I decided to do my paper on the topic of Mythos and Logos that we discussed in class. I will discuss what they are and what I think of them. I will start by talking about Mythos.

In the academic fields of mythology, mythography, or folkloristics, a myth (mythos) is a sacred story concerning the origins of the world or how the world and the creatures in it came to have their present form. The active beings in myths are generally gods and heroes. Myths often are said to take place before recorded history begins. In saying that a myth is a sacred narrative, what is meant is that a myth is believed to be true by people who attach religious or spiritual significance to it. Use of the term by scholars does not imply that the narrative is either true or false. See also legend and tale.

A myth in popular use is something that is widely believed to be false. This usage, which is often pejorative, arose from labeling the religious myths and beliefs of other cultures as being incorrect, but it has spread to cover non-religious beliefs as well. Because of this usage, many people take offense when the religious narratives they believe to be true are called myths. This usage is frequently confused with fiction, legend, fairy tale, folklore, fable, and urban legend, each of which has a distinct meaning in academia. Now we will look at Logos.

Logos is an important term in philosophy, analytical psychology, rhetoric and religion. Its semantic field extends beyond "word" to notions such as "thought, speech, account, meaning, reason, proportion, principle, standard", or "logic". In English, the word is the root of "log", of "logic," and of the "-ology" suffix.

Heraclitus established the term in Western philosophy as meaning the fundamental order of the cosmos. The sophists used the term to mean discourse, and Aristotle applied the term to argument from reason. After Judaism came under Hellenistic influence, Philo adopted the term into Jewish philosophy. The Gospel of John identifies Jesus as the incarnation of the Logos, through which all things are made. The gospel further identifies the Logos as God (theos), providing scriptural support for the trinity. It is this sense, the Logos as Jesus Christ and God, which is most common in popular culture.

In ordinary, non-technical Greek, logos had two overlapping meanings: It meant an instance of speaking: "sentence, saying, oration"; the antithesis with ergon ("action" or "work") was a commonplace. Despite the conventional translation as "word", it is not used for a word in the grammatical sense; that's lexis. It also means the inward intention underlying the speech act: "opinion, thought, grounds for belief, common sense".

Heraclitus (c 535–475 BCE) established the term in Western philosophy and was one of the first to associate it with fire. One must not follow what is common; but, even though the Logos is common, most people live as though they possessed their own understanding of it. The common is what is open to all, what can be seen and heard by all. To see is to let in with open eyes what is open to view, i.e. what is lit up and revealed to all. The dead neither see nor hear; they are not closed. No light shines in them; no speech sounds in them. And yet, even they participate in the cosmos. The extinguished ones also belong to the continuum of lighting and extinguishing that is the common cosmos. The dead touch upon the living sleeping, who in turn touch upon the living waking.

Heraclitus also used Logos to mean the undifferentiated material substrate from which all things came: "Listening not to me but to the Logos it is wise to agree that all [things] are one." In this sense, Logos is the arche, the first principle of the cosmos in Pre-Socratic philosophy. Logos therefore designates both the material substrate itself and the universal, mechanical, "just" way in which this substrate manifests itself in and as individual things; that is, it subsumes within itself the later Platonic distinction (in Timaeus) between "form" and "matter".

By the 300s BC, the time of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, logos described the faculty of human reason and the knowledge men had of the world and of each other. Plato allowed his characters to engage in the conceit of describing logos as a living being in some of his dialogues. The development of the Academy with hypomnemata brought logos closer to the literal text. Aristotle, who studied under Plato, first developed the concept of logic as depicting the rules of human rationality. The Stoics understood Logos as the animating power of the universe.

Aristotle defined logos as argument from reason, one of the three modes of persuasion. The other two modes are pathos, emotional appeal, and ethos, reputation and credibility. An argument based on logos needs to be logical, and in fact the term logic derives from it. Logos normally implies numbers, polls, and other mathematical or scientific data.

In Christianity, the prologue of the Gospel of John calls Jesus "the Logos". Christians who profess belief in the Trinity often consider this to be a central text in their belief that Jesus is the Divine Son of God, in connection with the idea that God and Jesus are equals.

As you can see Mythos is a story that explains how something in the world happened. Logos is a logical well-reasoned explanation of how things happened. I like to explain things in a more Logos manner. I believe it is harder to be told you are wrong when you have real reasoning to support what you say. When you explain things in a Mythos way it is basically just telling a story. Stories don’t really have any logical backing. I just think it makes more sense to have reasoning to say what you say.