What are the possible scientific explanations for what Carl G. Jung called Archetypes?
How is it possible to explain, for example, all the myths shared by so many cultures and civilizations all over the world, in different epochs? Common ancestry or cultural diffusion seem not enough to explain most cases.
If you know any serious explanation, please post it here.
Thank you.
One possibility: ‘archetypes’ are like numerology. You find them when you want to find them, when you’re willing to be vague enough to find the similarities that are always there between any two or more complex stories. It’s an exercise in pattern-matching. In this case there is nothing to “explain” since there are no real shared myths that aren’t due to diffusion. All the rest is convenient happenstance.
Another possibility: there are some vague similarities in the way all cultures view the world because of our shared biological heritage.
Another possibility: there are some vague similarities in the way all cultures view the world because of our shared biological heritage.
This, at least to me, sounds very much like the main reason for the existence of shared myths, etc. Maybe we could compare this with the evolution of an eye at different times in different animals: they evolved independently, but they all function in almost identical way.
Or perhaps the events that spurred these myths were created before man was starting to migrate out of Africa. When we finally started moving around, the myths were kept by oral tradition and stayed with the groups that split.
Maybe the myths, such as a great flood (which has a very archetypical trend), actually happened on a global scale, incurring the similarities.
Isn’t the point of laws in America to be made by what you believe. AKA we decided what is write and wrong based on what is better for everyone, obviously there isn’t one person that benefits from killing being legalized.
Or perhaps the events that spurred these myths were created before man was starting to migrate out of Africa.
Hmm, I don’t know. Look at the pyramids, for example. They built them in Africa and in America, and surely we didn’t get the idea fifty thousand years ago when we started emigrating from Africa and then waited forty-five thousand years to actually “make this dream come true.” No. Doug’s “shared biological heritage” still makes most sense.
Archetypes may be thought of, in anthropological terms, as being pre-memetic elements of cultural potential (residing in our intrinsic nature), or as untraceable ancient mythological motifs. Human beings share all sorts of proclivities in social interaction; for instance, a tribal society in Africa is engaged in the same outline of “family drama” as a bourgeois society in northern Europe, their portrayals of such situations will undoubtedly be comparable despite all cultural disparities and nuances. One can therefore imagine that they would share a psychic semiology underlying their own idiosyncratic sophistications and moral perversions, a system of ideas and impulses that recurs in their art, music, literature and DREAMS. In any case, the value of this consideration surpasses the domain of classical psychology.
Or perhaps the events that spurred these myths were created before man was starting to migrate out of Africa.
Hmm, I don’t know. Look at the pyramids, for example. They built them in Africa and in America, and surely we didn’t get the idea fifty thousand years ago when we started emigrating from Africa and then waited forty-five thousand years to actually “make this dream come true.” No. Doug’s “shared biological heritage” still makes most sense.
Pyramids seem kind of obvious to me. You want to build something really grand and you don’t want it to fall down after a couple of years and you don’t have “space age” materials. What else would you build?
One possibility: ‘archetypes’ are like numerology. You find them when you want to find them, when you’re willing to be vague enough to find the similarities that are always there between any two or more complex stories. It’s an exercise in pattern-matching. In this case there is nothing to “explain” since there are no real shared myths that aren’t due to diffusion. All the rest is convenient happenstance.
Thanks Doug and hypnos. Those 2 bias links really shows where-how that quote “perception is reality” came about. I disagree with the statement in general because if one makes an effort to consider one’s bias’s a clearer vision of objective reality is possible. It’s a wonder how we can be “sure” of anything.
