Introduction to cosmology notes

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Mabry Introduction We aren't accustomed to think in terms of the whole in the West. The starting point for our cosmology historically has been the atom, and more recently, the elusive parts of the atom. It is a perspective that has, in general, served us well. But then a hammer may serve us well until we attempt to open a bottle of wine with it, for then we wind up with a god-awful mess.

The Bible and Cosmology

Intuitively we would know that we need a different sort of tool. It was Hegel who first divined the need for this tool, and began to see the whole, rather than the part, as the starting point for our cosmology.

On his heels, Whitehead takes us into the presence of God as part and parcel of that whole, and finally, Teilhard, who worships it. In the following pages one will find an examination of key concepts in the philosophies of these three men, respectively, as well as discussions on the ramifications of such philosophies in terms of God, humankind, and in reference to one another.

George Wilhelm Frederich Hegel "Never tell a person that what they propose to do is impossible until they have done it. The "impossible" here is the synthesis of Western wisdom up to his time, the wrestling of such data into a single cohesive system which would partake eclectically from Spinoza, Schelling, Aristotle, Kant, and many others.

Richard Tarnas describes it as "an immense drama in which the universe reveals itself to itself and achieves its freedom. All struggle and evolution are resolved in the realization of the world's telos, its goal and purpose.

The Absolute was a tangible reality for Hegel, for, as Meister Eckhart puts it, "God created all things in such a way that they are not outside himself. From such a Gestalt perspective, then, nothing that exists in the phenomenological world may be considered in and of itself, but only as it relates to the Whole, the Absolute.

That the part is a separate entity is an illusion, only the Whole is real. Just because this substance is a being resolved in the self, it is not a lifeless essence, but real and alive.

Taken in isolation they appear as if they existed as they stand. But their advance and return upon their real ground and essential being showed that they are merely moments or vanishing quantities; and this essential being is precisely this movement and resolution of these moments.

We should not get the idea that the phenomenological world is, as some Hindu sects believe, maya, or illusion, however. Physical things are real enough, but it is their separateness that is the illusion.

The Absolute is the unity of all such particulars, and all particulars are member's of its being, which it unites from within. And what does it think about?

Itself--what else is there? In Hegel's own words, it is "self-consciousness at home with itself,"10 or "the Idea which thinks itself. Traditionally in Western thought, opposites were seen as contradictory and mutually exclusive, but Hegel's breakthrough was in seeing contraries as part of a larger schema.

This leap in logic makes it possible to hold contradictory data as equally true, since the acceptance of the paradox leads the thinker onward, through the paradox into the larger reality of which the paradox is only a part.

For Kant, the mind of man is shackled to his experience, and cannot perceive or even deduce the Absolute because of the obstacle of contradiction. But Kant lived in a particularized universe, whereas for Hegel, the mind of humankind is subsumed in the mind of God, which knows all things and through which all paradoxes could be transcended by means of synthesis, to a higher truth.

This truth also will be presented with a contradiction, which will result in the synthesis of a higher truth, and so on, infinitely--as infinitely as God.

	Timeline of cosmology and List of cosmologists Modern cosmology developed along tandem tracks of theory and observation.
	Timeline of cosmology and List of cosmologists Modern cosmology developed along tandem tracks of theory and observation. InAlbert Einstein published his theory of general relativitywhich provided a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time.
	The starting point for our cosmology historically has been the atom, and more recently, the elusive parts of the atom.
Sorry! Something went wrong!	Human timeline and Life timeline Physics and astrophysics have played a central role in shaping the understanding of the universe through scientific observation and experiment. Physical cosmology was shaped through both mathematics and observation in an analysis of the whole universe.
SVP Universal Cosmology, Table of Contents	Quotes from the book of Genesis.

By means of this triangular logical process, Hegel ingeniously works through some of the most baffling logical questions found in Nature and History. The impossible was achieved. The veil of the philosophical temple had been rent, and Hegel perceived the unity of the human and Divine minds. The implications of this are worthy of awe.

For, of all known creation, only humankind is self-reflexive; aware that it is aware. Spirit may know itself as spirit, but humankind is the only element of Creation that is conscious of its own consciousness, and so as the part of the physical manifestation of God, it is through humankind alone in what Hegel calls the "real" or "actual," i.

Hegel writes, "As we now know that spirit in its own world is the same as spirit conscious of itself as spirit The mind of humankind is still limited. So why would Reason, the Logos want to bother with humankind with all our limitations? Because although it is the transcendent Mind which directs the unfolding of the material universe, it lacks something within itself.

Even at the plane of consciousness, when it is mere intellect, there is a consciousness of the supersensuous, of the inner aspect of objective existence.Currently these notes cover: a brief overview of astronomy's place in the scientific endeavor, the philosophy of science and the scientific method, astronomy that can be done without a telescope, a history of astronomy and science, Newton's law of gravity and applications to orbits, Einstein's Relativity theories, electromagnetic radiation, telescopes, all the objects of the solar system.

An Introduction to Modern Cosmology Third Edition is an accessible account of modern cosmological ideas. The Big Bang Cosmology is explored, looking at its observational successes in explaining the expansion of the Universe, the existence and properties of the cosmic microwave background, and the origin of light elements in the universe.

Hegel, Whitehead, & Chardin: Trailblazers of a New Cosmology. Copyright by John R. Mabry. Introduction. We aren't accustomed to think in terms of the whole in.

Cosmology: The Origin, Evolution & Ultimate Fate of the Universe An Introductory Resource Guide for College Instructors Spring An all-sky image of the Cosmic Microwave Background (Credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration). "A truth's initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed.

It wasn't the world being round that agitated people, but that the world wasn't flat. Contents Cosmology. Introduction; Observations and Some Implications.

Universe Contains MassWhy has the Universe Not Collapsed? Olbers' Paradox and the Dark Night Sky.