An Editorial Conundrum

Interdisciplinarity is to be welcomed as a way of overcoming the limitations of narrow specialization and the blinders that inevitably follow from immersion in a particular discipline's worldview. To that end, the Journal of Folklore Research explicitly welcomes submissions from scholars in related fields, as our stated mission is to provide "an international forum for current theory and research among scholars of folklore and related fields." This goal carries a pair of demands: first, that folklorists must remain open to approaches from other disciplines; second, that folklorists think hard about how they can best convey their work so that scholars in other fields will take heed (a task that may include making explicit our own disciplinary assumptions).

An article that appears in the current issue, "The Ourobóros as an Auroral Phenomenon," presented an interesting challenge to your editors and especially to our commitment to interdisciplinary research. In this article, Marinus Anthony van der Sluijs and Anthony L. Peratt draw upon research in plasma physics and astronomy to present a novel hypothesis for the motif of the cosmic worm ourobóros, who constantly eats his own tail and is related to the Midgard Serpent (motif A876) and Leviathan (A876.1). This mythic motif is both ancient and widespread across the world, and the authors seek to answer one of the oldest questions that has plagued folklorists, namely, how does the same motif come to be found in such widely scattered places?

Since the paper drew upon both comparative mythology and astronomy/physics, we sent the paper out for review to both folklorists and scientists. The folklorists considered the topic interesting and the treatment of comparative data valuable; these concerns form the bulk of the article. Regarding Van der Sluijs and Peratt's concluding arguments about the origin of the ourobóros image, the folklorists disclaimed knowledge of the science but were intrigued by resonances with, if not resurgences of, nineteenth-century themes in comparative myth study: Max Müller's "solar hypothesis," E. B. Tylor's attempts to reconstruct the origins of mythology in rational but unschooled observation, and the inclination of mythologists of that time to assume that mythology was fundamentally about nature.

It has been a while. The assumption that myth was fundamentally about the workings of nature was displaced in the twentieth century by the inclination to assume that it is about the workings of the human psyche and/or of society. Moreover, for the last century the very quest for the origins of mythology has been displaced by questions about its function and structure. Are the winds shifting back? "The Ourobóros as an Auroral Phenomenon" is but one among several instances the editors have encountered recently of scholars utilizing mythology and geological/planetary science to cast light on one another. It remains to be seen whether this marks a momentary enthusiasm or a dominant shift in myth study.

Our scientific reviewers expressed considerable skepticism toward Van der Sluijs and Peratt's hypothesis, pointing especially towards its highly speculative character. Indeed, their claim is built upon a double reconstruction: on one hand, of an atmospheric event that may have transpired millennia ago; and on the other, of the archaic human reaction to that event. Reconstructions invariably open methodological cans of worms. But they also serve to foster discussion on fundamental issues of method: What is the role and limit of speculation in myth and in science? How long might a singular striking event remain in collective memory? Reflexively, how might we understand the shifts, cycles perhaps, in what thinkers of different eras find in mythology? We hope that "The Ourobóros as an Auroral Phenomenon" will contribute productively to such debates.