Cosmos

In to 56 COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 by Alexander von Humboldt Translated by E C Otte from the 1858 Harper & Brothers edition of Cosmos, volume 1 -------------------------------------------------- p 23 INTRODUCTION. ---------------- REFLECTIONS ON THE DIFFERENT DEGREES OF ENJOYMENT PRESENTED TO US BY THE ASPECT OF NATURE AND THE STUDY OF HER LAWS. In attempting, after a long absence from my native country, to develop the physical phenomena of the globe, and the simultaneous action of the forces that pervade the regions of space, I experience a two-fold cause of anxiety. The subject before me is so inexhaustible and so varied, that I fear either to fall into the superficiality of the encyclopedist, or to weary the mind of my reader by aphorisms consisting of mere generalities clothed in dry and dogmatical forms. Undue conciseness often checks the flow of expression, while diffuseness is alike detrimental to a clear and precise exposition of our ideas. Nature is a free domain, and the profound conceptions and enjoyments she awakens within us can only be vividly delineated by thought clothed in exalted forms of speech, worthy of bearing witness to the majesty and greatness of the creation.

In considering the study of physical phenomena, not merely in its bearings on the material wants of life, but in its general influence on the intellectual advancement of mankind, we find its noblest and most important result to be a knowledge of the chain of connection, by which all natural forces are linked together, and made mutually dependent upon each other; and it is the perception of these relations that exalts our views and ennobles our enjoyments. Such a result can, however, only be reaped as the fruit of observation and intellect, combined with the spirit of the age, in which are reflected all the varied phases of thought. He who can trace, through by-gone times, the stream of our knowledge to its primitive source, will learn from history how, for thousands of years, man has labored, amid the ever-recurring changes of form, to recognize the invariability of natural laws, and has thus, by the force of mind, gradually subdued a great portion of the physical world to his dominion. In interrogating the history of the past, we trace the mysterious course of ideas yielding the first glimmering perception of the same image of p 24 a Cosmos, or harmoniously ordered whole, which, dimly shadowed forth to the human mind in the primitive ages of the world, is now fully revealed to the maturer intellect of mankind as the result of long and laborious observation.

[Footnote] *This verse occurs in a poem of Schiller, entitled 'Der Spaziergang' which first appeared in 1795, in the 'Horen.' In order to trace to its primitive source the enjoyment derived from the exercise of thought, it is sufficient to cast a rapid glance on the earliest dawnings of the philosophy of nature, or of the ancient doctrine of the 'Cosmos.' We find even p 37 among the most savage nations (as my own travels enable me to attest) a certain vague, terror-stricken sense of the all-powerful unity of natural forces, and of the existence of an invisible, spiritual essence manifested in these forces, whether in unfolding the flower and maturing the fruit of the nutrient tree, in upheaving the soil of the forest, or in rending the clouds with the might of the storm. We may here trace the revelation of a bond of union, linking together the visible world and that higher spiritual world which escapes the grasp of the senses. The two become unconsciously blended together, developing in the mind of man, as a simple product of ideal conception and independently of the aid of observation, the first germ of a 'Philosophy of Nature.'

As the history of nations -- if it were always able to trace events to their true causes -- might solve the ever-recurring enigma of the oscillations experienced by the alternately progressive and retrograde movement of human society, so might also the physical description of the world, the science of the 'Cosmos', if it were grasped by a powerful intellect, and based upon a knowledge of all the results of discovery up to a given period, succeed in dispelling a portion of the contradictions which, at first sight, appear to arise from the complication or phenomena and the multitude of the perturbations simultaneously manifested.

By uniting, under one point of view, both the phenomena of our own globe and those presented in the regions of space, we embrace the limits of the science of the 'Cosmos', and convert the physical history of the globe into the physical history of the universe, the one term being modeled upon that of the other. This science of the Cosmos is not, however, to be regarded as a mere encyclopedic aggregation of the most important and general results that have been collected together from special branches of knowledge. These results are nothing more than the materials for a vast edifice, and their combination can not constitute the physical history of the world, whose exalted part it is to show the simultaneous action and the connecting links of the forces which pervade the universe. The distribution of organic types in different climates and at different elevations -- that is to say, the geography of plants and animals -- differs as widely from botany and descriptive zoology as geology does from mineralogy, properly so called. The physical history of the universe must not, therefore, be confounded with the 'Encyclopedias of the Natural Sciences', as they have hitherto been compiled, and whose title is as vague as their limits are ill defined. In the work before us, partial facts will be considered only in relation to the whole. p 56 The higher the point of view, the greater is the necessity for a systematic mode of treating the subject in language at once animated and picturesque.

The influence of narrow-minded views peculiar to the earlier ages of civilization led in all languages to a confusion of ideas in the synonymic use of the words 'earth' and 'world', while the common expressions 'voyages round the world', 'map of the world', and 'new world', afford further illustrations of the same confusion. The more noble and precisely-defined expressions of 'system of the world', 'the planetary world', and 'creation and age of the world', relate either to the totality of the substances by which space is filled, or to the origin of the whole universe. It was natural that, in the midst of the extreme variability of phenomena presented by the surface of our globe, and the aerial ocean by which it is surrounded, man should have been impressed by the aspect of the vault of heaven, and the uniform and regular movements of the sun and planets. Thus the word Cosmos, which primitively, in the Homeric ages, indicated an idea of order and harmony, was subsequently adopted in scientific language, where it was gradually applied to the order observed in the movements of the heavenly bodies, to the whole universe, and then finally to the world in which this harmony was reflected to us. According to the assertion of Philolaus, whose fragmentary works have been so ably commented upon by Böckh, and conformably to the general testimony p 69 of antiquity, Pythagoras was the first who used the word Cosmos to designate the order that reigns in the universe, or entire world.*

[footnote] *[Greek word], in the most ancient, and at the same time most precise, definition of the word, signified 'ornament' (as an adornment for a man, a woman, or a horse); taken figuratively for [Greek word], it implied the order or adornment of a discourse. According to the testimony of all the ancients, it was Pythagoras who first used the word to designate the order in the universe, and the universe itself. Pythagoras left no writings; but ancient attestation to the truth of this assertion is to be found in several passages of the fragmentary works of Philolaus (Stob., 'Eclog.', p. 360 and 460, Heeren), p. 62, 90, in Bockh's German edition. I do not, according to the example of Nake, cite Timof Locris, since his authenticity is doubtful. Plutarch ('De plac. Phil.', ii., I) says, in the most express manner, that Pythatoras gave the name of Cosmos to the universe on account of the order which reigned throughout it; so likewise does Galen ('Hist. Phil.', p. 429). This word, together with its novel signification, passed from the schools of philosophy into the language of poets and prose writers.

Plato designates the heavenly bodies by the name of 'Uranos', but the order pervading the regions of space he too terms the Cosmos, and in his 'Timus' (p. 30 a.) he says 'that the world is an animal endowed with a soul' [Greek words]. Compare Anaxag. Claz., ed. Schaubach, p. III, and Plut. ('De plac. Phil.', in Aristotle ('De Caelo', I, 9), 'Cosmos' signifies "the universe and the order pervading it," but it is likewise considered as divided in space into two parts -- the sublunary world, and the world above the moon. ('Meteor.', I., w, 1, and I., 3, 13, p. 339, 'a', and 340, 'b', Bekk.) The definition of Cosmos, which I have already cited is taken from Pseudo-Aristoteles 'de Mundo', cap. ii. (p. 391); the passage referred to is as follows: [Greek words]. Most of the passages occurring in Greek writers on the word 'Cosmos' may be found collected together in the controversy between Richard Bentley and Charles Boyle ('Opuscula Philologica', 1781, p. 347, 445; 'Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris', 1817, p. 254); on the historical existence of Zaleucus, legislator of Leucris, in Nake's excellent work, 'Sched. Crit.', 1812, p. 9, 15; and, finally in Theophilus Schmidt, 'ad Cleom.

Cycl. Theor.', met. I., 1, p. ix., 1 and 99. Taken in a more limited sense, the word Cosmos is also used in the plural (Plut., 1, 5), either to designate the stars (Stob., 1, p. 514; Plut., 11, 13) or the innumerable systems scattered like islands through the immensity of space, and each composed of a sun and a moon. (Anax. Claz., 'Fragm.', p. 89, 93, 120; Brandis, 'Gesch. der Griechisch-Römischen Philosophie', b. i., s. 252 (History of the Greco-Roman Philosophy). Each of these groups forming thus a 'Cosmos', the universe, [Greek words], the word must be understood in a wider sense (Plut., ii., 1). It was not until long after the time of the Ptolemies that the word was applied to the earth. Bockh has made known inscriptions in praise of Trajan and Adrian ('Corpus Inscr. Graec.', I, n. 334 and 1036), in which [Greek word] occurs for [Greek word] in the same manner as we still use the term 'world' to signify the earth alone. We have already mentioned the singular division of the regions of space p 70 [Footnote continues] into three parts, the 'Olympus, Cosmos' and 'Ouranos' (Stob., i., p. 488; Philolaus, p.

From the Italian school of philosophy, the expression passed, in this signification, into the language of those early poets p 71 of nature, Parmenides and Empedocles, and from thence into the works of prose writers. We will not here enter into a discussion of the manner in which, according to the Pythagorean views, Philolaus distinguishes between Olympus, Uranus, or the heavens, and Cosmos, or how the same word, used in a plural sense, could be applied to certain heavenly bodies (the planets) revolving round one central focus of the world, or to groups of stars. In this work I use the word Cosmos in conformity with the Hellenic usage of the term subsequently to the time of Pythagorus, and in accordance with the precise definition given of it in the treatise entitled 'De Mundo', which was long erroneously attributed to Aristotle. It is the assemblage of all things in heaven and earth, the universality of created things constituting the perceptible world. If scientific terms had not long been diverted from their true verbal signification, the present work ought rather to have borne the title of 'Cosmography', divided into 'Uranography' and 'Geography.' The Romans, in their feeble essays on philosophy, imitated the Greeks by applying to the universe the term 'mundus', which, in its primary meaning, indicated nothing more than ornament, and did not even imply order or regularity in the disposition of parts. It is probable that the introduction into the language of Latium of this technical term as an equivalent for Cosmos, in its double signification, is due to Ennius,* who was a follower of the Italian school, and the translator of the writings of Epicharmus and some of his pupils on the Pythagorean philosophy.