Noun

The study of the physical universe, its structure, dynamics, origin and evolution, and fate.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2012-01

, author=Robert L. Dorit , title=Rereading Darwin , volume=100, issue=1, page=23 , magazine= citation , passage=We live our lives in three dimensions for our threescore and ten allotted years. Yet every branch of contemporary science, from statistics to cosmology , alludes to processes that operate on scales outside of human experience: the millisecond and the nanometer, the eon and the light-year.}}

A metaphysical study into the origin and nature of the universe.

A particular view (cultural or religious) of the structure and origin of the universe.

Noun

The collection of myths of a people, concerning the origin of the people, history, deities, ancestors and heroes.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-08, volume=407, issue=8839, page=55, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Obama goes troll-hunting , passage=The solitary, lumbering trolls of Scandinavian mythology would sometimes be turned to stone by exposure to sunlight. Barack Obama is hoping that several measures announced on June 4th will have a similarly paralysing effect on their modern incarnation, the patent troll.}}

(countable, and, uncountable) A similar body of myths concerning an event, person or institution.

* 2003 , Peter Utgaard, Remembering & Forgetting Nazism: Education, National Identity, and the Victim Myth in Postwar Austria , Berghahn Books, ISBN 978-1-57181-187-5, page x:

This program to distinguish Austria from Germany was important to building a new Austria, but it also indirectly contributed to victim mythology by implying that participation in the Nazi war of conquest was antithetical to Austrian identity.

Pervasive elements of a fictional universe that resemble a mythological universe.

* 2000 April 28, Caryn James (?), As Scheherazade Was Saying . . .], in The New York Times'', page E31, reproduced in ''The New York Times Television Reviews 2000 , Routledge (2001), ISBN 978-1-57958-060-5, [http://books.google.com/books?id=z0QFKpI6p7AC&pg=PA198&dq=mythology page 198:

This tongue-in-cheek episode is especially fun for people who don’t take their “X-Files” mythology seriously.

(uncountable) The systematic collection and study of myths.