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How The Greeks Invented The Cosmos
On the philosophy of unity, flux, and fire
This story was originally published by , a regular newsletter covering space and science. !
This cosmos, the same for all,
no god nor man did create,
but it ever was and is and will be:
ever-living fire, kindling in measures
and being quenched in measures.
~ Heraclitus
The cosmos, , is all that is or ever was or ever will be.
He was surely inspired by Heraclitus. Two and a half millennia earlier he defined the concept in very similar terms: “this cosmos,” he wrote, “ever was and is and will be”. It is the first definition of the term we have, at least in the sense of all creation, past and future.
It was not, however, the origin of the word. The Ancient Greek κόσμος, or kosmos, meant order, as in the opposite of χάος, or chaos. And chaos, centuries earlier, was the original state of the universe. From it the world was created, and it stood thereafter in opposition: something, rather than nothing; order, rather than disorder.
