Chaos and Order: How Philosophy

Chaos and Order: How Philosophy Got Started

Werner J. Krieglstein (2002) talks about chaos and order and how these two conditions have played on the thinking of mankind from his earliest days, as he realized he did not have the answers to the all things in the universe. Here, with the ancient contemplations of the universe around him, and the curiosity about man's own presence on earth as he gazes upward and sees the universe above him, the earth beneath him, and suddenly feels the need to explain his self in the presence of these more enormous aspects of heaven, earth, the moon and the sun. This is when philosophy began, although there is probably no way to say at exactly what moment and by whom it began; it is clear, and very well discussed by Krieglstein in Compassion: A New Philosophy of the Other (27-33).

Krieglstein introduces the Greek and Egyptian strategies for the creation of man and the universe and earth; and in introducing these ancient concepts, the ways in which the ancients went about creating stories to make sense of existence, is for the Egyptians, when they decided there was, out of the chaos of nothingness, a fluid snake-like intelligence, that took the shape of "something" other than man, and became the first God, Atum, who was simultaneously Ra (the sun God), and who created six other gods, before turning to the task of creating man.

The Greeks, took, looked around themselves and realized that they were in the midst of something much greater than themselves either individually or collectively. "Who could blame the Greeks when they preferred the light of reason to chaos? (Krieglstein 27)." So it began, at least as Krieglestein describes the and ancient Egyptians, that at least those two groups began philosophizing about making order from chaos; which is what the psyche of mankind needs, to make sense of that which is unknown to him. This is why Krieglestein mentions that chaos occupied a place in the minds of the ancients (27). It is the nature of ratio (reason), for mankind to attempt to make sense of chaos, to convert chaos to order, to harness the energy of chaos - because the ancients realized, too, that there was an energy in chaos - and to convert that energy to ratio (28-29).

It is no surprise, then, that this need to make reason or order from chaos lead not just philosophy, but to science too (29). History shows the continual efforts, through science, make ratio of chaos (29). Krieglestein talks about Descarte's philosophy of rationalism, and Kant's realm of necessity (29). Each of these men, like the ancients, was consumed with the need to make sense out of that which defied logic, in science and in philosophy.

The Newtonian world view left its mark on sociology and psychology. Marxist sociology declared the human being a product of historical forces, while capitalism put more emphasis on the chaotic twists and turns of the marketplace to plot the way of the individual in history (28).'

Man's efforts make sense from chaos has not ceased since the earliest days of man. This goes back as far as Gilgamesh, the ancient epic, that was written on tablets, and is believed to be about 2000 years BC. Like the ancient Greeks, Egyptians and into modernity, the ancients who scrolled the epic of Gilgamesh sought to make sense of chaos, and to provide some explanation, in the language of the moment, that the people of the moment could understand (Gallery Kovacs 1989). In the epic of Gilgamesh, there is an explanation of how the universe and man was created, and the story acknowledges that there is that which exists that is greater than mankind (Gallery Kovacs 1989).

Science, Krieglestein says, attempts to explain chaos, and to the extent it cannot, it then ignores it (30). However, science is using the language it has in this moment, to explain chaos. Like the philosophers, Descarte and Kant, science relies upon its investigation in much the same was the philosophers rely upon nature and rationalism to convert chaos to order. That it is the nature, if not the universe, of mankind to gravitate towards order. This is man's obsession with chaos, to turn it into order.

One of the most recognized names in the history of philosophy is Plato. Dante Germino, Eric Voegelin (2000) shed some light on Plato's obsession with chaos and order, or philosophy, writing, "The motives that induced the young man of a well-connected family not to pursue his natural career in the politics of Athens but insteadto become a philosopher, the founder of a school, anda man of letters, are revealedby Plato himself through an auto biographical passage of the Seventh Letter (324b-326b), written about 353, when he was in his seventies:

When I was young I felt like so many others: As soon as I become my own master, I thought, I would immediately enter public life. But my way was crossed by certain events in the affairs of the polis (Germino and Voegelin 58)."

Krieglestein moves mankind's philosophy and ratio into modernity with a discussion of mankind, who was created by God, whom, having been created, then goes on to create machines - the ultimate creator of order (30). Machines are the bookmark that maintain the order, freeing man to contemplate the next "order" of chaos, or to convert the energy of chaos into the next product of order.

It is no surprise, then, that man harnessed the ultimate tool of order, mathematics (31). With mathematics, mankind has been able to successfully bring about order from chaos on earth, and to finally venture out into the universe where there exists enough chaos to occupy mankind infinitely.