To the question on interaction of traditional and modern cultures

There is considered the phenomenon of ‘primitiveness’ in terms of its connection with modern culture. Analyzing the features of primitive thinking, the authors show that a modern man is no less prone to mythologizing reality than his distant ancestors on explaining the phenomena of nature and those of social life. The same is true for the other aspects of ‘primitiveness’, namely games, rituals. Elements of mythologization of reality are inherent even in the process of scientific understanding and find their expression in metaphors that do not separate the processes of perception and thinking, but activate them simultaneously. The authors note that the roots that connect ancient magic and modern forms of cognition of reality, such as science and art, after tens and hundreds of centuries, are not broken, but are still alive and nourishing the current culture. Their traces can also be seen in those rituals that are accepted in modern society, and which it would be too superficial to explain only by the influence of remnants of the distant past. The most interesting manifestation of the influence of primitive culture on modern culture is the phenomenon of the mythologization of reality, which finds its expression in the process of cognition of nature and society. One of the signs indicating the indivisibility of the processes of perception and thinking characteristic of myth can be the presence in the structure of a scientific theory of non-formalized content that is not amenable to rational analysis and is characteristic even of highly formalized theories of mathematical natural science.