Talk:Cosmology

Any notion that cosmology is limited to the branch of physics called 'cosmology' belies an ignorance of the millennia-long traditions of cosmology in religion and philosophy which in turn belies a lack of grounding in the liberal arts.

Please see these web pages:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04413a.htm

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04405c.htm

Probably, we will want separate articles, "cosmology (physics)" (if 'cosmology' is indeed the usual, most technical, hip, and up-to-date term for the study of the origins of the universe) and "cosmology (religion and philosophy)."

--Larry

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Does someone have one of those dictionaries where the date of the first use of a word is recorded? If the first one to use that word was an astronomer or physicist, I would consider it licit to reserve that word for that purpose...another word should exist that applies to the millenia of thinking. If, on the other hand, cosmology is an old word, probably brought long ago from latin and used in other contexts, I'll agree with Larry.

Checking Webster - the first recorded date in English is 1656, coming over from New Latin (i.e. Late Medieval or Early Modern), so it is somewhat difficult to call. It conveniently enough lists both definitions (osmogony refers to a theory of creation rather than of creation and development, so I was very wrong there). A quick search shows that scientists tend to restrict the term to scientific stuff (although still including things like Neptunism) while people dealing with religion and mythology don't mind using the term either way. What a mess.

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The origins of such words as "cosmology" should not be dated from its first appearance in English but from its first appearance by educated people (whose jargon and names for theories and such are often variants of the same basic, usually Latin or Greek, words). Anyway, though, today, the word is just used differently by different people; nothing unusual about that. I'd just emphasize that the fact that the physicists use the term in one particular way gives us no reason whatever to suppose that their usage is the "correct" one. There is no single correct usage, it seems. --LMS

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Maybe there should be headings: "physical cosmology", "philosophical cosmology", etc.? Right now "dark matter" is next to "creationism"... -- S. Winitzki

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does cosmology define theory of matter? is theory of matter = foundation ontology? if so, how can "fire", a process, fit into foundation ontologies? if not, can we clearly separate the scientific theory of matter[?] from the more general cultural concept of foundation ontology?

Some complexity is going to creep either into this article or into foundation ontology or perhaps theory of matter[?]. Personally I think there are *four* fields, I would separate "Religious" from "Theological" studies of cosmology because the methods diverge based on the motives of the investigator. For instance I would refer to the Gaian view as Theological but not Religious, and most pre-Englightenment Catholic views as Religious but not Theological. A few outright theological gurus like Pope John Paul II have managed to transcend the differences - but one must share their moral-centric point of view to consider that an advantage.

I suggest that anyone interested review particle physics, particle physics foundation ontology and foundation ontology and think hard about how to frame things like "dark matter" and "fecund universes" which have implications both for theory of matter and cosmology in all senses...

I believe cosmology is half of ontology (the foundation ontology only) and half of metaphysics (the physics half ;-)). However, I don't think this is stable - I think that physics lays claim to it as an exclusive domain only because physics is currently providing the most widely accepted foundation ontology. In other words, we might look to chemists or biologists to provide it in future, as they have in the past, e.g. "Heat Death of the Universe" and such thermodynamics-centric views of the 19th century... If we decided at some point in the future that our cosmology as a civilization ought to center on constraints on intermediate reactions of picosecond duration in chemistry, then cosmology would swap physics for chemistry and we would be talking about "metachemistry" not "metaphysics".

The other half of ontology seems to be that part of ethics that is concerned with making new categorizations: who makes them, in whose interests, and how heavily serviced are objections that the categorizations are "unfair" or "morally wrong". However, back to the point:

I am concerned that any bridging statement that tries to claim that there are obvious commonalities between the Philosophical, Physical, Religious and Theological views, and that they have all chosen and continued to use the term "cosmology" not to try to dispute but unify its meaning, is potentially quite controversial, so before a bunch of actions and reactions, let's "talk".

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Those diverse fields do all use the word for roughly the same meaning: a theory of the large-scale structure and origin of the universe. Of course, their particular cosmologies are completely different, and no one is claiming otherwise. The article here is very simple, very accurate, and very good. If you want to go into further details about the content of various cosmologies, then write articles on "Christian cosmology", "Big Bang cosmology", etc. --LDC

no, there are many people claiming that "their particular cosmologies" are far from "completely different" but in fact revealing the same underlying foundation structure. Your "no one" is excluding for instance Pope John Paul II, which is a lot of believers to exclude for an NPOV. The article by lumping together all theological views as simply (or naively) "religious" is overly simple, not accurate, and not good. Also the relationship between particle physics, theory of matter[?] and foundation ontology (which 213* seems to think are interchangeable concepts) needs to be elaborated somewhere.. the linkage 213 makes between the three intuitively suggests that this is in fact some kind of larger cosmology.

so, I agree that the different articles need to be written, but they will be using *some* underlying terms in common, and we need to know what those are, and make some small reference to the major questions they addres here.

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213 has moved on to imposing his or her own personal cosmology on the wiki. For instance, "Standard Model" by definition is the particle physics standard model[?], "Scientific method" is defined only in terms of reproducibility, "particle physics foundation ontology" does not exist despite our hard-worked attempt to define it - wherein no one denied that it was in fact in use *as* a foundation ontology and we found no more neutral term, "philosophy of science" can be mentioned but not linked in particle physics, foundation ontology itself is equivalent to theory of matter[?], and God only knows what other stuff s/he believes.

All of this will be undone, and I have removed "particle physics" itself so that s/he will get the message.

We need a truce on this matter, or at least a cease-fire. I doubt that any other serious player here would agree with *all* of 213's renaming gaming... particularly not those who worked hard to keep these concepts separate and neutral.

It's called the Standard Model because that's what the physicists call it. It's jargon. It's the standard model, not becuase they have any philsophical drive to make it true, but just becuase it is the current working hypothesis, repeatedly resisting efforts to falsify it. And lots of physicists would love to do just that!

all right, fine, but physicists do not define the cosmology of the wiki. Almost all sciences have or have had a "standard model" of something or other over the years, they come and go all the time, and I hope that you cna see that the process of w:particle physics investigation by humans via accelerator can by no means claim a monopoly on any kind of larger truth in the universe. The objections are covered well in the article, but they blur the distinction rather badly between issues of whether the "particle physics standard model" (a better title than any of the ones we have used so far) is *COMPLETE*, *USEFUL*, *DESIRABLE* or *UNIVERSAL* i.e. a foundation ontology in itself. We very carefully separated the issues raised by continued accelerator use to the *stability* or *completeness* of the model (presumbly we do not have infinite resources to invest in falsifying it), the objections of anti-reductionist physicists to it on grounds of non-usefulness, and the issues raised in philosophy of science and philosophy of mathematics regarding the applicability of the scientific method to such basic and barely-explorable stuff that requires lots of math to unravel... and ended up with *two* articles. Now you jam them together into one, without that structure implied by having two carefully separate articles (one for people who care about physics, another for those who care about the cultural implications of physics) - jamming them together creates volatility all over again... people adding doubt about various claims of the model or experiments ongoing, people mixing and matching claims to objections to cost questions from the larger culture, etc., and we just do not have the kind of clean separation we had to fight for over the last week. Read the talk files associated... there were *lots* of issues raised and settled there, *most* but not *all* of them agreed, and now we are going to go through it again? Please. For now I would just like you to see that there are other views that are as valid as yours, and good reasons to keep things separated.

I'm not suggesting that it is actually true, or valid (or, for that matter, untrue, or invalid) -- only that, when you say "Standard Model" in physics, it is that particle physics model that is being talked about.

I will believe it is not changing when they shut the accelerators down. Fair enough? Until then it is only *the current* Standard Model, and part of a particular "paradigm" which some people (like Axel) use as a foundation ontology to describe everything else in the universe. That is not a universally shared or neutral point of view. It is the view of mathematical physicists or physics-fetishist mathematicians, not much more.

"in physics" and "in academic use" and "in wikipedia" and "in general English language usage" are several separate things. Scientific method has more than reproducibility and falsifiability constraints, it has ethical and moral constraints on it, and 1 billion plus Catholics in the world trust one man to sort this stuff out for them... a far more neutral point of view than any of ours, and more carefully scholarly too. So we can't become some kind of medium for propagating physicists' assumptions as if they were "reality" - history has many many examples of foundation ontology turned on its head, and if we build one into the naming conventions of wikipedia and don't stay neutral between them, we lose big.

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all right, fine, but physicists do not define the cosmology of the wiki.

But they do define the current practice of physics, which is what this article and the particle physics articles attempt to describe, with a place for sketch discussion of philosophical or political critiques, which can be dealt with in full in technical articles about philosophy or politics of science.

no, *this* (cosmology) article is *NOT* here to "define the current practice of physics" and especially not particle physics - if you will please note there are many types of cosmology that have nothing to do with that practice, physics being only one of several *ways* to explore cosmology, and particle physics being only a specialized way within physics.

Until then it is only *the current* Standard Model, and part of a particular "paradigm" which some people (like Axel) use as a w:foundation ontology to describe everything else in the universe. That is not a universally shared or neutral point of view. It is the view of mathematical physicists or physics-fetishist mathematicians, not much more.

Great. Then write about that in foundation ontology, which is the right place for it.

no, the idea of a "foundation ontology" is very general and broad and crosses many civilizations and time periods, and is proliferating now in computer science and law circles. Those are more general and important concerns than any raised in physics since they impact such important human actions as oh say suicide bomber tactics and religious training. Much as we might deplore the waste of money on particle physics, we should deplore the bodily risk of ignoring those issues more. At least in my cosmology... which is more like that of the body philosophers[?] than the physicists.

thus, the particle physics foundation ontology is only one of many that have prevailed in the human species "civilizations" over its recorded history, and needs to be discussed, as Axel and LDC and I and the anti-reductionist advocate (was that you?) agreed, giving rise to one article. The more general foundation ontology concerns that Axel *deleted* from that article may belong in or foundations of science[?] or foundations of cognition[?] or something, but not (as LDC said) in particle physics nor (as I keep showing) in foundation ontology. The physics debate is far from significant compared to similar debates in law and ethics.