Kosmos (κόσμος) — “Order,” “ornament,” “universe.” The Greeks named the universe kosmos because they perceived it as ordered and beautiful, opposed to chaos. For the pre-Socratics, the kosmos has an arché that governs it. For the Stoics, the kosmos is a rational organism permeated by the divine logos (pneuma). The opposite is primordial chaos (khaos). Contemporary cosmology inherits this project of explaining the order of totality.


Glossary