The night sky is a primal wonder whose infinite nature spurs a longing to understand human existence. The realization that they are beneath a vastness and majesty beyond their personal experience impels people to attempt to know themselves and their place in all that there is. This is a religious impulse and is also the impulse behind cosmology.

From Astronomy to Cosmology

Cosmology is, however, a uniquely modern science of the history, structure, and dynamics of the universe. Although astronomy is a transliteration from the Greek, the word cosmology is a seventeenth-century coinage from an imaginary Greek term. It thus denotes a new, uniquely scientific way to deal with primal wonder about the night sky that was designed to replace the myths that represented primordial efforts to respond to that wonder.

The myths on which traditional societies were built were inspired by and speak to the origins of...