How Does One Know Something Essay, Research Paper

There are many different philosophies towards life. All these philosophies are based on the opposition of mythos and logos. The factor that changes most philosophies is the correct definition of the two terms.

Philosophers have been trying to explain the difference between mythos and logos for centuries. The only thing that is agreed upon by all philosophers is that logos can be explained and mythos cannot. This is the most generic difference between the two.

An example of mythos is the bible. When read one cannot experiment with what is taught in the bible. One must take what the book has to offer and have faith in it. This is the problem that faces the world. Theologians will argue till the end of time that god created the earth and everything on it, and scientist will oppose them by saying it all happened spontaneously and that evolution has a part. This battle can never be won because the theologians cannot be proven nor disproven.

This battle did not start anytime recently, it was being fought during the rein of the Athenians as well as in the modern day. During the Athenians rein there was a philosopher named Socrates. Socrates was a teacher that felt the goal of philosophy was to replace religion, as the basis for knowing what right and wrong actions are, with reason. He was a man that loved to learn; his goal in life was to search for wisdom. To Socrates wisdom is a clear view of what human life ought to aspire to, but as a philosopher he is not wise because he only knows that he does not know, he calls this human wisdom . His idea of logos was to understand the basis of everything without religion being involved. He wanted concrete proof that which could be tested and possibly disproved. Mythos to Socrates is the same as to the rest of us; it is just improvable facts taught to us by the church (bible).

Approximately 2000 years after Socrates another philosopher comes into play, and his name is Charles Darwin. Darwin was sent to, by his father, a seminary at a young age to study the bible and become a priest. While there he did what his father had planned for him, but while learning about god he became curious as to how he worked. He became really interested in biology, and heard about a boat that was going to sail around the world for five years and study different animals to see what could be learned from them. While on his trip he constructed a theory to explain how evolution occurs. His theory was called the Theory of Natural Selection . Once he returned from his trip he wrote a book about this.

Darwin was a different type of philosopher; he was called an evolutionary psychologist . He used his knowledge of evolution to come up with a definition of a human being. His definition was that humans are gene machines , and by this he means that we are driven to do the things that we do because our genes tell us so. What he is trying to say is that in everything that we do our genes our subconsciously the reason for us doing so.

Natural selection being a theory means that it can be proved or disproved, thus this is Darwin s idea of logos. To Darwin mythos is the biblical account of god s creation of humankind. Even though the theory can be disproved, it is impossible to do so because one cannot observe evolution, at it s normal pace, occur in a laboratory, but it can still be proved or disproved gradually by showing how many facts it explains, and how simply it explains them.

In conclusion logos can be proved and mythos cannot. This means that the bible or any type of theory based of faith cannot be proved nor disproved.