I believe that the nature and function of myth is to pave the way for fact and reason. It helps us, as a society, to understand where we came from, who we are, and where are we heading. It's with this mythical thinking that we can use to counter-balance our own theories that we create with the aid of fact and actual statistics if you will. Here's a perfect example for the way myth plays a part in the discovery of modern technology. Myth offers an early account of the way things work, in a time when these people didn't have the means necessary to prove otherwise.
Myth paves the way for future scientifical and technological discoveries in the near future.
However, I believe science is taking over modern myth. Science could be proven with theories, equations, terms, and so forth, whereas myth, cannot be proven whatsoever. Sure, some things that exist today can be correlated with myths, but that could only be a mere coincidence. It's like this. Myths are like records, and how records are made to be broken.