Includes bibliographical references (pages 176-184) and index.

How myths work -- Our place in the world -- Progress, science and modernity -- Thought has many forms -- The aims of reduction -- Dualistic dilemmas -- Motives, materialism and megalomania -- What is action -- Tidying the inner scene : why memes? -- The sleep of reason produces monsters -- Getting rid of the ego -- Cultural evolution? -- Selecting the selectors -- Is reason sex-linked? -- The journey from freedom to desolation -- Biotechnology and the yuk factor -- The new alchemy -- The supernatural engineer -- Heaven and earth, an awkward history -- Science looks both ways -- Are you an animal? -- Problems about parsimony -- Denying animal consciousness -- Beasts versus the biosphere? -- Some practical dilemmas -- Problems of living with otherness -- Changing ideas of wildness.

Print version record.

Mary Midgley argues in her powerful new book that far from being the opposite of science, myth is a central part of it. In brilliant prose, she claims that myths are neither lies nor mere stories but a network of powerful symbols that suggest particular ways of interpreting the world.

English.

Open Access EbpS