Creation Stories
Humanity’s First Reckoning with Physical Reality
Since time immemorial, man has wondered why the world exists. Consider, for a moment, the inner life of an early hominin wandering through the Pleistocene. Despite being well adapted for the harsh Ice Age environment, he no doubt would be utterly confounded by the myriad phenomena surrounding him.
The rising of the sun, a sudden flash of light; prior to the enlightenment of modern science, man could only gawk at these transient wonders.
At this time, homo sapien’s innate curiosity was only satiated by the musings of the collective imagination. Practically all ancient cultures have professed occult knowledge of the universe’s beginning. In the guise of narratives passed down through the generations, an explanation was presented for how everything in the world came to be. The causes behind physical phenomena were attributed to gods or spirits who fashioned the world according to their divine whim.
But what does any of this have to do with physics? The scientific revolution has seemingly dispelled, to a dark corner, all the excesses and absurdities of premodern superstition.
Creation stories, nevertheless, give testimony to an important cognitive development for the human species: the recognition of nature as an interconnected totality.
