Teaching Science and ethics through the Ancient Olympic Myths: a Philosophical and Pedagogical Challenge

For the ancient Greeks, myth was not just a simple story or a tale, rich in religious and poetic meanings, but a form of scientific knowledge about the world. Although Greek thought’s history is the history of a progressive emancipation from knowledge based on myths to science (lógos), myth has always played a seminal role in Greek paidéia which included both athletics and Olympic education. In the Greek myths there was always a hero or a heroine, that is a mythological character, who embodied not only a narrative sense but also a scientific meaning. It is from a myth – the myth of Hercules and his labors – that the history of the Olympics probably took origin. For this reason, starting from a brief analysis of the mythology in Greek culture and its existentialistic and phenomenological implications for contemporary culture, the main aim of this study is to highlight that is possible to draw a conceptual map of both scientific and cultural meanings of Olympism from and through the ancient myths. What we want to demonstrate is that Olympism, through the ancient myths and mythological heroes, sums up the values of sport both as a human and scientific practice. This study will also highlight the importance of myth and mythology – when reinterpreted in light of science – as a hermeneutical tools which can be used to teach the scientific and ethical values of Olympic sport to the new generations, unifying in a new paidéia both mýthos and lógos.