Abstract
Cosmology is the study of the universe in its largest sense – the structure of the Earth, planets, and stars and our place within this system. Through the centuries, in all continents, humans have developed world systems to describe their cosmology. Their effort to describe the universe necessarily draws from the world known to each civilization – worlds are made of water, or ice, or fire, or dirt. Cultures describe universe that include layers, or nested spheres, or with spirits living in mountains, depending on the terrain and the aesthetic sensibility of each civilization. Each cosmology attempts to define the world in terms of what is precious and what is unique to each culture. In constructing a cosmology, a civilization gives both a model of the universe, and a mirror to its own sensibility.
Material objects are of two kinds, atoms and compounds of atoms. The atoms themselves cannot be swamped by any force, for they are preserved indefinitely by their absolute solidity...
Excerpt from the Lucretius, “The Nature of the Universe,” relating theories of the earlier pre-Socratic thinker Democritus (ca 50 BC)
Eyes and ears are bad witnesses for men if they have souls that cannot understand their language.
Heraclitus, commenting on the “language of the cosmos,” 500 BC
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Penprase, B.E. (2011). World Systems: Models of the Universe Throughout Time. In: The Power of Stars. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6803-6_4
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