temporaryreality

Update Sept 17, 2020 (actual readings)

• Hawking, Stephen. A Brief History of Time.
• Hesiod. The Theogony.
• Fortune, Dion. The Cosmic Doctrine.

****
Update Aug 25, 2020.
I'd thought I had a copy of Carl Sagan's Cosmos on my shelves, but I can't find it and may have gotten rid of it. That might actually be a decent place to get a general understanding of cosmogony from a Western scientific standpoint. Barring that, I may be forced to just read up online. 

The Cosmic Doctrine, which I'm reading anyway as part of JMG's book club, is certainly right at home on this reading list, even if she's conveying metaphors (and, who's to say, actually, that the metaphors don't convey some aspect of how things got started?).

As for the creation stories, I think I'll be looking for something from peoples of each continent or major civilization. I have a book of Native American myths and legends (that's probably the title even) that's got some creation stories. I'll also reread the opening chapter of the Dao de Jing (Tao de Ching) and meditate on that.

Since I'm doing this on a small (or nonexistent) budget, I'll be looking for library books, and classic and out of print, but downloadable, books for readings in this section.

Turns out the Frazer book mentioned below is not available as a scanned or digital version, so that's out. I checked The Golden Bough (I have the abridged version) and there's nothing relevant in there. Ovid's Metamorphosis (which I have) opens with the creation of the universe, so I'll go back and reread that, and I'll be looking for Hesiod's Theogony to see if it fits here as well.

****
Original post, August 18, 2020 (though later changes are marked in blue)
This is a draft (and above all, editable) list of where I'm going to start diving into cosmogonies - those theories about the beginning of the universe. 

Given that no humans were present for it, the stories we tell about the universe's beginning are all speculative (not to say they don't describe a truth, just that they're stories). I take them all as such, and accord myth and scientific theory equal weight. I'm interested in the ways we conceive of the start of "it all."

• I'll look for something at the layperson's level for the big bang theory.
• The Norton Anthology of Astronomy and Cosmology - by John North and Roy Porter - not available to me right now, and one review said it's more focused on astronomy than on cosmogony.
• The Cosmic Doctrine - Dion Fortune - currently being read.

Then consider creation myths from various parts of the world, plus an academic study or two, like:

• Ancient Greek Cosmogony - Andrew Gregory
• Creation and Evolution in Primitive Cosmogonies - James George Frazer

I'm still gathering up titles related to creation stories.

This list will be updated as I figure things out.

Next, I'll be working to fit the plan into a workable timeline. In other words, it can't take forever, so I might as well set a time limit and see where I get.

 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.