Introduction

1. NAME

means “order” or “good arrangement.” The alert minds of the ancient Greeks were quick to see in this word a suitable expression for the order, beauty, and regularity which they observed in the world around them. For this reason kosmos soon came to mean “the world,” that is, the bodily universe. It is interesting to notice in passing that the Latins also were alive to the orderliness and beauty of the world; they called it mundus, a word which describes something clean, pure, beautiful, ornate. Our English word mundane is a direct derivative from mundus in the sense of “the world,” just as our words cosmos and cosmic are formed from kosmos in the same sense.

The Greek word logos means “word” or “speech.” Fundamentally, it means the word, speech, or expression which takes place within the mind in the act of knowing. It means thought or knowledge, and, in special, reasoned knowledge. And it has come to have the technical meaning of sustained and connected rea-

soning; that is, it has come to signify science. In I compound words logos regularly takes the English form of -logy, which is usually connected with the rest of its compound by the letter o. Hence, a term ending in -ology usually suggests, by this very fact, its definition as “‘the science of” something or other.

From kosmos, the bodily world, and logos, science, we have the term cosmology. This name, therefore, by reason of its structure, means “the science of the bodily world.”

The term cosmology is a comparatively recent invention. In earlier times, the science (which is a part of philosophy) that we now call cosmology was known as natural philosophy. It was also called the science of mobile being or scientia éntis mobilis, that is, the science of things subject to physical and sensible movement, motion, change. Now, only bodily things are naturally subject to such modification or movement. Only a body,—in the natural sense, and not in the mathematical sense of pure or abstract quantity,—is ens mobile, that is, movable or changeable being. Hence, as is manifest, natural philosophy or the scientia entis mobilis was, like cosmology, the science of bodily things, the science of the world around us, the science of the material and physical universe. Cosmology deals with bodies, as these exist or are existible in nature.

2. DEFINITION

Cosmology is the philosophical science of natural

INTRODUCTION 3

bodily being. We must ponder every phrase of this definition.

a) Cosmology is a science. The term science, taken absolutely, without the article, is a literal synonym for knowledge. It is a direct derivative from the Latin scientia, “knowledge,” and this word comes, in its turn, from the verb scire, “to know.” But the word science has long been employed to signify a precise type or kind of knowledge: it means knowledge of facts or truths together with their explanations, their justification, their how’s and why’s, their causes and reasons. Such is the meaning of the term science when taken generally or absolutely. Now, any branch or department of such knowledge, which has its own clear-cut limits or determinate scope ; which sets forth its data in an orderly, systematic, and complete manner ; which justifies each point in its orderly development by assigning causes or reasons, is called a science. Cosmology meets the requirements here indicated, and is therefore rightly called a science. For cosmology is a branch of human knowledge with definite field or scope; it sets forth, in an orderly, complete, and systematic way, the reasoned truths that belong to its field ; it gives, at each step of its progress in manifesting these truths, the reasons and proofs which justify its conclusions. Hence, cosmology is a science.

a) Cosmology is a science. The term science, taken absolutely, without the article, is a literal synonym for knowledge. It is a direct derivative from the Latin scientia, “knowledge,” and this word comes, in its turn, from the verb scire, “to know.” But the word science has long been employed to signify a precise type or kind of knowledge: it means knowledge of facts or truths together with their explanations, their justification, their how’s and why’s, their causes and reasons. Such is the meaning of the term science when taken generally or absolutely. Now, any branch or department of such knowledge, which has its own clear-cut limits or determinate scope ; which sets forth its data in an orderly, systematic, and complete manner ; which justifies each point in its orderly development by assigning causes or reasons, is called a science. Cosmology meets the requirements here indicated, and is therefore rightly called a science. For cosmology is a branch of human knowledge with definite field or scope; it sets forth, in an orderly, complete, and systematic way, the reasoned truths that belong to its field ; it gives, at each step of its progress in manifesting these truths, the reasons and proofs which justify its conclusions. Hence, cosmology is a science.

We may add that cosmology is a speculative or theoretical science. That is, it is a science which aims, first of all, at knowing truth, possessing it, enriching the mind with it, contemplating it. On this score, cosmology is contrasted with practical or normative sciences, which have as their first purpose the manifesting of truth to be acted upon. Ethics, for example, is a practical science; it is the science of right human conduct ; it is a science which indicates something to be done with what it makes known scientifically. But a speculative or theoretical science like cosmology informs the mind and enlarges culture without directly indicating any precise action or procedure to be undertaken in consequence of the knowledge it affords.

b) Cosmology is a philosophical science. In other words, it is a department of philosophy. Now, philosophy is the science of all things knowable by the human mind, considered in their deepest reasons and causes. Philosophy is a composite science ; its departments or sub-sciences (of which cosmology is one) must all have the truly philosophical character; that is, each philosophical science must seek out the last, the ultimate, the deepest causes and reasons for the data which it manifests and proves. A philosophical science is, therefore, clearly distinguished from the nonphilosophical sciences (among which the experimental sciences hold an imposing place) by the fact that its quest is for 1/timate causes and reasons, while theirs is for proximate or immediate causes and reasons. Cosmology pursues an ultimate quest; it seeks to know the last how’s and why’s, the deepest causes and reasons that can be discovered for the data with which it

b) Cosmology is a philosophical science. In other words, it is a department of philosophy. Now, philosophy is the science of all things knowable by the human mind, considered in their deepest reasons and causes. Philosophy is a composite science ; its departments or sub-sciences (of which cosmology is one) must all have the truly philosophical character; that is, each philosophical science must seek out the last, the ultimate, the deepest causes and reasons for the data which it manifests and proves. A philosophical science is, therefore, clearly distinguished from the nonphilosophical sciences (among which the experimental sciences hold an imposing place) by the fact that its quest is for 1/timate causes and reasons, while theirs is for proximate or immediate causes and reasons. Cosmology pursues an ultimate quest; it seeks to know the last how’s and why’s, the deepest causes and reasons that can be discovered for the data with which it deals. Cosmology is, therefore, justly called a philosophical science.

But cosmology, a truly philosophical science, is not, strictly speaking, a metaphysical science. It belongs to philosophical physics, not to metaphysics. For metaphysics is the philosophical science of non-material real being, whereas cosmology is the philosophical science of material real being. Still, there are many writers and teachers who follow Christian Wolff (1679-1755) in making metaphysics a synonym for real philosophy, that is, for the philosophy of things or reality, as distinct from the philosophy of thought (Logic) and the philosophy of moral conduct (Ethics). These authorities make a convenient division of metaphysics into general metaphysics,—which treats of being or reality in itself and in its most general aspects,—and special metaphysics,—which treats of fundamental classifications of reality, viz., God, man, and the bodily world. Thus, the Wolffian division of philosophy stands as follows:

I. Mental Philosophy or Logic : Logic | Criteriology or Epistemology

II. Real Philosophy or Metaphysics : General Metaphysics or Ontology | Special Metaphysics (Theodicy, Psychology, Cosmology)

III. Moral Philosophy or Ethics : General Ethics | Special Ethics

Now, however convenient this plan may be for teachers and pupils,—and we are not concerned here to dispute its eminently practical character,—it is hardly to be called scientific. A strictly just assignment of departments would limit metaphysics to the field of non-material real being, that is, to the field of being considered in itself, as it is in the mind, and as it substantially exists in God and spiritual creatures. Thus, metaphysics would include ontology, criteriology, and theodicy. To philosophical physics would fall cosmology and psychology. For psychology, the science of life and of living bodies, is, inasmuch as it studies bodies, a department of cosmology. True, human life comes from a spiritual life-principle, a non-material real being ; and so it seems that the section of psychology which studies the human soul should be assigned to metaphysics. Still, man is a bodily composite, and psychology studies the spiritual soul and its faculties in and through bodily and material manifestations. Thus it appears just to assign psychology outright to the realm of philosophical physics or natural philosophy. In our present study we do not insist upon regarding psychology as a chapter or department of cosmology ; we follow the fashion which gives to psychology its own place as a distinct philosophical (but not metaphysical) science. In cosmology we study bodies as such, without reference to their character as living or non-living. The point we stress with special and repeated emphasis is that cosmology is a physical, and not a metaphysical, philosophical science.

Another important point : cosmology is philosophical physics, not experimental or laboratorian physics. The cosmologist takes the established findings of the physicist,—that is, the experimentalist,—and seeks to discover in these the larger meanings and ampler truths which the application of philosophical certainties may manifest. The cosmologist must also perform the occasional stern duty of pointing out to the experimentalist the mistaken character of theories which come into conflict with truths philsophically known and unshakably true. But the cosmologist does not invade the laboratory on his own account, nor is he greatly tempted to do so. The laboratorian, on the other hand, is almost inevitably drawn beyond the frontiers of his own proper field into the domain of philosophy. The physicist can hardly help playing the philosopher. For his quest of explanations,—an eager, sincere, enlightened, and wholly admirable search,— runs quickly through the realm of manifest sensible data, and leads temptingly on into the outer, nonsensible region where all final reasons and explanations must ultimately be sought. No explanation is ever entirely positivistic and sensistic. No theory, however bound up with material and testable things, is itself ultimately and completely testable and material. Back of every theory and of every explanation are certain fundamental truths which are self-evident and not subject to experiment,—truths, such as the existence of the investigator, the reliability of his powers, his capacity for knowledge, and the fact that the world he investigates cannot involve in itself an absolute contradiction. Now, while the physicist is compelled, by his rational human constitution, to accept these and other non-material and philosophical findings, and to recur to them, at least implicitly, in framing his theories, the cosmologist is under no compulsion whatever to accept, or even to be deeply concerned about, the continual new theories (so often quickly proved erroneous) of the laboratorian. Indeed, physical science, in spite of marvellous advances and most valuable achievements, is today in a general condition of instability and uncertainty. We may still say what Sir Arthur Eddington said, a few years since, in his Gifford Lectures: that on the outside of the scientific edifice there should be placed a large placard reading, “No Admittance Except on Business—Structural Alterations in Progress.” Hence the cosmologist is not to be contemned as a reactionary, a fogy, a standpatter, a wistful worshipper of the faded past, if he refuses to warp his philosophy to fit the latest theories of the laboratorian. The cosmologist needs the scientist and works with what the scientist furnishes him; but only with the established findings of the scientist, the certainly known facts. He does not work with the probabilities proposed by the laboratorian, nor is he concerned with the quickly cooked-up philosophy which the laboratorian serves with his dish of probabilities. The cosmologist is not a mere trimmer, an adjuster, a fitter. No, he is a philosopher, and this means that he has a body of known, proved, and indisputable principles. He may not have a finished philosophical edifice, but he has at least some sturdy and unshakable framework for building the edifice. Physical science may bring to light data which will indicate an annex to the cosmological building, or an unexpected cornice or cupola; it will never bring to the scholastic cosmologist an utter change of location or of plans.

There is a point where laboratorian physics and cosmology meet and even overlap. Rather, there is a series of such points, an irregular and intricate frontier. Hence it is not easy to determine, and to express in a few terse words, the distinction which indicates where the physicist should stop and the cosmologist begin. But the difficulty of establishing a clear line of demarcation is no reason for denying its existence or utility, or, as the current fashion is, for ignoring it altogether. In general, it can be said that the physicist deals properly with individual and material data and seeks for these a unifying and organizing explanation that may be called proximate or immediate; the cosmologist deals with material data in a more general or universal manner than the physicist, and seeks for these data an explanation that is ultimate or root-deep.

c) Cosmology is the philosophical science of natural bodily being. A natural bodily being, or a nat- ural body, or a physical body, is a body that exists or can exist (that is, it is thought of as existing) in the world of realities around us. It is a body that can be sensed. Contrasted with a natural body is a mathematical body, that is, bodily extension or quantity considered as three-dimensional-bulk, without reference to its sensible character or to the qualities which are necessarily associated with bodies that can be seen or felt or handled or depicted in fancy. The bodily objects we see around us are natural or physical bodies. Even such as are artificial (like a house or an automobile) are only combinations or modifications of natural bodily substances, and are, at Icast equivalently for our present consideration, to be classed as natural or physical bodies. The material universe itself, viewed as a single bodily thing, is a natural or physical body. And each individual thing in the bodily universe,—each tree, each man, each stone, each weed ; nay, each molecule, each atom, each electron,— is a natural or physical body. But the bodily quantity dealt with abstractly in mathematical problems is a mathematical body. A block of stone in the shape of a cube with edges two feet long is a physical or natural body. But eight cubic feet is a mathematical body.

Of any bodily thing, the mathematician asks, “What is its content in terms of abstract units of measurement? How big is it? How long; how wide; how thick?” Of an existing (or existible body), the physicist asks, “What is its actual and immediate constitution? What elemental bodies, what parts or bodily constituents, make it up?” The query of the cosmologist is, “What makes this body a body? What is its ultimate constitution as an existing or existible corporeal substance?” Of a gallon of water, the mathematician says it consists of 231 cubic inches; the physicist says it is made of hydrogen and oxygen, elements which may be reduced to atomic and subatomic parts; the cosmologist says it is a substance constituted by the union of two substantial co-principles, viz., primary matter and substantial form. Cosmology deals with the world of natural bodies and employs reason to interpret the deepest-lying facts discoverable in the actual experience of men with the material universe in which they live and of which they are a part. Mathematics, or, more precisely, the philosophy of mathematics, uses reason to interpret the properties and relationships of quantities as such. Of course, cosmology presupposes fundamental mathematics, even as it presupposes fundamental physics. Cosmology cannot discharge its function unless it rest upon a basis of mathematical philosophy and of physics, nor can a treatise in cosmology appeal to a mind wholly uninstructed in elementary physics and mathematics. Therefore, a textbook in cosmology must borrow something from the philosophy of mathematics, and must recognize the physics available to the commonest human experi- ence and such physical facts as are definitely established by laboratorian science. Such a textbook will inevitably presuppose physical data, and will inevitably take up the consideration of quantity, extension, number, and certain quantity-relationships. Nevertheless, despite this alignment with mathematics and physical science, cosmology has its own specific character as the philosophical science of natural bodies. This point will be made more clear in the explanation of the object of cosmology, which now follows.

3. OBJECT

A science has a twofold object, one material, one formal. The material object of a science is what is usually called its ‘subject matter”; it is the thing with which the science deals; it is the field in which the science works. The formal object of a science is the precise end and aim which the science has in dealing with its material object. The material object of cosmology is the bodily world, or simply bodies. The formal object of cosmology is discerned in the fact that cosmology studies bodies as such (not this or that special kind of bodies) and seeks the ultimate explanation of them.

Our definition of cosmology indicates the material object of this science in the phrase, “the science of natural bodily being.” It indicates the formal object of cosmology in the phrase, “the philosophical science.”

Manifestly, sciences are distinguished, one from another, by their objects. Two sciences that are not in the same general field (such, for example, as the science of anatomy and of algebra) are distinguished by this fact ; that is, they are distinguished and known as different sciences by their respective material objects. But it often happens that several, and even many, sciences are in the same general field, and thus they all have the same material object. Such sciences are distinguished, one from another,—that is, they are seen in their proper place and character, and kept from overlapping,—by their respective formal objects. Thus, cosmology, inasmuch as it deals with bodily being, is at one with all the experimental sciences ; it is not marked off from these, and assigned its own proper scope, by its material object. But cosmology is distinguished from every other science by its own formal object. For, of all the sciences that deal with bodies, cosmology alone deals with all bodies (that is, with bodies as such), seeks to establish their ultimate constitution, and makes known the deepest roots of their observed activities. The other sciences that deal with natural bodily being (that is, the physical sciences) have, each in its respective way, certain kinds of bodies in their purview, or they seek for immediate and proximate explanations of bodies and bodily activity. Cosmology alone levels distinctions among bodies and traces out the ultimate explanation of the material universe. Therefore, cos- mology is a science distinct from every other science. It is so distinct because of its formal object.

4. IMPORTANCE

Philosophy has been described, in a somewhat grandiose fashion, as “man’s ultimate interpretation of the universe of knowable things.” Now, it is surely a matter of basic importance to the philosopher to know all he can about the most obvious part of that universe, that is to say, about the bodily world in which he lives, observes, and experiences; about the material universe which furnishes him the first beginnings of all his knowledge. And philosophers from the earliest times,—from the first Greek cosmogonists, and indeed from the first religion-philosophers of the ancient orient,—have recognized the importance, and even the necessity, of having some philosophy of nature, that is, of having cosmological knowledge.

Before Aristotle (4 century B. c.) the Ionians, the Pythagoreans, the Eleatics, and other schools of philosophers, worked out theories about the ultimate constitution of matter and the nature of the bodily world; at all events, they tried to do so, but they failed to get back to the truly ultimate roots of bodily reality. Aristotle succeeded where his predecessors failed. Maritain says that Aristotle’s philosophical physics (or cosmology) lays down the foundations and principles of every true philosophy of nature.

And even though the same author says that Aristotle’s experimental physics is “a magnificent intellectual construction totally ruined by mistakes of facts,” we must not fail to give due recognition to the truth that Aristotle did undertake physical science on the experimental side and, despite mistakes, developed it amazingly. Father Tilmann Pesch, S.J., says of him that he made the fullest use of observation and experiment and did all that any man of his times could do, without the service of the special instruments and scientific equipment which only later days have made available.

St. Albert the Great (d. 1280) and his illustrious pupil, St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), as well as Roger Bacon (1214-1292), elaborated the findings of Aristotle with such physical means as their times afforded. After Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam (d. 1626), the natural sciences were developed with great rapidity. In our own day they engage the intense interest of so many able minds that they have, to some extent, outstripped the development of philosophy, which should keep pace with, and offer ultimate explanations of, their established findings. Physical science offers to the cosmologist an orderly field for his labors; it affords him endless items to explain, and it offers him continuously new checks, illustrations, and confirmations of his right conclusions. Yet modern physical science has sometimes about it a kind of feverish self-sufficiency which im- pels the scientist to turn too quickly into a philosopher, and invites the proclamation of general theories upon the first apparent results of observation and experiment. And, since observation and experiment are continually confronting new facts, and often upsetting facts, the scientist-philosopher is frequently compelled to reverse himself and propound new and emended theories. Sane cosmology must, therefore, move very slowly; it must make perfectly sure that scientific conclusions are truly scientific, and not merely scientistic, before it adopts them and applies them to its uses. Hence, cosmology, while acknowledging its debt to physical science, must recognize its own proper work of crowning with rounded perfection the work of the scientist, and so must steadily refuse to become excited with the temper or the tempo of the current age. It must never be stampeded into the adopting of theories which, however attractive, are not incontestably justified and proved by facts. Yet the importance of cosmology is not lessened, but is rather emphasized, by this careful procedure. It is the science of ultimate truth in the domain of bodily reality, and ultimate truth is not established swiftly or by popular acclaim. Its very deliberation and caution is a strong recommendation of cosmology to the sound and scholarly mind.

Following the eminent cosmologist, Father H. Schaaf, S.J., we may mention the following points as indicative of the fundamental importance of cosmology:

1. Cosmology is a most interesting study, and it answers our natural desire to know all that can be known about the universe in which we live.

2. Cosmology is the science of that bodily world which is the proximate object of the human mind; as such, this science is of basic importance to students of all branches of philosophy.

3. Cosmology brings a crowning perfection to the physical sciences, which, without the ultimate interpretation of philosophy, must ever be partial, piecemeal, and fragmentary.

4. Cosmology is of inestimable value to the student of theodicy or natural theology. It shows, on the one hand, that God is not to be identified with the bodily world, and, on the other hand, it indicates the existence and boundless perfections of God as manifested in the being, the order, the harmony, and the government of the material world.

5. DIVISION

The ultimate questions that may be asked about the bodily universe are three: What, in last analysis, is a body? Whence, in the ultimate view, do bodies come? Whither do bodies, by their connatural activities, tend?

In accordance with the suggestion of these three fundamental questions, we frame our plan for the present treatise. We shall study the universe of bodies in its nature, its origin, its tendency. These points are to be discussed in the following Books and Chapters:

This Book undertakes a study of the nature of bodily being. It discusses the general characteristics of natural bodies, and takes up the questions of quantity and bodily activity. Then the Book sets forth the Scholastic doctrine on the ultimate constitution of matter or bodily being, and offers a refutation of the more notable of opposed philosophies. The Book is divided into two Chapters: