COSMOLOGIA. — From the Greek κόσμος (world) and λόγος (discourse), it is the branch of natural philosophy that studies corporeal being in general and the universe as a whole. As the title of a philosophical treatise, the term first appears in C. Wolff (C. generalis, Frankfurt 1731) and was subsequently adopted, particularly by the neo-Scholastics, either simply as a replacement for the traditional term “physica” or, more often, to designate the general part of “physica.”
I. HISTORY
In the history of Western thought, the philosophy of nature arises within the overall course of a process in which the world is seen as φύσις, that is, as an autonomous reality, moved and governed by immanent forces according to definable laws. Among the first Ionic philosophers, the new conception appears linked with a unified view of the entire cosmos which, in the face of the multiformity and inconstancy of things, required a distinction between variable forms and the one, imperishable foundation of reality. The determination of this foundation became the first problem of c. With the Pythagoreans’ discovery of the normative role of numbers in natural phenomena, a new and important motive was introduced into speculation, contributing to the orientation of thought toward a pluralistic and atomistic c. The Eleatic school represents in part a reaction against this Pythagorean direction: the basis of its doctrine is a dialectic which, for the first time, develops the problems of becoming, being, and its determinations from an ontological point of view. The paradoxical consequences to which Eleatic monism led gave rise to the two attempts of Empedocles and Anaxagoras to take up cosmological questions again on a pluralistic basis. Eleatic and Pythagorean motives are also combined in Democritus’s atomistic system.In Plato’s thought, c. does not assert itself as an autonomous science. Everything knowable in empirical things comes to them from the ideas and mathematical values. Scientific propositions concerning things are therefore possible only on the level of a mathematized physics. In Plato’s philosophy, however, this mathematism acquires a wholly original meaning: numbers and figures are the norms of a preparatory order, intermediate between the ideas and sensible things. Above the mathematical order stands the order of essences, the immediate expression of the dialectical relations among the ideas themselves. The modifications undergone by Platonic doctrines in Aristotle are governed chiefly by the idea of the ontological primacy of concrete being. Corresponding to this primacy, in the realm of essences, is that of the εἶδος ἔσθων, which stands to generic essences in the relation of act and potency. Thus Plato’s descending dialectic falls away, and with it the a priori conception of science. Among the four genera of causes, final causes occupy the first place. The teleological order that directs all beings toward the supreme good is limited only by prime matter. In his treatment of the intrinsic principles of bodies, Aristotle develops his hylemorphic doctrine (v. ILEMORIFISMO).
Christianity, with its doctrine of a transcendent God and of creation, introduced a view of the universe which Greek and Hellenistic philosophy, despite significant approximations, had not attained. In the development of this new conception, the writers of the patristic age made extensive use of the doctrines then current, especially those of the Stoic and Platonic schools. They were given an opportunity to treat cosmological questions more fully in commentaries on Genesis; commentaries on the Hexosmeron became, from Theophilus of Antioch and Origen onward, a typical literary form in which the Fathers’ conceptions of the universe found expression.
Scholastic c. underwent a rich and multifaceted development. The superiority of Aristotelian physics assured it, from the middle of the twelfth century onward, an important influence even among scholastics of Augustinian orientation (the school of St. Bonaventure) and Neoplatonic orientation (Ripellino and Hugh of Strasbourg, Witelo). Medieval c. reached its culmination with the reconstruction of Aristotelian physics in the works of St. Albert and St. Thomas. The incorporation of Aristotelian doctrine into the great philosophical-theological syntheses required certain corrections and additions, which are also important for the deeper direction of cosmological speculation. Thus divine exemplarism is, among medieval thinkers, a common doctrine, and chance is subordinated to God’s providence; moreover, the metaphysics of cosmic causality is deepened and corrected.
Modern cosmological systems were immediately prepared by a current of thought, especially vigorous in Italy and Germany, in which the transition was accomplished from the inner experience of late-medieval mysticism to an enthusiastic experience of the universe, more or less close to pantheism. The principal inspiration of this current was N. Cusanus, and its most influential representatives were G. Bruno and Paracelsus. Another factor of the greatest importance was constituted by the natural sciences. The first fruit of the new scientific movement was modern mechanics (G. Galilei, C. Huygens, I. Newton), which acquired an ever-wider influence and led to the collapse of the physics of sensible qualities. The tendencies at work in the new physics found an initial expression, inspired by mathematical rationalism, in Descartes’ mechanistic c.
In Kantian criticism, a principled distinction is placed in the foreground between the sciences that can critically establish knowledge of objects of experience and metaphysics. The theoretical knowledge of nature is essentially identified with Newtonian physics. Because of the limited scope of this knowledge, Kant can avoid its dogmatic-physicalist consequences.
For the history of c. from the end of Romanticism onward, the orientation of all the natural sciences toward the scientific ideal of physics was of decisive importance. The debate over the true meaning and scope of the scientific image of the world, constructed under the methodological guidance of physics, characterizes the subsequent period, which was otherwise little homogeneous. The dogmatic acceptance of scientific concepts led to a group of doctrines (materialism, energetism, evolutionism) lacking the necessary philosophical development. The philosophers of the positivist group (A. Comte, E. Mach) subjected scientific methods to a criticism ordinarily founded on the presuppositions of a radical sense-empiricism. Other philosophers, however (E. V. Hartmann, H. Driesch), defended the right and necessity of a philosophy of nature whose task they saw as extending and deepening the image of the world outlined by the empirical sciences, so that it might satisfy the requirements of a total causal and final understanding.
For the continuators of the scholastic tradition, the profound differences between Aristotelian physics and the results of the natural sciences raised the task of bringing out the properly philosophical content of traditional doctrine and demonstrating the possibility and necessity of cosmological speculation, prior to and beyond experimental investigation. The Neoscholastics were able firmly to demonstrate that the essential theses of their c. are founded on general philosophical principles and on the most universal and fundamental data of experience.
II. PROBLEMS
The profoundest divergences that have appeared in the history of c. derive from the diversity of metaphysical presuppositions. The decision regarding questions such as idealism or realism, the relations between cosmic being and absolute being, monism or pluralism, does not belong to natural philosophy, but to metaphysics. However, even after these problems have been removed from c., there remains a group of questions which, although ordinarily discussed in treatises on natural philosophy, are, strictly speaking, metaphysical. The questions concerning the temporal existence of corporeal things, that is, their coming-to-be and perishing as substances and their accidental mutability; the composibility of the autonomy of individual beings with their dependence on others; and of substantial unity with the multiplicity of integral parts, are the most important of this group. The Aristotelian tradition seeks their solution on the basis of the metaphysical theory of potency and act and of hylomorphism, which is the application of that theory to the constitution of bodies. The problems of transeunt causality receive their clarification chiefly from the doctrine of the identity between the act of the action and that of «passio».A second group of problems centers on the question of the physical essence of bodies. It concerns the determination of the essential and fundamental properties of bodies in general and of the order and manner according to which the other corporeal determinations result from them. In these questions c. is in closer contact with experimental investigation, as is also shown by certain answers, which are intimately connected with physical theories (mechanicism, recent dynamism based on the physics of the electromagnetic field). The Scholastics regard quantity as the primary property of bodies, immediately connected with their materiality. The difficulties concerning continuous extension, which have constituted one of the most important motives in the elaboration of the various dynamical theories, are resolved by the doctrine of the actual unity of the continuum (v.), which is at the same time potential multiplicity. Against mechanicism, however, the Scholastics reject the denial of qualitative properties and of the intrinsic mutability of bodies, insisting especially on the existence of operative powers, required for the causal explanation of any natural mutation. Even on the question of the nature of spatial relations, Scholastic doctrine departs from mechanical-dynamical conceptions by affirming space as «ens rationis», which has its foundation in the real extension of bodies and in the dimensional relations arising from II. Connected with that of space is the question of time, resolved on the basis of the Aristotelian principle that gives the concept of time a real foundation in successive motion.
Connected with the questions relating to the generic properties of bodies is the question of the principles of their differentiations. Here too the Neo-Scholastics regard atomistic explanations, which derive the differences in the corporeal world from nonspecific differences, as insufficient, especially to account for the chemical differences of bodies; ordinarily they explain the results of chemical and physical analysis through the theory of the virtual presence of the substantial forms of the components within the compound (v.). On the question of the order of essential structures, the Aristotelian school defends, in corporeal beings, a hierarchy of forms in which the higher forms integrate within themselves the perfections of the lower ones.
A final group of questions concerns the world as a whole. First and foremost, it includes questions relating to the order of the universe. Against doctrines that derive the structure and development of the universe from chance, or from cosmic forces transcending individual beings, the Scholastic tradition defends a teleological tendency of all cosmic beings toward the constitution and preservation of a harmoniously ordered universe; lower substances are destined for the use of higher beings; the entire cosmos is ordered to attain, through its use and knowledge by man, its highest meaning in relation to the immanent final order of the universe. The deficiencies of the cosmic order and the apparent dysteleologies pose the problem of cosmodicy: Aristotelian philosophy seeks its solution chiefly on the basis of the doctrine that the rational law of forms does not achieve the complete subordination of the indeterminate potentiality of prime matter. The questions concerning the direction and reasons for cosmic development have, thanks to the investigations of the sciences, received a more determinate content. Especially in the face of the history of vital forms, the question arises as to how and to what extent the development of the universe is determined by the causal factors of the cosmos itself (v. EVOLUZIONISMO CULTURALE).