Heraclitus argued there was a single divine law of the universe, which rules and guides the cosmos. This is the Logos. He said that the logos both underlies and governs change. Heraclitus compares the logos to fire an element that is always changing yet always the same. For example he said, "The sun is new each day."(Curd Pg. 38 88) His view was that "all things are derived from a single arche or starting point and that as now constituted all things are organized within a single world structure or Kosmos". (5.17 Robinson) In other words all things are one. In Heraclitean cosmology the components turn into one another according to certain rules. The struggle between the opposites will always be evenly balanced, gains in one region by one force being always simultaneously offset by equal gains elsewhere by the opposed force. Some examples would be "Fire lives the death of earth and air lives the death of fire, water lives the death of air, earth that of water." (Maximus of Tyre 41.4) Another example would be "the changes of fire: first sea, and of sea half is earth, half fiery thunderb...
Roman and Greek mythology are filled with multiple interpretations of how the creator, be it the gods or nature, contributed to the birth of the world. These stories draw the backgrounds of the gods and goddesses that govern much of classical mythology. Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Hesiod’s Theogony are two pieces of work that account for how our universe came to be. A comparison of Theogony with Metamorphoses reveals that Hesiod’s creation story portrays the deities as omnipresent, powerful role whose actions triggered the beginning of the universe whereas in Metamorphoses, the deities do not play a significant role; rather the humans are center of the creation. The similarities and differences are evident in the construction of the universe, ages of man, and the creation of men and women on earth.
All these contradicting sides of Heracles makes him a more interesting figure in ancient texts but they also create quite confusion. Why after all the evil, horrid things he did would the gods make him immortal? Heracles truly is a paradox.
With the invention of newer technology, scholars were able to make closer observations for how different concepts of the science worked. With these scientific breakthroughs scholars and philosophers, who were mainly Christian, of this time of the Scientific Revolution made a pathway for a more efficient way of life. Natural Philosophy was used in the early 1500s by Enlightenment thinkers. It can be defined as the “study of the nature of the universe, its purpose, and how it functioned” (McKay, 504) All belief about the universe and its structure was based on Aristotle’s hypothesis. He believed the Earth was the center of the universe. Though he worked for Christian belief, natural philosophy in the early 1500s was based off of Aristotle’s model of the universe and his ideas of the planetary motion. This hypothesis was the center of natural philosophy until the Copernican Theory came into discovery. Aristotle believed that the world was flawed and that the planets in the universe represented the heavenly bodies. His theory was that there were ten spheres in the universe: water, air, fire, the moon, the sun, and the five planets. Aristotle declared that beyond the tenth sphere was heaven and this model was proved by Christian theologists to fit into the beliefs of Christians. The Christians
“Greek Creation” is one creational myth, and is one story of how the universe was created. “ Greek Creation” tells of a line of sons that overthrew their fathers for power. Cronus overthrew Uranus (Heaven) with the help of his mother
It is ironic that the entity in existence was the being called Chaos, for although it's Greek translation is Chasm, or emptiness, I believe that chaos and disorder will be their fate if the gods continue this eternal cycle of increasing self destructive behavior. All of this, however, was created as through the beliefs and imagination of Hesiod. Historians and mythologists still can not concretely separate, in his two stories, the Theogony and the Works and Days, which parts were of his imagination and which were not; it is therefore difficult to determine what the author's overall message was to the readers. It is possible that Hesiod wrote these stories in order to discredit the gods with gossip of their alleged human-like violence and sexual transgressions.
Epicurean's physics was atomistic; meaning that the entire universe merely consisted of atoms and the space or void in which the atoms floated, collided, and whirled about. Lucretius wrote that 'not all bodily matter is tightly packed /by nature's law, for there's a void in things. By void I mean vacant and empty space, /something you cannot touch'; (Lucretius 456). For if the universe were comprised of only matter, then nothing would ever move, because it is the nature of matter to remain immobile until acted upon by an outside force. Without the open space, or void, nothing could have been made or brought to life. Epicur...
Ever wonder why the sun shines in the day and not at night or how night and day even came to be? It happened many, many years ago. Two young gods were trying to decide how to make the world. One wanted it to be square. The other wanted it to be a triangle. They could not seem to agree on anything at all. The young gods were twins, created at the exact same time. One was made by a ball of light that collided with a lone tree on a meteor she was named Lumina. Lumina means light in Romanian, pretty fitting for a god of light! The other god was created when a pitch-black meteor broke through a black hole; he was called Dorcha, which means dark in Irish. These two gods were completely different and could never see eye to eye.
In addition, the nature of the universe can be also explained when Aquinas mentions that “the property, that the things signified by the words have themselves also a signification.”
In the beginning, the universe was nothing but a formless state. The empty space was completely absent of the essence of life with the exception of the two gods that existed. The first god was Apsu, which represents “sweet water” and serves as the begetter in the relationship. His wife, Tiamat,
The universe began with nothing more than a chaotic swirl of undifferentiated water. One day, for no reason, the swirl split and created a god and a goddess out of two distinctly different bodies of water. The fresh water god Aspu(m) and the salt water goddess Tiamat(f) formed a union and gave birth to the younger gods, who were housed inside Tiamat’s(f) body.
Everything on the planet, be it dead or alive, will go through changes. The changes that each being must make or undergo could be good, bad, or somewhere in between the two. An ancient Roman author known as Ovid wrote an epic called Metamorphoses that consists of small stories linked together by a larger narrative and all of the stories deal with change in one way or another. In Ovid’s stories, the changes that the characters undertake are often detrimental because the characters are usually changed against their will, the change is commonly done as a punishment, and the changes typically force the characters away from their homeland and all the people they love.
... yet present in all things […] something underlying the change and transformation of all beings, the spontaneous process regulating the natural cycle of the universe” (3).
In Hesiod’s Theogony , Chaos was the beginning. Next came Gaia, the earth, who gave birth to Ouranos, the sky. Gaia and Ouranos coupled and produced the Titans, the Cyclopes’, and the Hecatonchires. All the products of Gaia and Ouranos are thought to be agents of Chaos. Ouranos, knowing his children were monsters, trapped them in the womb of the earth. Gaia upset with Ouranos, and in pain, asked her children to help overthrow their father. The youngest Titan, Cronus, obeyed his mother and castrated his father from inside the womb. Cronus then threw Ouranos’ dismembered privates across the earth and they landed in the sea. Seafoam appeared where they landed and from the foam rose a full-grown woman: Aphrodite. She is the goddess of beauty,
In the myth that is introduced the existence of the world is divided into two epochs, the Age of Kronos and the Age of Zeus. As the myth goes the world is endowed with motion, but alone it cannot move eternally.
The cosmological views of the Late Middle Ages revolved around the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic theory. This theory was adapted by the Church to explain the universe, as a result, many people believed the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic theory was perfect because the pope believed it, and he was infallible. The Church took many ideas from the Bible. One example would be that they believed that the universe was six thousand years old. Another major idea was that the universe was made up of a series of concentric spheres with a motionless earth at the center. Planets, commonly referred to as “heavenly bodies”, were made up of crystalline substance and moved in circular orbits. Stars are attached to these planets and are “pushed by angels”.