The first myths were stories that gave comfort and a sense of order to a chaotic world. They were passed down from generation to generation, becoming the unquestioned truth of the tribe. The story of the great spirit who drank the smoke was as real to the people of the cave as the fire itself.
But as the human mind continued to expand, a new kind of thinking began to emerge, a thinking that was not content with the comfort of stories.
One of the tribe’s younger members, a woman with a restless, observant mind, sat by the fire night after night, watching the smoke rise. The story of the thirsty spirit was a familiar comfort to her, but her eyes saw something more. She noticed that the smoke always rose, whether the air was still or windy. She noticed that a small, light seedpod, dropped into the rising column of hot air, would be carried upwards with the smoke. She noticed that a heavy stone was unmoved.
Her mind was grappling with a new idea, an idea that was not about intention or spirit, but about rules. She did not have the words for it, but she was beginning to perceive the concept of a law of nature.
She began to experiment. She built a smaller fire, and saw that it produced a smaller column of rising air. She built a larger one, and saw that it could lift even heavier seeds.
She did not have a new story to tell. What she had was a prediction. She could say, with a certainty that had nothing to do with the mood of a spirit, that a fire of a certain size would have a certain effect.
This was the first law. It was the birth of physics, of the scientific method. It was the beginning of a new kind of story, a story not about the ’who’ of the cosmos, but about the ’how’. The universe had created a being that could not only invent a comforting narrative, but could also begin to decipher the source code of reality itself. The age of myth now had a powerful, and ultimately revolutionary, competitor: the age of reason.