Cosmogony (from the Greek, kosmos, world, and gone, generation), is a theory of the origin or formation of the universe. Such theories may be comprehended under three classes: 1. The first represents the world as eternal, in form as well as substance. 2. The matter of the world is eternal, but not its form. 3. The matter and form of the universe is ascribed to the direct agency of a spiritual cause; the world had a beginning, and shall have an end.
Aristotle appears to have embraced the first theory; but the theory which considers the matter of the universe eternal, but not its form, was the prevailing one among the ancients, who, starting from the principle that nothing could be made out of nothing, could not admit the creation of matter, yet did not believe that the world had been always in its present state. The prior state of the world, subject to a constant succession of uncertain movements which chance afterwards made regular, they called chaos. The Phoenicians, Babylonians, and also Egyptians, seem to have adhered to this theory. One form of this theory is the atomic theory, as taught by Leucippus, Epicurus, and Lucretius. According to it atoms or indivisible particles existed from eternity, moving at hazard, and producing, by their constant meeting, a variety of substances. After having given rise to an immense variety of combinations they produced the present organization of bodies. The third theory of cosmogony makes God, or some deity, the Creator of the world out of nothing. This is an ancient and widely-spread theory, and is that taught in the book of Genesis. Anaxagoras was the first among the Greeks who taught that God created the universe from nothing. Around 1900 the most popular theory for the origin of the universe was the nebular hypothesis, which was strikingly similar to the later big bang theory propagated at the end of the 20th century. Research Cosmogony
The term Wild West refers to the frontier society of 19th-century USA. Around the masculine, saloon-bar world of the gold rushes and the cowboy cattle-drives of Texas, California, and the largely unsettled western territories there early developed a mythology. Bandits such as Billy the Kid and Jesse James were romanticised, as were General Custer and his 'last stand'. An early perpetrator of the myth was Edward Z. C. Judson, who, under the pseudonym Ned Buntline, wrote penny (dime) novels romanticising the exploits of his friend W. F. Cody as 'Buffalo Bill'. The latter in turn organised 'Wild West Shows' from 1883 onwards, which included the appearance of the Indian Chief Sitting Bull and which travelled as far afield as Europe.
There is no evidence that the West was much less law-abiding than the rest of the USA. Nonetheless, the 'Wild West' was no purposeless myth; it suggested an arena in which individuals struggled to make order out of chaos and to progress through individual effort and moral worth. The North American continent had had a succession of 'Wests', as its frontiers receded, and that known as the Wild West was the last. It disappeared after 1890, with the end of Indian hostilities, the decline of the long-distance cattle drives, the building of the railways, and the steady growth of population. Research Wild West
Alfonso IV (Alfonso The Monk) was king of Leon and Asturias (Spain). He died in 933. Known as Alfonso The Monk because he abdicated to become a monk, he tried to reclaim his throne but chaos ensued. Research Alfonso IV
Anaxagoras was an Ionian philosopher. He was born in 488 BC at Clazomense and died in 428 BC. When only about twenty years of age he settled at Athens, and soon gained a high reputation, and gathered round him a circle of renowned pupils, including Pericles, Euripides, Socrates, etc. At the age of fifty he was publicly charged with impiety and condemned to death, but the sentence was commuted to perpetual banishment. Thereupon he went to Lampsacus, where he died. Anaxagoras belonged to the atomic school of Ionic philosophers. He held that there was an infinite number of different kinds of elementary atoms, and that these, in themselves motionless and originally existing in a state of chaos, were put in motion by an eternal, immaterial, spiritual, elementary being, Nous (Intelligence), from which motion the world was produced. The stars were, according to him, of earthy materials; the sun a glowing mass, about as large as the Peloponnesus;
the earth was flat; the moon a dark, inhabitable body, receiving its light from the sun; the comets wandering stars. Research Anaxagoras
Nicholas II was the last Czar of Russia from 1894 to 1917. He was born in 1868 and died in 1918. He was a great-grandson of Nicholas I. In 1894 he formalised an alliance with France, but his Far Eastern ambitions led to disaster with the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 to 1905 which played an important part in causing the Revolution of 1905. Although he won support for taking Russia into the Great War against Germany in 1914, mismanagement of the war and governmental chaos at home led to his abdication in 1917 and the Russian Revolution. Imprisoned, he was murdered in 1918 by Bolsheviks who feared a counter-revolution. Research Nicholas II
Eros was the Greek god of sexual love (traditionally of homosexual relationships between older men and youths). By some accounts Eros was born from Chaos, in other accounts that he was the son of Aphrodite and her lover Ares. Eros developed in form through time, being a god of fertility and later with the Romans, in the form of Cupid, of more gentle romantic love Research Eros
Gaea (also spelled Gaia and Ge) was a Greek goddess of the earth. She was one of the first two beings to emerge from Chaos, she formed the Earth and together with Ouranos, the Sky, gave birth to children which were the rivers, plains, trees and other features of earth. Research Gaea
In Shinto mythology, Izanagi and Izanami are the central deities in the creation myth. They were descended from seven pairs of brothers and sisters who had appeared after heaven and earth had separated out of chaos. A mighty bridge floated between the heavens and the primeval oceans; standing on this,
Izanagi and Izanami stirred the waters below with a jewelled spear to form the first land mass. Their union gave birth to the islands of Japan and to various deities. In giving birth to the fire-god Kagutsuchi (or Homusubi), however, Izanami was fatally burnt and descended to the land of darkness, Yomi. When
Izanagi ventured into the underworld to seek his dead spouse, he found her alive but imprisoned in a decomposing body. Fleeing, Izanagi bathed in the sea to purify himself and in doing so gave birth to a number of deities, among them Amaterasu, the sun goddess, from his left eye, the moon-god Tsukumi from his right eye, and the storm god Susanowo from his nostrils. In Shinto religion, the purification practised in the harai ceremony commemorates
Izanagi's submersion in water. Research Izanagi
Abbreviations
Research Cosmogony
