In classical Greek one of the popular meanings of the word cosmos (κόσμος) was orderly arrangement. A flower arrangement may have been called a cosmos. The word κόσμος has been used since Homer but
a sufficiently clear distinction has not been drawn between 1) the ordinary meanings of κόσμος from Homer onwards, and 2) the special sense current among the philosophers.
It was Plato who first used cosmos in its philosophical sense as the universal order which
holds together heaven and earth, men and gods.
Pythagoras is also said to have applied this word to the orderly arrangement of the “starry firmament,” but this may be apocryphal. Eventually, professional priestly classes who controlled astronomical observations and the right to model cosmologies defined what they observed as the totality. In this sense, cosmos is a faked model of totality.
Definition:
Cosmos is an ordered and knowable truncation of totality defined fraudulently as the totality by the professional class who is in charge of defining and packaging cosmogonic mythologies for humans to consume.
Cosmos is not totality. It is defined as totality by its designers, today, the physicists. Cosmos is a vicious pun used by physicists to fool consumers into believing that they know the totality by scientific means.
It is one of the most remarkable mysterious coincidences in the history of humankind, even more remarkable than the mystery surrounding the fine structure constant, that totality has always been only as complicated as any given generation of physicists could know. To this day there is no explanation why the knowability of the Cosmos has been increasing exactly with the same rate as the increasing knowledge of physicists.
The mystery will remain until that time when there will be a regulatory agency to regulate this last unregulated professional industry. This agency will also protect consumers by requiring that every physics theory pushed to the market through any channel, including the arxiv, peer reviewed journals or blogs ran by physicists must include a warning label:
Warning: this theory is based on no experimental evidence as implied by the author but it is his opinion disguised as mathematics
Warning: this cosmos is just a cosmos not totality as claimed by its author
Warning: this theory contains more hidden assumptions than artificial ingredients in a can of Spam
Warning: the free parameters in this theory may cause an attack of scientific incredulity in people with low threshold of suspension of disbelief
Warning: this theory has never been tested in any of the multiverse it happily predicts. Believe at your own expense. Study for easy laughter as needed.
Warning: Newtonism is religion. Nature is not Newtonian. Question Newtonism.
“Cosmos in Greek meant orderly arrangement. ”
Where did you find this? It’s another one of your creations.
Noun
κόσμος (genitive κόσμου) m, second declension; (kosmos)
1. universe
2. planet earth
3. people, society, a group of people
The other translations of wikipedia are wrong. And yours is also wrong.
Spyros,
Thanks for the correction and I’ll put a note on the article but before that could you check this page from where I took definition as “orderly arrangement?” Is that wrong too?
I have a feeling that they are talking about the meaning of the word in classical Greek language, maybe there is a difference with modern Greek. And after a bit of research I found this book Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology By Charles H. Kahn
It has a very good critical explanation of the word cosmos in classical Greece and explains how the word had originally the meaning of arrangement and order and later it acquired the philosophical meaning of cosmos as the universe.
Some notes:
The first important point Kahn makes is that a notion of ordered universe, or a cosmos, was first arose in classical Greece and he says there is no reason to doubt that philosophers who invented the notion of cosmos used any other word than cosmos or κόσμος. But where does the “orderly arrangement” meaning come from?
So the word κόσμος has been used since Homer but
So, in Plato orderly arrangement meaning is present.
Of course this refers to the ancient Greek language.
As a matter of fact it refers to different dialects of Greek language (ie in those years no official Greek language existed) that varied greately in both meaning and syntax.
I was referring to the meaning of cosmos in modern Greek language and not to archaic greek dialects.
In any case the question of the (absolute) origin of the word cosmos is out of my reach.
However the use of the word cosmos in physics can have a very precise meaning that may differ from both its everyday use in english (or greek) and its original meaning.
Spyros thanks, I see that from my first sentence it was not clear that I was referring to cosmos in classical Greek:
So I changed that to
I think that clarifies it. I also like to mention that according to the Professor Kahn’s book that I cited above it is apocryphal that Pythagoras was the first to apply cosmos to “starry firmament” conceived as an orderly arrangement of stars and planets. I modified that sentence too. But the point that I was trying to make was that since the antiquity the professional class who is in charge of studying heavens always defined observational universe as totality. I call this cosmos-universe-totality pun.
This is related to the point you make that
Yes. In physics today cosmos is used as synonym for universe and totality. So both universe and cosmos are used as semantic illusions for totality.
“But the point that I was trying to make was that since the antiquity the professional class who is in charge of studying heavens always defined observational universe as totality”
“In physics today cosmos is used as synonym for universe and totality”
2 comments
1. The situation in academic teaching is not the same as it was in the times of Pythagoras. In Greece nowadays 1500 students are accepted on an average basis each year in undergraduate physics courses. In the times of Pythagoras those with access to academic teaching did not exceed a couple of dozens.
2. Not all physicists use the world cosmos as “totality”.
Correction
2. Cosmos has different meaning in Greek. The scientific term used in the Greek language is sympan (σύμπαν) which is translated as universe.
By definition universe (sympan) means (etymologically) everything so it is a synonym for totality.
So in Greek there is a distinction between cosmos and totality.
What about ” ta hola = the whole” as mentioned here
Is “ta hola” another, maybe old, word for totality?
. . . In Greece nowadays 1500 students are accepted on an average basis each year in undergraduate physics courses.
I don’t see how the number of students then and now is relevant to the point that the owners of the astronomical database of humanity have always defined a cosmogonic mythology to justify their database. This group always pretended that their database was a representation of totality. It makes marketing sense, I understand, but it’s not true.
“I don’t see how the number of students then and now is relevant to the point that the owners of the astronomical database of humanity have always defined a cosmogonic mythology to justify their database.”
Back then only the aristocratic classes had access to higher education. The same case was with the first european universities, where only the bourgeoisie was accepted.
The theories that you criticize reflected the ideology of these classes so noone of those that had access to higher education would dare to think otherwise. This is one factor.
And another one is that with so few students, it was much more difficult to test and reject the theories that were taught as true theories of nature. Think of this in this way: how is it more plausible that you find a novel theory that describes nature, when you have 10 students working on it or 10.000?
“So in Greek there is a distinction between cosmos and totality.”
Κόσμος in modern greek means the world. What does the word world mean? It has many meanings: the earth, the human world, etc. Greek physicists don’t use the world cosmos much.
When they want to refer to earth they use the word earth. When they want to refer to the universe, they use the word universe.
For ancient greek, read the discussion above.
Όλα means everything. Το όλον means the whole. But this discussion is drifting towards philology.
You can find a dozen words with the meanings everything, universe etc. This has nothing to do with physics though.
The other translations of wikipedia are wrong. And yours is also wrong.
Do you still think the Wikipedia entry is wrong?
I think since it says “it originates . . .” it refers to its classical Greek language. My opinion is that this is correct.
Look. It seems that we will end up discussing if the universe is finite or not.
I was referring to the wiktionary entries not wikipedia’s lemma.
I made it clear that i was referring to the modern greek language.
Wikipedia does not clarify this. I also have objections about the translations “order” and “ornaments”. You have to keep in mind that in ancient times the greek language differed vastly from region to region and different writers used the words in entirely different ways.
As i said, this discussion is out of my reach, since i haven’t studied (in such depth) greek philology. However as a native speaker i do keep my objections on the above.
Back then only the aristocratic classes had access to higher education. The same case was with the first european universities, where only the bourgeoisie was accepted. The theories that you criticize reflected the ideology of these classes so noone of those that had access to higher education would dare to think otherwise.
professional to civilian ratio is a historical constant
I would think that the ratio of the population to number of scholars in a given country would have stayed constant throughout history. And a little research suggests that this is the case:
Greece 2001 population = 10,196,539
Athens 431 BC population = 45,000
physics students today = 1,500
physics students then = 30
From this data I calculate that today 0.015 percent of population enters physics. In 431 BC that was 0.010. Very close.
owners of database have power
But the point I was making is independent of the number of students in the field. The point is that the owners of the astronomical database has always been a priestly class apart from the theoretical and practical physicists and students.
In Ptolemy’s time mathematicians who worked in astronomy did not try to change the philosophy and the ideology on which the model was based on. The ideology was established as geocentric view and could not be changed. How many of the 1500 students that enter physics today will be able to change current paradigms and form their own school? I think none.
only two physics schools in 2000 years
In fact, in physics there has been just two major schools, Aristotelianism and Newtonism. Today GR and Newtonism cohabit. String theory is not a school invented by one person, it is not associated with one charismatic schoolhead. There are several people claiming to have discovered it.
So, four points:
1) owners of database are not scientists
At any given time in history the astronomical database is owned by a professional brotherhood or a corporation who derive their power from their ownership of the database. Their goal is never scientific advance but to perpetuate their power by controlling the database
2) right to define cosmogony
This group either defines a cosmogony based on their database or contract it out to other professionals. In either case, whoever owns the database owns the right to define the official cosmogony of humanity to glorify their database as the true database
3) practitioners can maintain not change
Generations of mathematicians, astronomers physicists exist to maintain the database. They don’t have the right to change its ideology.
4) Civilians are left in perpetual ignorance by professionals
The ratio of population to professionals remain constant because professional classes allow civilians to know only enough, and no more, so that they can purchase the services of the professionals i.e., civilians are allowed to be literate so that they could study physics and pay the school for 25 years to get their license.
how is it more plausible that you find a novel theory that describes nature, when you have 10 students working on it or 10.000?
In physics as I’ve written many times what is expected of a student is to conform not to question and come up with new theories. Students don’t work on new theories.
You are drifting again to paranoic deductions.
The number of students that study physics in Greece is much more than 1500. I said that every year 1500 students are accepted to undergraduate courses. The total number of physicists is over 10.000.
“I was referring to the wiktionary entries not wikipedia’s lemma.”
I don’t see anything wrong in Wiktionary either. Do you have a link?
Wiktionary actually makes a good point. It marks cosmos as uncountable, a subtlety that physicists ignore, e.g., multiverse is simply a grammatical error.
“You are drifting again to paranoic deductions.”
I never heard of paranoic deduction. My simple calculation may be right or wrong but nothing more.
Maybe you are not reading what I’am writing. You gave me the number of students *entering* academia so I computed the proportion of students *entering* academia then and now. That should be a good measure of practicing academics. I am extrapolating from more data to shorter distance in time than what cosmologists do with their Big Bang extrapolation.
Now you are giving me the total number of working physicists. With the same type of computation, therefore, in 431 BC there would be about 44 active philosophers. As a ball park figure this may make sense. Or it may be totally wrong. We need to ask a historian.
I tried to find the number of students in Plato’s academy but couldn’t. Instead, I learned that Plato founded his academy as “a community consecrated to the worship of the Muses and Apollo, the head of the Muses” to let the Athenian state allow him to open such a community. I wonder when was the sign on the door saying that people ignorant of geometry should not enter was added, if ever. There is so much mythology perpetuated as history.
Also, the meaning of student was not the same then as it is today. As you wrote, students were aristocratic and did not have a career to worry about, the Academy was more like a brotherhood. So, there are too many unknowns to compare the state of physics education then and now. And Plato knew a lot but did not know Newton or Newtonian physics.
What a shame that most of human history is lost behind a veil of fog. We don’t know the human history without mythology just about 2000 years ago. Two thousand years from now historians will have the opposite problem: too much information if they could decipher all the different now defunct storage media.
In any case, the number of students then, or any time, has no relevance to the point of my original comment.
“Όλα means everything. Το όλον means the whole. But this discussion is drifting towards philology.”
Thank you for your help on this. I disagree with you that this is drifting towards philology. I think it would benefit physics to have well-defined words delineating different types of worlds. For instance in physics you have FLRW universe, or Einstein-DeSitter universe. Or Euclidean geometry. Or Riemann space. What are the domain of validity of these universes? These are mathematical formalisms named after someone. They are more appropriately called cosmoses or proposed models for the universe.
To clarify I made this list, that I will post soon. Let me know if you could help with suggestions and other distinctions. I believe that these were all thought about by Greek philosophers at the time but now that tradition is limited to philosophy and because physicists don’t like philosophy this type of scientific knowledge is now lost:
Sympan = totality
Cosmos = the modelled world
Ecumene = known world, observable world
universe = fusion of sympan, cosmos and ecumene (use it when you don’t know what you are talking about)
ta hola = the whole enchilada, including, but not limited to, the physical world the world of organisma, ideas, metaphors, analogies and appareances, that is, ta hola, the whole enchilada.
I think it would benefit physics to have well-defined words delineating different types of worlds. For instance in physics you have FLRW universe, or Einstein-DeSitter universe. Or Euclidean geometry. Or Riemann space. What are the domain of validity of these universes?
Physics does have perfectly well-defined and self-consistent terminology. I don’t have time to answer all of the above, but you can easily find their meanings and domains of validity in wikipedia.
Your list is both physically and philologically incorrect. For instance οικουμένη has nothing to do with observability. I said that the scientific term is “universe” or σύμπαν in greek.
Philologically σύμπαν has a meaning of totality, ie it denotes all of the existing things. In physics it should have the same meaning, although the dominant ideology (which is not made by physicists) uses the word universe to refer to only the observable part.
You are searching in the wrong direction to find the misinterpretation of the word universe. The true cause of this is the philosophical interpretation of cosmology.
Spyros,
Thanks, you make a good point. More than “domain of validity” I was thinking that these *mathematical models* come after the general *world types* or categories.
On the top category we have, say, [totality] and [ecumene] and under [totality] we have [flrw] universe. [totality] and [ecumene] are not mathematical models, they are categories. [flrw] is a mathematical model, that is, a variable, a computational device, not a category.
1. [totality]
2. [flrw]
Physicists will put [flrw] under [ecumene] too. (I defined [ecumene] as the [observable universe] in analogy to its old meaning of “inhabited world.”)
1. [ecumene]
2. [flrw]
Physicists prefer to leave the distinction between totality and observed universe intentionally obscur (as we’ve discussed may times before) so that they can exploit it. I understand this because any good legal professional will exploit cracks in the law and be proud of it.
Here the crack in the law is the legal polemical constant called the Cosmological Principle. I admit that there is no way to change polemical constants of legal physics by argument in a blog comment. But my goal is to understand these things for myself and to show that physicists argue by legal constants, tropes and puns that acquired power of law by repetition.
“You are searching in the wrong direction to find the misinterpretation of the world universe. The true cause of this is the philosophical interpretation of cosmology.”
But you are ignoring the political interpretation of cosmology. Both philosophical and physical interpretation of universe are defined officially by political powers who pay physicists to cosmologize. Political powers pay physicists to develop the Big Bang mythology as the official cosmogony of humanity and physicists have been complying gladly.