Abstract

The notion of “cosmos” is tied to a multiplicity of metaphysical ideas which imply both ontological concepts and mythological narratives dating back to Egyptian and Mesopotamian myths as well as to the “YHWH” tradition of ancient Israel. As a discipline, cosmology is connected to Christian Wolff, who plotted it in his rationalist metaphysics. While in the wake of rationalist philosophy and its increasing reference to empirical methods, the ontological presuppositions of cosmology lost their convincing power; modern developments tied to the linguistic and cultural turn allowed for a new interplay between mythological cosmologies and their hermeneutic understanding. Hence, methodological intersectionality has turned cosmology into an issue of interest far beyond theology and the study of antiquity to both transcendental and phenomenological approaches, continental and analytic philosophies, reaching out even to astronomical physics.