Cosmos: Encyclopedia - Cosmos

Cosmos

The cosmos is thought of as an orderly or harmonious system. It originates from a Greek term meaning order.

When used as an absolute, the term cosmos is considered to be all that exists, whether it has been discovered or not. Some theologians use the term to denote the created universe, not including God. Many philosophers use the word "absolute", cosmos and universe synonymously to include all that exists. Physicists often use the word universe in a technical way, referring to a space-time continuum; see cosmology.

The term is used in phenomenology to describe the view of the world up until the rise of technology in the 20th century. The view of cosmos as "nature as self-sufficient, self-governing body" is in sharp contrast to the view of nature as merely mechanism for the growth of humans. In the cosmos world-view, man is a part of nature, whereas in the mechanism worldview, man dominates nature, it in turn bends to his will.

The philosopher Ken Wilber uses the term kosmos to refer to all of manifest existence, including various realms of consciousness. The term kosmos is used to distinguish this nondual universe (which, on his view, includes both noetic and physical aspects) from the strictly physical universe that is the concern of the traditional ("narrow") sciences and which is widely associated with the term cosmos.

See also

• Universe
• Multiverse
• Big bang
• The Absolute
• Carl Sagan

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Cosmos", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki