The best way to descirbe what this book was like is relating the story about the sun
The first stories of the sun had it going through the center of the earth overnight before rising again. Was this literal? No of course not, that didnt even exist then (literal means from text). But it also wasnt purely metaphor
What does he mean? Well we eventually figured out 1) everything is moving relative to something else so why not choose the earth as the center of the universe? but more specifically:
The largest, longest standing relationship the earth has with the sun is gravity. Which affects the very core of the earth. The Sun is basically holding onto the center of the earth while both wobble and spin around that.
so our myths incorporate all of this felt, lived relational experience in a way that pure science cannot do, especially as we cannot totally remove ourselves from the world we are analyzing