Origins of Mythology

The Philosophy of Mythology

Context and Mythology

In this thesis, I will survey some philosophically representative approaches to the problem of the relationship between context and meaning. Starting from G.W.F. Hegel’s discussion of the meaninglessness of indexical terms in the Phenomenology of Spirit, I will investigate Gottlob Frege’s notion of context and the legacy of this notion in the formal sciences of language, showing that this appro...

Greek technology or mythology?

The study by Stefanadis et al. in this issue indicates that treatment with a variety of statins reduces the release of heat from atherosclerotic plaques in the human coronary artery. This observation suggests that statins exert a beneficial effect on the inflammatory process that exists in the vascular wall in a variety of acute coronary syndromes. The finding that this effect was most pronounc...

Heavy Weight Training Mythology

The mythological story of the association of lifting maximal amount of weight and muscle mass gain during resistance training has been perpetuated for a very long time. Passed on from gym meatheads, athletes, to coaches, moms, dads, even children can identify and promote this after watching a Saturday morning Incredible Hulk cartoon. Big muscles are made by lifting big weights, right? Not neces...

The Mythology of Game Theory

Non-cooperative game theory is at its heart a theory of cognition, specifically a theory of how decisions are made. Game theory's leverage is that we can design different payoffs, settings, player arrays, action possibilities, and information structures, and that these differences lead to different strategies, outcomes, and equilibria. It is well-known that, in experimental settings, people do ...