Poetry between Myth and Logos: a Decisive Step towards Science

Two intellectual traditions, the Indian and the Greek, are used as a basis to discuss the emergence of science in the so-called “axial time” (800–200 BCE) and the role of poetry in the formation of scientifi c thought. At that time, spiritual culture existed as an oral tradition, and the spoken word played a leading role. For several centuries, poets organized and preserved the sacred texts of the Rigveda. They created special ways of pronunciation in order to not distort the sound of hymns, wrote down comments concerning unclear phrases and words, composed dictionaries, and formulated rules of grammar. All these activities resulted in the development of the Vedangas: religious and scientifi c texts, representing, in particular, such disciplines as phonetics, etymology, grammar, and astronomy. To some extent, a similar process can be seen in the Greek tradition. Poets formed a creative attitude to tests and created neologisms, which was an example and a prerequisite for the creation of a number of concepts by philosophers. They also deepened the content of a number of key concepts, such as “measure”, “justice”, etc., began to criticize the mythological tradition, releasing ideas from rigid authorities, and discovered reasoning in the form of proportions. Thus, poetry played a crucial role in the transition from mythological to rational thinking.

language, poetry, scientifi c thinking, Rigveda, Vedangas, lyric poetry, measure, harmonica, philology