The Functions Of Mythology Vs Science Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Hawking (1988: 171-2):

The earliest theoretical attempts to describe and explain the universe involved the idea that events and natural phenomena were controlled by spirits with human emotions who acted in a very humanlike and unpredictable manner. These spirits inhabited natural objects, like rivers and mountains, including celestial bodies, like the sun and moon. They had to be placated and their favour sought in order to ensure the fertility of the soil and the rotation of the seasons.

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From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, a theory is a reconstrual of meaning as higher-order meaning.  That is, experience of the non-semiotic domain is construed by consciousness as meaning, and meaning is reconstrued as 'meta-meaning' (meaning of meaning), such as those that realise mythological traditions and scientific theories.

What makes such reconstruals possible is the distinction between meaning and wording, the stratification of the content plane of language, which, according to Halliday (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 25), is what distinguishes the species Homo sapiens from its ancestors.  It is this distinction that makes metaphor possible, and it is metaphor that makes the reconstrual of meaning possible, beginning with lexical metaphor, as in mythic symbolism, with grammatical metaphor coming to the fore in the emergence of modern science.

According to comparative mythologist, Joseph Campbell, mythic symbolism is not concerned with explaining the universe, but with providing the means of fitting consciousness to both the (construed) physical and (enacted) social environments.