intentional world is real, factual and forceful, but it exists only if it
is inhabited by people who have emotions, beliefs, desires and who represent
the world around them.
Roy Harris (2009), too, rejects the existing conceptions of rationality,
arguing that they are a continuation of Aristotle’s static and rigid syllogistic
philosophy. He maintains that human rationality is a product of sign-making
and that sign-making is not a unique process but involves an integration of
human activities that take place in daily human communication. All meanings
in circulation are profoundly contextualised and thus Harris’s integrational
approach embraces various levels and modes of semiosis, ranging from oral,
written, gestural to others. In integrational semiology, rationality is central to
the creative process of sign-making and is connected with social relations and
with social organisation of communities (Harris, 2009, p. 170).
Finally, Rosa and Valsiner (2007) reconceptualise rationality in terms of
human agency, intentionality and ethics. Cultures are no longer isolated in their
geographical ghettos. The contemporary world of societies is opened to other
cultures; it is the world of uncertainties which moves cultures and individuals
in different directions. These movements require making choices based on
evaluations of possible consequences for the Self and Others. In such situa-
tions, the authors argue, humans are constantly pushed towards making judge-
ments between ethical and unethical acts and towards choosing actions to
confront the ambiguities of life. It would be totally inadequate to conceive of
reason as the private domain of the individual. Rather, reason must be nego-
tiated in the world of ambiguities and uncertainties where individuals, groups
and cultures have become interdependent and interfering with one another
(Rosa and Valsiner, 2007, p. 697). In these confrontations, interdependence
between humans and their sociocultural environments transcends not only

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 From mythos and irrationality towards logos and rationality 37

individual rationality but also a particular cultural rationality; rationality, ethics

and actions cannot be disentangled.
These proposed alternatives to universalism and relativism by Shweder,
Harris, and Rosa and Valsiner suggest a fundamental ontological and episte-
mological rethinking of rationality. Individuals and cultures are interdependent
processes that can be understood only in terms of one another. Rationality and
irrationality can be judged only in terms of this interdependence.

1.3 Science impinging upon religion

We noted in the Introduction to this book that for Albert Einstein the division
between ‘inferior’ and ‘superior’ thinking was an illusion. However, Einstein
went much further than that. Gerald Holton’s (2003) essay on ‘Einstein’s third
paradise’ takes us through Einstein’s relations with science and religion
throughout his life. Einstein’s first paradise was religion. Having rejected
this, he attained his second paradise in science. By his middle age, Einstein
found his third paradise in the fusion between scientific and religious feelings
when he abandoned the boundaries between them. And so he stated: ‘I maintain
that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for
scientific research’ (Einstein, 1954, p. 39). This fusion of science and religion
without boundaries and barriers, together with the removal of boundaries
between life and politics, was an expression of Einstein’s search for coherence.
Strongly influenced by Spinoza’s philosophy and ethics uniting God and
Nature, Einstein pointed to a plausible source for his specific formulations:
‘Those individuals to whom we owe the great creative achievements of science
were all of them imbued with a truly religious conviction that this universe of
ours is something perfect, and susceptible through the rational striving for
knowledge’ (Einstein, 1954, p. 52). Like Spinoza, for Einstein religion was
not based on an anthropomorphic conception of God but on rationality and
unity underlying everything in nature (Holton, 2003, p. 33).
We may turn to the founder of cybernetics Norbert Wiener (1964), who, too,
explored frontiers at which science impinges upon religion. His aim was to
explore knowledge as intertwined with communication, control systems, ethics
and the normative side of religion. In his essays Wiener takes us through the
history of human efforts to produce a Golem, an anthropomorphic existence
perhaps best known as the Golem of Prague, of the Rabbi Loew. Humans have
always attempted to create their own images whether in producing golems or
machines. Creative activity leads humans to construct machines that not only
learn but also reproduce themselves. This is where science impinges upon
ethical questions of the relations between them.
The humility of deeply reflective scientists like Einstein or Wiener thus
sharply contrasts with the views of some contemporary cognitive psychologists

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 38 ‘Superior’ and ‘inferior’ thinking and knowing

who reverse the order of the natural development of the brain and the creation
of a Golem (a computer). For them, it is the Golem which comes first, and the
human brain which created the Golem comes second. In other words,
a cognitive psychologist may express her excitement by saying (or writing)
that she can understand the brain, and even the mind (a cognitive psychologist
often uses a term ‘mind/brain’), as a kind of a computer (a Golem).
Finally, we may note that for the topmost scientists of the twentieth century,
it may not be the search for the truth that comes first but the search for beauty.
For example, Zee (2007) refers to Einstein’s search for beauty in equations
because they appeal to his aesthetic sense: the truth will come later. Zee
maintains throughout his book that despite general beliefs that physics is
a precise and predictive science, it is aesthetics that drives contemporary
physics in its search for symmetry and simplicity which physicists find in
Nature and its designs.

1.4 Conclusion
Throughout this chapter, I referred to attempts to separate, in different histor-
ical and cultural periods, ‘inferior’ and ‘superior’ thinking and knowing, and to
difficulties in maintaining such a separation or even in fixing boundaries
between them. Some scholars, such as Aristotle and Jacob, argued that scien-
tific and mythical reasoning fulfil, at least to some degree, similar functions:
they both aim at explaining fundamental questions about the universe, origin of
matter and life; they are both based on imagination, representations of the
world; and they explore powers that rule it.
Although the categories of mythos and logos have created controversies
since ancient Greece, they have been maintained throughout centuries, together
with the conviction that on its road towards progress humankind will shed off
irrational beliefs and myths. However, today, the mixture of myth and science
still characterises the thinking of ordinary citizens, scientific popularisers and
political ideologists. It may even permeate thinking of scientists who, whether
with or without awareness, are prone to propagating ‘scientific myths’. But
search for coherence takes different paths; for scientists like Einstein or Wiener,
boundaries between different kinds of knowing like science, religion, ethics
and aesthetics are not rigid but totally fluid and open towards creative and
imaginative thought.

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