I use “ cosmos” for our forebearers’ idea of the totality of existence because it contains the idea of an ordered whole. 60), the Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor, contrasts the ancient notion of cosmos with the modern secular universe: It was, of course, not scientific in its formulation, but it expressed a profound insight that remains valid, and the present ecological crisis could only have developed in a world that has forgotten it, or forgotten to live by it. They may not have had (or needed) the term “ecology,” but the ancient writers were deeply aware of the inter-relatedness of the natural world, and of man as the focus or nexus of that world, which they expressed in the doctrine of correspondences. But this is little more than a rediscovery in scientific terms of what had already been understood “poetically” in all previous civilizations.

The old cosmos might not be a very useful map for space travelers, but it does alright as a map for worshippers.Įcologists tell us that the interdependence of all living things makes the world more than a mechanism, more than the sum of its parts, perhaps even in some sense organically alive in its own right. Lewis described the medieval “cosmos” as “tingling with anthropomorphic life, dancing, a festival not a machine.” The modern “universe,” he believed, is devoid of significance, and so we have to give a meaning to our own lives, by willpower if necessary.

Bladud of Bath by Howard C. Levis