Catching Wrangham: On the Mythology and the Science of Fire, Cooking, and Becoming Human
2011; Indiana University Press; Volume: 48; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2979/jfolkrese.48.2.109
ISSN1543-0413
Autores Tópico(s)Culinary Culture and Tourism
ResumoMyth and science sometimes converge—nowhere more so than in scenarios concerning the domestication of fire and its consequences for human social life. I examine this claim through an analysis of bioanthropologist Richard Wrangham’s recent book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human, comparing his claims and findings with those of mythologist/anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss in The Raw and the Cooked. I examine myth-science convergences around the following topics: parochialism, narrative speculation, transformations attributed to cooking and fire, temporality in science and myth, and the human fascination with fire as a substance. As part of my analysis of temporality, I look at the projection, in both myth and science, of contemporary cultural contestations (such as gender issues and food debates) into an idealized species-formative moment set in the past. Challenging the rhetorical tendency to invoke science and myth as opposites, I consider possible factors leading to convergence and suggest that science can enrich its perspective through a sympathetic attitude toward myth and other forms of traditional wisdom.
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