Thomas Nail speaks on "The Birth of Order From Chaos: Perspectives from Comparative World Mythology"

Event Description:

What is Chaos? In English, we use it to mean “disorder,” but a deep history of this word reveals a completely different meaning intelligible only from an immanent worldview. All the oldest native language cosmogonic texts around the world, and over thousands of years, say the cosmos was born from chaos. Without direct contact between cultures, how was this possible? Why was this their shared conclusion? When and why did some humans begin to reject this account? This lecture presents a summary of my research on these questions and others from my latest two unpublished books, The Birth of Chaos and The Birth of Order. The presentation lays out the common features of the world’s oldest recorded cosmogonies and argues that they offer us a compelling movement-oriented alternative to post Axial-Age world views. Thomas Nail is a Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Denver and author of numerous books, including The Figure of the Migrant, Theory of the Border, Theory of the Earth, Marx in Motion, The Philosophy of Movement, Lucretius I, II, III,and Being and Motion. His research focuses on the philosophy of movement. The event is sponsored by the Philosophy Department.