Trying to understand the theories of the rainbow we focus the debate between scientific logic and mythic thinking in the history of science. This paper follows three paths. Firstly, it presents a summary of the discontinuities and recurrences in the explanation of the fenomena in history of thinking. Secondly, registrations of foreign ethnographers in the Amazon in the first half of the twentieth century are examined. Thirdly, the approach is directed to the 'native theory' about the rainbow in the low lands of South America, trying to understand the logic behind the native classifications as mythic thinking. Symmetry among disciplines supposes complementarities between biological theories and humanities and allows for analogies involving biological and social codes.
scientific logic; mythic thinking; historical discontinuities; logic of classifications; biological codes
