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The story of the Garden of Eden and the story of Oedipus each contain a character whose attitude to knowledge is hostile – or perhaps I should say, ‘two-faced’, since the Sphinx demands the answer to a question and may therefore be supposed to be favouring a search for it, and God of Genesis plants the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden. Psychoanalysts have concentrated attention on the sexual pair and have left discussion of the attitude to knowledge on one side. Yet in man's search to know, few disciplines have penetrated so far in illuminating that source of his difficulties that lies within himself. This adds significance to the neglect of the material that might be compacted in the roles attributed to Sphinx, God and Devil (also Tower of Babel – verbal thought attacked).
But my concern here is not to elucidate these myths. I wish to clarify the similarities and differences between psychoanalysis and scientific method as it is understood and employed in spheres other than psychoanalysis. Nevertheless I believe the reader would find it rewarding to refresh his memory of these stories and to bear them in mind as he reads this; their effect thus used could be restorative during the arid passages that must be traversed in this investigation.