Jennifer Gidley on Cosmic Kinship as an Ecology of Evolving Concepts

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Discussion

Cosmic Kinship—An Ecology of Evolving Concepts

Jennifer Gidley:

"One way to increase our awareness of our fragile planetary situation might be to foreground the prefix cosmo. The following is a deconstruction and reconstruction of some common — and not so common—terms that infer our planetary status as one of kinship with the cosmos. There isan interesting family of terms — including cosmology, cosmogony, cosmosophy and cosmography — that deal with knowledge about the cosmos, its origins and the place of humans in it. The term cosmos itself originated from the Greekκόσμος meaning "cosmos, the world," orin some translations, “a sense of order , in contrast to chaos.” By a focus on the prefix cosmo-, I intend to build stronger conceptual links between our largely anthropocentric, tellurian notions of space on the one hand and authentically cosmic notions of space on the other. I am endeavoring to pick up leading-edge developments in the evolution of language as it is happening in the world at the present time through a kind of noospheric environmental scanning—or remote sensing.


Cosmos

The term cosmos itself has begun to appear in various discourses, with broader meanings thanthat used in cosmology discourses from the physical sciences. Three new journals have appeared that link the term cosmos or Kosmos with broader issues: Cosmos and History: the Journal of Natural and Social History; Culture and Cosmos: A Journal for the History of Astrology and Cultural Astronomy; Kosmos: An Integral Approach to Global Awakening . It is worth noting that Wilber uses the term Kosmos to distinguish his more integral, spiritual notion from purely physical cosmological notions. He has written a trilogy called The Kosmos Trilogy — the first of which is published in book form (Wilber, 2000d); Tarnas (2006) has recently published Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View.


Cosmology

Probably the best-known term in this cosmo-family is cosmology: the study of the structure and changes in the present universe. Although this may take the form of mythical, religious or philosophical cosmologies, the default usage today would most likely refer to cosmology as a branch of astrophysics. The shift from the unitive hermetic sciences—with their ensouled notions of the cosmos as anima mundi — to the starkly materialistic cosmology of 20th century science, was marked by centuries of overlap. As hinted earlier, the founders of modern physical cosmology, Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), Galileo Galilei (1564-1624), Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), Isaac Newton (1643-1727), were all hermetic scientists, who studied the psycho-spiritual-sciences of alchemy and astrology as well as physics. A question that could be posed here is how and why did the more spiritually-oriented hermetic side of cosmology and astronomy become buried under the weight of materialism for two to three centuries?


From Cosmogony to Cosmogenesis: From Big Bang to Informed Meta-verse

Perhaps a lesser-known term than cosmology is cosmogony. According to NASA the scientific field of cosmogony is distinct from cosmology in that cosmogony is more concerned with the origin of the universe. In a similar way to cosmology, there are other theories of cosmogony that are not based on scientific materialism. Questions of the origin of the universe, the earth, life and humanity have, as far as we know, been asked by humans for millennia. Some of these theories of origin are based on spiritual philosophies, as will be discussed below. Perhaps a conceptual bridge could be made here via the transformation of scientific thinking that has occurred as an outcome of the new biological theories arising from chaos and complexity science, and notions of self-organization and emergence. Building on these perspectives, integral cosmologist Brian Swimme (1992, 1999) refers to the emerging shift to complex, morphogenetic and cosmo-genetic notions arising from postformal biological models of complex adaptive systems. Swimme builds on Teilhard de Chardin’s use of the term cosmogenesis to describe the cosmological process of the creation of the Universe. Teilhard de Chardin (1959/2004) viewed his notion of cosmogenesis as a foundation for the later processes that he called biogenesis, and noogenesis.

A cosmogenesis embracing and expanding the laws of our individual ontogenesis on a universal scale, in the form of Noogenesis: a world that is being born instead of a world that is. (pp. 80-81)As indicated in the main narrative, diverse theories of evolution hotly contest the degree to which humans with their mental faculties have evolved through random selection, complex adaptation, or autopoiesis. Although the new science of emergentism is beginning to discuss the emergence of complex, moral and spiritual dimensions in human nature, this theory is still based on the metaphysical assumption of the primacy of matter, whereby any emergent dimensions are completely new appearances. Steiner, Gebser and Wilber all make significant contributions to this conversation. Although their views diverge somewhat all three share the heterodox idea that prior to matter and the subsequent evolution of matter, there was a spiritual origin. In all their views, it could be stated that ontogeny recapitulates not only phylogeny but also cosmogony (Grossinger, 2000, p. 705)The notion that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny was developed by biologist Ernst Haeckel in the late 19th century. Anthropologist, Grossinger (2000) takes the view that Haeckel was actually dealing in “information theory and deep structure,” (p. 330) but because he preceded structuralism, he clothed his theories in natural science. Such a cybernetic version of recapitulation could be seen to foreshadow the recent scientific notion that a complex invisible dimension is infolded within the material world. Bohm’s implicate order , Rupert Sheldrake’s morphic field and, more recently, Laszlo’s Akashic Field , require further investigation in this regard (Bohm, 1980; László, 2006; Sheldrake, 2006). These theories of an in-formed universe ,also underpin current meta-verse theories. Laszlo (2007, p. 38-42), citing several metaverse theorists, and Davies, propose that our universe was birthed from a Metaverse—the mother of all universes. Davies (2007) refers to “a family of universes multiplying ad infinitum, each giving birth to new generations of universes . . . With such cosmic fecundity, the assemblages of universes—or metaverse . . . might have no beginning or end” (p. 138).This endless cyclical aspect of the cosmos is also proposed by cosmologists Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok (2002) who claim “. . . the universe undergoes an endless sequence of cosmic epochs” (László, 2007, p. 42). It seems that these postformal science theories are bringing us back, full circle, to the cyclical notions of mythological cosmologies. I suggest that there are also parallels between Laszlo’s and Davies’ theories of a Meta-or Mother-universe—incorporating Laszlo’s in-formation rich Akashic field—and Steiner’s, Gebser’s and Wilber’s notions of spiritual involution prior to the biological evolution of matter (Davies, 2007; Gebser,1970/2005; László, 2007; Steiner, 1971c; Wilber, 2001b). Such a proposition may point to some fruitful potential for future research.


Cosmosophy

Perhaps even less familiar is the word cosmosophy, which derives from the Greek combination- cosmos and sofia, meaning the wisdom of the cosmos, with the understanding that the Greek sense of Wisdom was intimately connected to Love. Cosmosophy may also refer to the place of the human being in the cosmos. The notion of cosmosophy, possibly a Hegelian concept, having in modern times passed through Steiner (1921/1985), appears to be undergoing a revival of interest—most notably through Morin—as integral thinkers struggle to find new ways of expressing postformal ideas. For Steiner, cosmosophy was an evolution of cosmology through an inner development that infuses Wisdom with Love. This echoes Morin’s Cosmosophic perspective, as summarized by Santa de Siena (2005) as “love for the cosmos” (p. 435). “In interrogating the notion of eco, Morin opens the Oikos, the common home of the living , a cosmo- philosophy, a planetary perspective implying the idea of munus, of reciprocity toward all those who give us life” (p. 437). While physical cosmology is knowledge of the external physical cosmos discovered through the observing intellect, in Steiner’s poetic interpretation, cosmosophy would be knowledge of the cosmos, “which blossoms like a flower in the depths of the individual soul. ”The science which arises from this cannot be measured by its power of abstract reasoning but by its power to bring souls to flower and fruition. That is the difference between ‘Logia’ and ‘Sophia,’ between science and divine Wisdom. (Steiner, 1978a)Contemporary researchers who have begun to recognize the appropriateness and depth of this notion include Come Carpentier de Gourdon (2002), who sees cosmosophy as a way of reconciling scientific knowledge and spiritual culture, and John Toomey (2007), who defines cosmosophy as the confluence between cosmology—as the study of the universe; and philosophy— as the love of wisdom.


Cosmography

Like many of the other terms discussed above cosmography also has a default scientific meaning. The term is used for “the science that maps the general features of the universe; describes both heaven and earth (but without encroaching on geography or astronomy).” Clearly, when one begins to speak about heaven as well as earth, the notion of cosmography can appropriately be broadened beyond science. It is intriguing that we have a well-known term, geography — usage of 1,481 per 100 million words for the mapping or description of theearth yet the counterpart term, cosmography, for mapping or writing about the cosmos, is far less used—usage of 3 per 100 million words. Using the etymological root graphia "description, "from graphein "write," the term cosmo graphy could be used to refer to how we describe, or write about, the cosmos. This narratival sense of cosmography is beginning to reflect postformal thinking. Buckminster Fuller made some inroads into a postformal approach to cosmography with his notion of cosmic conceptioning (Fuller, 1992). Recently, social scientists Lesley Kuhn and Robert Woog, have developed the notion of complexity cosmography. They draw on concepts from complexity theory—such as self-organization, dynamism, and emergence—to develop narratives appropriate for social inquiry (Kuhn & Woog, 2007). Their complexity cosmographies utilize narratives that are generated through what they call coherent conversations — that is conversations that include postformal characteristics such as self-reflexivity, intuition and construct awareness. Kuhn and Woog (2007) are undertaking pioneering postformal research, by taking several key concepts from complexity science—originally formulated as mathematical concepts — and reshaping them in prose, as a basis for social inquiry, e.g., fractal dimensions become fractal narratives (p. 177); mathematical phase space becomes phrase space as a literary device related to construct awareness in narrative and discourse (p. 181). Although they are notusing their complexity cosmography to write about the cosmos as such, they are opening up new possibilities for human narratives—fractal, non-linear, recursive—that could provide a template for cohering our complex relationships as humans with the cosmos. Another relevant contribution to a re-enlivening of cosmic conceptioning — to use Fuller’s term—is the notion of the narrative universe. Although Swimme (1999) and Bocchi and Ceruti (2002) do not use theterm cosmography, they are indeed writing new postformal cosmographies.


Cosmopolitanism

A postformal-integral-planetary consciousness, as developed in this research, emerges through a re-awakening of the roots of its own being in the archaic, magic, mythic and mental structures of consciousness. Instead of being stuck in the ego-mental space of individualism, territorialism and nationalism, we may begin to appreciate a broader planetary space. If we wish to understand more about our marginalized spirituality, vitality and imagination, we need to step beyond our ego-bound intellectual-mentality and glance at the spirituality, vitality and imagination among the disappearing cultures whom our hegemonic mentality has marginalized. There are indigenous and traditional people on every continent who may know more than modernist western science can imagine, about these other structures of consciousness. This is nota regressive romantic plea or some re-vamped version of the 19th century noble savage. It is a conscious integral philosophic stance towards a new cosmopolitanism—an honoring of all cultural treasures. All people need to go through all structures, including ego-mental, to be able to reach a fully integral-aperspectival awaring. However, the emphasis has been too strongly on culturally progressing and transcending - particularly through techno-economic rather than humanitarian values—with insufficient consideration of cultural pluralism, preservation and inclusion. Such a postformal, integral-planetary consciousness is evident in philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah’s recent book Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (Appiah, 2006).Appiah appears to successfully steer a course that critiques both the imperializing influence of extreme liberal universalism and also the vagaries of cultural relativism. His notion of universality plus difference echos the ideals of this narrative, and others (Morin & Kern, 1999;Poletti, 2005)."

(https://www.academia.edu/197841/The_Evolution_of_Consciousness_as_a_Planetary_Imperative_An_Integration_of_Integral_Views)