A Rational Cosmology: The Distinction Between Physics and Cosmology

Essay IV

The detailed study of cats and dogs is beyond cosmology (they are studied by biology), because there is the possibility that a given man, in a given setting, will never encounter cats or dogs. Cosmology can only say that cats and dogs are "entities."

But what is meant by "space," "time," "universe," "shape," "color," "light," "matter," "dimension," and numerous other commonly used terms, cannot be escaped in any environment. Every man will have need of using such terms to describe the world he observes, and the task of cosmology is to discover what such terms actually refer to!

Cosmology can be quite useful in identifying and discarding erroneous or unwarranted statements made by contemporary scientists, who venture outside their field of categorizing specific observations and phenomena into making generalizations of a metaphysical scope about the nature of some of the aforementioned terms.

It is perfectly within the scope of physics to discuss the behaviors of subatomic particles inaccessible to the unequipped eye, or to discover that the relationship "sound" is made manifest in wavelike phenomena. Physics, however, can never rationally venture to state that a particle is not an entity, or that a sound is not a relationship. That is the province of cosmology as a branch of philosophy.

To summarize: the specific-observational sciences can tell us the mechanisms involved inparticular entities, qualities, or relationships. They cannot, however, tell us whether or not something is an entity, a quality, or a relationship (or neither of the three, for that matter, as shall be seen in later examples). That is the province of cosmology.

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