2. Chaos. In a connected essay on space (Physica,
Book 4, Chs. 1-5) Aristotle suggests (208b 29), rather
lightly, that Hesiod's “Chaos” (χάος) was one of the
earliest (Greek) designations for space, or perhaps uni-
verse, and he also quotes line 116 of Hesiod's Theogony:
“First of all things was Chaos, and next broad-bosomed
Earth.” It is true that by etymology of the word Chaos,
and in Hesiod's own vision, Chaos does not actually
represent space as we know it today (Kirk and Raven,
pp. 27ff.), that is, space in a cosmologically articulated
universe. But chaos was destined, by future develop-
ments, to have a certain relation to space, and it is
this that Aristotle's suggestion is hinting at. In fact,
in many “creation myths,” beginning with Plato's
Timaeus, there is an initial phase of a “primordial
chaos,” in which there is no ready-made space as yet,
but only a space in the making, and the structure of
this space unfolds not by itself but conjointly with the
structure of matter, energy, and other physical attri-
butes. Greek natural philosophy in general knew about
this initial phase, and, when in a mood of historical
retrospection, viewed Hesiod's Chaos as an aspect of
it. Aristotle's suggestion expresses such a view, in such
a mood.
In present-day cosmology there is an obvious need
for such an initial phase whenever a model of the
universe, be it expanding or pulsating, has a so-called
“point origin,” that is, a time point at which the radius
R of the universe has the value O or nearly so (H.
Bondi, pp. 82ff.). Or the point origin may be the time
point of a “big squeeze” for all matter and energy,
in consequence of a “collapse” of a universe just pre-
ceding (Gamow, p. 29). In either case, the resulting
situation has been described by Arthur Eddington
(1882-1944) thus:
If the world began with a single quantum, the notions of
space and time would altogether fail to have a sensible
meaning before the original quantum had been divided into
a sufficient number of quanta. If this suggestion is correct,
the beginning of the world happened a little before the
beginning of space and time
(Lemaître, p. 17).
It must be stated though that there is a contemporary
version of evolutionary theory in which there is no
“point” origin, and a space is preexistent. It assumes
that evolution began with a primordial plasma, or
rather “ambiplasma” (H. Alfvén, pp. 66ff.), that is with
a huge mass of gas composed of various particles of
energy, matter, and antimatter, and filling a spherical
volume of cosmic dimensions. Such a plasma is un-
stable. At some stage in the past a breakup set in which
led to the formation of galaxies, and this was the true
beginning of creation (ibid.).
In the Timaeus Plato imagined that Space, or rather,
Place, was preexistent, together with Being and Be-
coming (52D), but that Time began when creation
began (38B). With this fancy Plato outdid himself.
Whatever the mode of creation, cosmologists agree
that there was an initial phase of “disorder,” that is,
mathematically, of so-called turbulence. Greek natural
philosophers knew this, in thought patterns of theirs,
fairly early, certainly since Anaxagoras of Clazomenae
(500-428 B.C.), and possibly since Anaximander of
Miletus (610-545 B.C.). As scientists sometimes do even
today, the Greek philosophers projected back this
primordial disorder as far as they could. This led them
to attribute it to Hesiod's Chaos, and hence the famed
“definition”:
chaos: rudis indigestaque moles
(chaos: a “rude” and “undigested” heap),
in
Metamorphoses 1, 7 of Ovid.
It has been noted long ago that Hesiod's Chaos, in
the light of later interpretations, brings to mind the
tohu wa bohu (“without form, and void”) of Genesis
1:2 and related biblical terms (see “Chaos” in Der
Kleine Pauly, Vol. I, column 1129). This is of impor
tance, because, more than any other general concep-
tion from general philosophy, our conception of space
is just as much a biblical heritage as it is a Greek one
(Jammer, Ch. 2; here the emphasis is on space in
theology).
