Cosmology/Talk

Any notion that cosmology is limited to the branch of physics called 'cosmology' belies an ignorance of the millennia-long traditions of cosmology in religion and philosophy which in turn belies a lack of grounding in the liberal arts.

Please see these web pages:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04413a.htm

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04405c.htm

Probably, we will want separate articles, "cosmology (physics)" (if 'cosmology' is indeed the usual, most technical, hip, and up-to-date term for the study of the origins of the universe) and "cosmology (religion and philosophy)."

--Larry

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Does someone have one of those dictionaries where the date of the first use of a word is recorded? If the first one to use that word was an astronomer or physicist, I would consider it licit to reserve that word for that purpose...another word should exist that applies to the millenia of thinking. If, on the other hand, cosmology is an old word, probably brought long ago from latin and used in other contexts, I'll agree with Larry.

Checking Webster - the first recorded date in English is 1656, coming over from New Latin (i.e. Late Medieval or Early Modern), so it is somewhat difficult to call. It conveniently enough lists both definitions (osmogony refers to a theory of creation rather than of creation and development, so I was very wrong there). A quick search shows that scientists tend to restrict the term to scientific stuff (although still including things like Neptunism) while people dealing with religion and mythology don't mind using the term either way. What a mess.

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The origins of such words as "cosmology" should not be dated from its first appearance in English but from its first appearance by educated people (whose jargon and names for theories and such are often variants of the same basic, usually Latin or Greek, words). Anyway, though, today, the word is just used differently by different people; nothing unusual about that. I'd just emphasize that the fact that the physicists use the term in one particular way gives us no reason whatever to suppose that their usage is the "correct" one. There is no single correct usage, it seems. --LMS

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Maybe there should be headings: "physical cosmology", "philosophical cosmology", etc.? Right now "dark matter" is next to "creationism"... -- S. Winitzki