The cosmos (, US also ; Ancient Greek: κόσμος, romanized: kósmos) is an alternative name for the universe or its nature or order. Usage of the word cosmos implies viewing the universe as a complex and orderly system or entity.
The cosmos is studied in cosmology – a broad discipline covering scientific, religious or philosophical aspects of the cosmos and its nature. Religious and philosophical approaches may include the cosmos among spiritual entities or other matters deemed to exist outside the physical universe.
Etymology
The verb κοσμεῖν kosmeîn meant generally 'to dispose, prepare', but especially 'to order and arrange' (troops for battle), 'to set (an army) in array'; also 'to establish' (a government or regime), 'to adorn, dress' (especially of women). Thus kósmos meant 'ornaments, decoration' (compare kosmokómes 'dressing the hair' and the English word cosmetic). The philosopher Pythagoras used the term kósmos for the order of the universe. Anaxagoras further introduced the concept of a Cosmic Mind (nous) ordering all things.
History
The 1870 book Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology noted
Thales dogma that water is the origin of things, that is, that it is that out of which every thing arises, and into which every thing resolves itself, Thales may have followed Orphic cosmogonies, while, unlike them, he sought to establish the truth of the assertion. Hence, Aristotle, immediately after he has called him the originator of philosophy brings forward the reasons which Thales was believed to have adduced in confirmation of that assertion; for that no written development of it, or indeed any book by Thales, was extant, is proved by the expressions which Aristotle uses when he brings forward the doctrines and proofs of the Milesian. (p. 1016)
Plato, describes the idea of the good, the cosmic mind or the Godhead, sometimes teleologically, as the ultimate purpose of all conditioned existence; sometimes cosmologically, as the...
