By DONALD DeMARCO
The word “cosmos” was coined by Pythagoras and referred to a universe that is unified, ordered, good, and beautiful — that last adjective endures among cosmetologists whose work with cosmetics are aimed at restoring beauty to the face. According to Hesiod, chaos was the first thing that came to be. Many religious groups in ancient Greece believed that chaos was nothingness, but not entirely inert. It was a matrix of unintelligible entities from which things took shape and became distinct, ultimately forming the cosmos. Given the intimacy between cosmos and chaos, it was inevitable that people would fear that the cosmos would eventually return to that vast amorphous soup known as chaos.
These terms were not created out of thin air. They were based on philosophical responses to the visible world. On the one hand, the order of the universe was apparent. The planets moved in regular patterns, day and night alternated predictably, the seasons followed in a consistent manner, and people organized their lives in accordance with the sunrise and the sunset. On the other hand, there was turmoil: volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, typhoons, and tornados. On the human level: war, famines, pestilence, and plagues of a variety of kinds. Which term, then, cosmos or chaos, accurately captures the nature of the universe?
This distinction has particular relevance for how human beings should live. For, if chaos is the proper name of the universe, then vice is the appropriate comportment for human beings. But if the universe is a cosmos, then human beings should order their lives through virtue. The fact that the Greeks distinguished between the microcosm man and the macrocosm world indicated that people could live in harmony with the universe. Man is merely a microcosm, but one through which he can understand the order of the macrocosm world.
The modern world has become skeptical about the meaning of life. There seems to be an unhealable severance between the microcosm man and the macrocosm world. Man no longer “knows,” he just “thinks.” We think a great deal, although we seldom come to a conclusion. The consequence of this inconclusive thinking is the politically correct view that all opinions are equal. Truth disappears and conjecture reigns.
It is significant, as Anton Pegis, an expert in medieval philosophy, has pointed out, that St. Thomas Aquinas did not have in his vocabulary a word corresponding to the term “thinker.” Such a term cannot be translated into Latin. For Aquinas, man is a “knower,” not a “thinker.” Obviously, man thinks, but as a “mere thinker” he does not achieve knowledge. From the viewpoint of the Angelic Doctor, the decline of medieval philosophy was really a transition from man as a “knower” to man as a “thinker.” According to Pegis, a “thinker” in this sense is a “disexistentialized knower.”
“I think therefore I am,” Descartes’ deathless phrase, locks the self in a prison, shut off from anything beyond itself. We are descendants of Descartes whether we realize it or not.
Albert Einstein once said that the most incomprehensible thing for him was that the universe is comprehensible. In other words, how was the mind of man attuned to the order of the universe so that man could know something about the universe? The answer to this question, which vexes scientists, is best explained theologically. God created man a knower and one who would build his love on what he knew. Therefore, God created man to be an integral part of the universe, knowingly connected with its laws.
The frequency emitted by a radio station is attuned to the radio (or receiving set). Of course, this connection does not happen by chance. It was designed. So, too, the connection between the knower and what is known must also be ordered. We take this for granted when listening to the radio, but neglect two more extraordinary attunements, between our ear and what it senses, and our mind which interprets the meaning of what we hear. We are knowers who live in a cosmos, not mere thinkers who dwell in chaos.
The notion of chaos has a firm place in the world of fantasy. Video games, movies, recordings, novels, comic books, and radio and TV programs make steady and effective use of it. Chaos is attractive and intriguing because it is daring, rebellious, exciting, and adventurous. In the world of fantasy, anything that is well-ordered, by contrast, seems frightfully boring.
In the field of mathematics, the phrase “chaos theory” may be misleading. It is not the case that mathematics is chaotic in itself, but it is the mathematician’s admission that there are vast areas of reality that cannot the correlated with mathematics. Indeterminacy and unpredictability are confessions of human ignorance, not the presence of disorder in the universe.
Scripture informs us that God created the world out of nothing. He did not bring the cosmos out from chaos. In creating out of nothing, He manifested His infinite power, but also brought into being a cosmos that was entirely separate from any notion of chaos. There are times in our lives when we have a perception of this truth, that God’s creation is His work and His work alone.
On one of his expeditions to the South Pole, Admiral Richard E. Byrd recorded an experience he had while situated near the Bay of Whales. It was twilight, that time of day when it seems that chaos is absorbing the cosmos into itself. At this moment, Admiral Byrd seemed to be in tune with the music of the spheres. “It was enough to catch the rhythm, momentarily, to be myself a part of it,” he wrote.
“In that instant I could feel no doubt of man’s oneness with the universe….It was a feeling that transcended reason that went to the heart of man’s despair and found it groundless. The universe was a cosmos, not a chaos.”
It is the cosmos that is real. The ancient Greeks could not fathom a God who created from nothing, and so they invented chaos. At the same time, we should remember that sin is a choice for chaos, which is not only a choice for disorder, but a choice for nothingness.
+ + +
(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a professor emeritus of St. Jerome’s University and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College and Seminary. He is a regular columnist for the St. Austin Review. His latest books, How to Navigate Through Life and Apostles of the Culture of Life, are posted on amazon.com.)
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress