Catching Wrangham: On the Mythology and the Science of Fire, Cooking, and Becoming Human

Myth 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 Levi-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.