Myths, Gods, Machines: Illuminations on Mythology, History and Science

In this new collection of essays cultural critic John David Ebert traces the history of what Jacques Derrida termed Transcendental Signifieds as they have evolved from the archetypes of ancient myth through the philosophical Ideas of German Idealist philosophy and on down to their disintegration into the floating signifiers of today’s consumer society. From myth to philosophy to science, these ultimate signifieds have undergone many transformations: beginning as the Sumerian gods, Ebert carefully traces the impacts of science and technology upon these Ideas as they changed over the millenia, finally becoming dismantled by Heidegger’s abbau and then dangerously assaulted by the Unabomber’s attempts to assassinate the very men of science who are creating today’s mass of consumerist archetypes. Science and popular culture have deconstructed the ultimate signifieds of ancient ritual, symbol and myth, and now we are set adrift in a sea of floating signifiers that are competing with each other to fill the semiotic vacancies left behind by the collapse of such ancient and ultimate referents as God, Soul, Freedom and Immortality. This collection of nine essays, never before published in book form, spans the breadth of Ebert’s career from 1997 to 2015.