Wednesday, September 26, 2018

Cosmos and cosmic

Cosmos (noun) ― the universe seen as a well-ordered whole.
Cosmic (adjective) ― relating to the universe or cosmos, especially as distinct from the earth.
I ran into Shirvan in the lobby Monday evening, and he asked about the word "cosmos."  Is it the same as "universe"?  I had to think about it, but as best I could sort through what I knew of the word, they were pretty much the same.

I remember Cosmos, the best-selling science book by Carl Sagan from 1980, as being about the universe.  But do we have two words that mean exactly the same thing?
"The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be," says Carl Sagan at the beginning of the (four-minute) introduction to his 13-part television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.
I got the definitions above from Google.  Here's what Merriam-Webster adds:
"Cosmos often simply means universe, but the word is generally used to suggest an orderly or harmonious universe, as it was originally used by Pythagoras in the 6th century B.C."
I've read the book Cosmic Consciousness by Richard Maurice Bucke (1900) at least two or three times, as I posted in August.  The book's sub-title is A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind.  Now I'll have to think about how that kind of consciousness relates to the universe as distinct from the earth.  This use of the word "cosmic" is actually more metaphysical than scientific, according to Merriam-Webster, but this has been an interesting reflection on the cosmos and however it may ― or may not ― relate to cosmic consciousness.

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