The Mythical structure of Social Thinking

Abstract

The paper asserts that social or collective thought build the thinking structures in which they take their own shape as it happens, for example, in historicity. In the same way, social thought builds structures that are "prior to history". These make possible to explain their own appearance, in notions like that of "causality". Myths are presented here as the widest of such structures, and mythical structures are certain shapes, orientations, numerations and paths within a space typically taken as "heterogeneous", which is different from the scientific notion of an "homogenous" space. It is claimed, finally, that everyday understanding thoroughly uses mythical structures of thinking.