temporaryreality: (Default)
I realized that I should have my definitions straight and that prompted me to make the first of my notebook sections: Vocabulary.

Today's vocabulary entries?

cosmogony: 1. a theory of the origin of the universe. 2. the creation or origin of the world or universe.

cosmography: 1. a general description of the world or the universe. 2. the science that deals with the constitution of the whole order of nature.

cosmology: 1a. a branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of the universe. 1b. a theory or doctrine describing the natural order of the universe. 2. a branch of astronomy that deals with the origin, structure, and space-time relationship of the universe. Also: a theory dealing with these matters.

Having been presented with the difference between these, I realize I'm probably more interested in starting with cosmogonies, but I may end up looking at the others as they seem likely to be intertwined.

---
some additional reading: cosmogony (including a "chronology of the universe" according to the Big Bang version of the story, and something about creation myths). Also, a timeline of cosmological theories.
temporaryreality: (Default)
 Wikipedia's list of timelines is going to be my go-to resource for figuring out what topics I'm going to be reading and learning about.

From there, for instance, I found the timeline of cosmological theories that will help me start dipping my toes into all the ways humans have conceived of the universe's beginnings (if it has one, or perhaps I should say "this universe's beginnings"?) and development. Obviously each of the theories is situated in its founder's place and time and that links it to a human-centered source, but I am interested to find out what all manner of people have thought about the origins and make-up of the universe.

Because I'm taking the historical approach to its logical conclusion by allowing that this isn't a human-centered universe and I ought therefore to not limit my historically-derived re-education to just the human realm, it would seem that I'm actually stepping outside the traditional trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and adding one topic of the quadrivium (cosmology or astronomy). I'm ok with that.

I'll be doing a separate post that will contain my proposed reading list and that will be updated as need be.

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