Antioxidants in food: mere myth or magic medicine?

The Position of Myth in Frazer’s Anthropological Theory

George James Frazer (1854-1941), the spiritual father of myth-ritual school, was bred up in the British tradition of empiricism. Believing in the evolutionary process of culture, Frazer mainly focused his attention on explaining such epistemic forms of thought as magic, religion and science. Accordingly, while interpreting the processes through which magic leads to religion and finally evolves ...

Acupuncture for gastrointestinal disorders: myth or magic.

For thousands of years, Chinese medicine and conventional Western medicine appeared to be two unrelated and uncompromising paradigms. The history of acupuncture can be traced back for more than 2500 years but today we can use advanced technology to understand ancient healing methods. Acupuncture should not be used to compete with efficacious treatment modalities that are already available in co...

The Myth of the Magic Pill

Multisensory control of ingestive movements and the myth of food addiction in obesity.

Some individuals have a neurogenetic vulnerability to developing strong facilitation of ingestive movements by learned configurations of biosocial stimuli. Condemning food as addictive is mere polemic, ignoring the contextualised sensory control of the mastication of each mouthful. To beat obesity, the least fattening of widely recognised eating patterns needs to be measured and supported.

The goldfish syndrome. Human nature and the posthuman myth.

Posthumanism is a myth. This does not mean to say that it constitutes a narrative devoid of any foundation, inspired by mere fantasy, far from it. The myth, as shown by Ries, Eliade and Lévi Strauss on several occasions, is based on something real and true, and appeals to conceptual structures that keep it away from a mere scientific report: having had to do with the essence of things, it does ...