This way of thinking supposedly explains the ancients' tendency to create myths, which portray events as acts of gods and spirits.
According to the Frankforts, ancients viewed the world this way because they didn't think in terms of universal laws.
Modern thought "reduces the chaos of perceptions to an order in which typical events take place according to universal laws.
[4] Mythopoeic thought doesn't look for unifying principles behind the diversity of individual events.
[4] Thus, mythopoeic thought ends up viewing the entire world as personal: each event is an act of will.
The heavens, which were to the psalmist but a witness of God's greatness, were to the Mesopotamians the very majesty of godhead, the highest ruler, Anu.
[7] These philosophers may not have been scientific by today's rigid standards: their hypotheses were often based on assumptions, not empirical data.
[9] However, by the mere fact that they looked behind the apparent diversity and individuality of events in search of underlying laws, and defied "the prescriptive sanctities of religion", the Greeks broke away from mythopoeic thought.
[9] Religious scholar Robert Segal has pointed out that the dichotomy between a personal and an impersonal view of the world is not absolute, as the Frankforts' distinction between ancient and modern thought might suggest: "Any phenomenon can surely be experienced as both an It and a Thou: consider, for example, a pet and a patient.