A Rational Cosmology: The Distinction Between Physics and Cosmology

The reason for cosmology's essential grounding in ontology is the fact that, before one can answer questions such as "What entities exist?", "What qualities exist?", and "What relationships exist?", one must first answer the questions: "What is an entity?", "What is a quality?", and "What is a relationship?"

This, of course, implies, that all true and objective science is in fact founded upon a rational ontology, metaphysics, and philosophy. Both philosophy and physics are sciences, but philosophy is a foundational science, and physics is a specific-observational science.

I use the term "specific-observational" as distinguished from "general-observational," which would be the basis for such sciences as philosophy and mathematics. There is no true science which does not have some kind of observation behind it, but this does not have to be observation under the narrow empiricist-positivist definition which equates observation with experimentation.

Physics (along with the other "natural" or specific-observational sciences) seeks to answer the question: "What are particular entities/qualities/relationships?" This therefore renders it dependent on specific, targeted observations of those entities/qualities/relationships.

Cosmology, on the other hand, is not derivative of physics, but rather far more fundamental, as it depends on general, not specific, observations. It asks: "What entities/qualities/relationships exist universally, and are ubiquitously observable?"

The detailed study of cats and dogs is beyond cosmology (they are studied by biology), because there is the possibility that a given man, in a given setting, will never encounter cats or dogs. Cosmology can only say that cats and dogs are "entities."

But what is meant by "space," "time," "universe," "shape," "color," "light," "matter," "dimension," and numerous other commonly used terms, cannot be escaped in any environment. Every man will have need of using such terms to describe the world he observes, and the task of cosmology is to discover what such terms actually refer to!

Cosmology can be quite useful in identifying and discarding erroneous or unwarranted statements made by contemporary scientists, who venture outside their field of categorizing specific observations and phenomena into making generalizations of a metaphysical scope about the nature of some of the aforementioned terms.

It is perfectly within the scope of physics to discuss the behaviors of subatomic particles inaccessible to the unequipped eye, or to discover that the relationship "sound" is made manifest in wavelike phenomena. Physics, however, can never rationally venture to state that a particle is not an entity, or that a sound is not a relationship. That is the province of cosmology as a branch of philosophy.

To summarize: the specific-observational sciences can tell us the mechanisms involved inparticular entities, qualities, or relationships. They cannot, however, tell us whether or not something is an entity, a quality, or a relationship (or neither of the three, for that matter, as shall be seen in later examples). That is the province of cosmology.

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