From Ursula K. LeGuin’s 1976 essay “Myth and Archetype in Science Fiction“:
Where intellect fails, and must always fail, unless we become disembodied bubbles, then one of the other modes must take over. The myth, mythological insight, is one of these. Supremely effective in its area of function, it needs no replacement. Only the schizoid arrogance of modern scientism pretends that it ought to be replaced, and that pretension is pretty easily deflated. For example, does our scientific understanding of the nature and behavior of the Sun explain (let alone explain away) Apollo’s remarkable sex life, or his role as the god of music and of the divine harmony? No, it has nothing whatever to do with all that; it has nothing to do with sex, or music, or harmony, or divinity; nor, as science, did it ever pretend to — only scientism made the claim. Apollo is not the Sun, and never was. The Sun, in fact, ‘is merely’ one of the names of Apollo.
Reductionism cuts both ways, after all.
