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The Myths We Live By
Midgley's 2003 treatise arguing that myths are not falsehoods but framing narratives that organise experience — and that the reigning myth of Western culture is the myth of the all-explaining mechanism.
The Myths We Live By (2003) is Midgley's most sustained account of how framing narratives — myths, in her specific technical sense — shape what counts as evidence, what questions can be asked, and what conclusions can be drawn within any cultural or scientific discussion. A myth in Midgley's usage is not a falsehood to be debunked but a structure of imagination operating beneath explicit argument. Myths determine the categories within which thinking takes place. They are invisible to the people inside them, who experience them as reality itself rather than as one interpretation of reality. The book argues that the dominant contemporary myth is the myth of the perfectly objective, mechanical universe — and that this myth, while useful for certain scientific purposes, has been catastrophically inflated into a total worldview that renders invisible everything it cannot measure.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The book's central claim is that science cannot function without myths