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Module COSMOLOGY IN ANTIQUITY

Module code: GC638
Credits: 10
Semester: 2
Department: ANCIENT CLASSICS
International: No
Overview Overview
 

The Greek word 'kosmos' has a primary sense of ‘order’, hence it is the order and arrangement of the universe as a whole that cosmology engages with. Add to this the Greek word 'logos' (‘reason’) and we get ‘cosmology’, with two fundamental meanings: either ‘a reasoned account of the order of the universe’ or ‘the study of the reason or mind behind the order of the universe’. Thus cosmology encompasses everything in the universe, and attempts to explain the world from its creation to its destruction, the origins of life, the nature of the gods, and especially the place of humans within the great world system. This module surveys the development of cosmological ideas in Antiquity, considering, in turn, the Babylonian Epic of Creation (Enuma Elish), middle-eastern influences on Greek thought in Hesiod’s Theogony, the development of ‘scientific’ cosmology in the Presocratic philosophers, Plato’s creationist reply to the Presocratic physicists in the Timaeus, and finally the development of Stoic creationist teleology in Book Two of Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods.

Open Learning Outcomes
 
Open Teaching & Learning methods
 
Open Assessment
 
Open Autumn Supplementals/Resits
 
Open Pre-Requisites
 
Open Co-Requisites
 
Open Timetable
 
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