This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 1 of the author’s book PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. That chapter is titled “Gaia, Goddess, Cosmogenesis, and the Wheel of the Year”, wherein the three qualities of Goddess have been associated with three qualities of Cosmogenesis.
Cosmogenesis, in brief, is the ongoing creative activity of the Universe, the unfolding of the Universe – referring to the form producing dynamics of the Cosmological Unfolding. Generally it refers to large-scale structures such as galaxies and stars, but according to cosmologist Brian Swimme and geologian Thomas Berry a more inclusive understanding is justified:
“What we observe is that forms and structures in the universe arise, evolve in interactions, achieve stable if nonequlibrium processes, and then decay and disintegrate. The Cosmogenetic Principle simply states that the evolutionary dynamics involved in building the structures that appear in our own region of space-time permeate the universe as well.[1]”
Certainly in their discussion of the three dynamics, Swimme and Berry cover the full gamut of creative manifestation – from particles to biological life to stars. They later describe how the three biological shaping powers of mutation, natural selection and niche creation “are further illustrations of the root creativity of the universe” that they have identified with the Cosmogenetic Principle.[2] They consider their articulations of the meanings associated with these dynamics as a beginning, “a prologue for later treatments as our direct experience of the universe’s development extends throughout space and time.”[3]
In the background to this Cosmogenetic Principle, is a principle called the Cosmological Principle defined by Einstein, and it has been essential for the entire Western scientific research enterprise on the planet today. That principle states that every point in the Universe is the same as every other point[4] – basically that hydrogen in this part of the cosmos can be assumed to be the same as hydrogen in some other part of the cosmos. This is not something that can be proved but it is assumed as a reasonable principle. Swimme and Berry note that this foundational principle of cosmology came out of a context early this century, that believed we lived in a static cosmos – a context that was ignorant of the evolution of the Universe as a whole. Now that science recognizes that we live in a cosmogenesis, a developing evolutionary reality, which appears to have had a thirteen point seven billion year story, that principle of Einstein’s is being extended to the Cosmogenetic Principle:
“Even though our knowledge of morphogenesis and cosmogenesis is in its infancy, we are assuming that the heightened scientific investigation of these dynamics will make the cosmogenetic perspective entirely ordinary in the next centuries.[5] ”
This Cosmogenetic Principle states not only that every point in the universe is the same as every other point, but in addition, that the dynamics of evolution are the same at every point in the Universe. What that means, amongst many other things, is that the same Creative principle that gives birth to the Universe, pervades every drop of it with the same creative potency – that the Centre of the Universe is everywhere. Thus it is here as much as anywhere.
NOTES:
[1] Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story, p.67.
[2] Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story, p.132. I provide a description of these three biological shaping powers and my association of them with the Female Metaphor in Chapter 4.
[3] Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story, p.71.
[4] Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story, p.66.
[5] Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story, p.129.
REFERENCES:
Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Nebraska: iUniverse, 2005.
Swimme, Brian and Berry, Thomas. The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.