Focus and Scope

‘Cosmos’ and ‘History’ are both Greek words. ‘Cosmos’, which originally meant ‘order’, came to mean ‘the ordered structure of the universe’. ‘History’, which originally meant ‘investigation’, came to mean an account of human actions and the causes of conflicts. Systematic speculation on the cosmos and the effort to produce objective histories emerged together in a society where, perhaps for the first time, people reflected impartially on themselves and their world. This conjunction was no accident. Ancient Greece was the first major society in which people took responsibility for their own institutions and for their future. With autonomy, with people having to choose what laws to enact, what to make, what to do, how to organize society, they had to face the questions: What ought we to think about justice, about ourselves, about the cosmos and the nature of being? And they had to reflect critically on their actions. Unlimited interrogation exploded on the scene. Yet a tension emerged between Greek cosmology and Greek history. Equating knowing with perceiving, the Greeks believed that anything which can be an object of genuine knowledge must be permanent. Its triumph was to have found in the objects of mathematics something that met these conditions. With the Pythagoreans who argued that the order in nature is mathematical, the notion of cosmos as a timeless structure crystallized. History, being concerned with human actions and the rise and fall of individuals and cities, was clearly about that which is not permanent. The tension between cosmology, conceiving the cosmos as an immutable, timeless order, and history, concerned with actions, intentions, conflicts and the rise and fall of individuals and communities, has been at the core of virtually all intellectual and political oppositions throughout the history of European civilization. Natural philosophy and social philosophy are sub-disciplines within which the tension between cosmology and history must be grappled with. These are the disciplines which critically reflect upon the assumptions of not only the natural sciences, the human sciences and the humanities, but also on the relationship between knowledge of the world and ourselves and ethics and politics, on how we should live and how we should organize society. But these disciplines only have a very tenuous place in universities, and their separation militates against an adequate consideration of their relationship. What is required is a combination of natural and social philosophy, transcending all disciplinary boundaries, concerned with the fundamental issues of understanding the cosmos and our place within it as historical agents. Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, provides a forum for this. It provides a focus to revive that unlimited interrogation of our cultural heritage introduced by the Ancient Greeks required for us to create the future. The journal encourages contributions from philosophically oriented thinkers from all disciplines.

 

Peer Review Process

The Editors will make an initial judgement on the acceptability of articles. If articles pass this stage they will move into the double-blind review process. A covering letter should include the title of the paper, abstract, keywords and all useful contact information—address, phone numbers, email address, etc. Any identifying references to the author(s) should have been removed prior to submission. The initial mode of contact should be via our online submission process.

 

Publication Frequency

Bi-Annually

 

Open Access Policy

Cosmos and History provides open access to all of its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. Such access is associated with increased readership and increased citation of an author's work. For more information on this approach, see the Public Knowledge Project, or The Open Archives Initiative. Please feel free to contact the editors for further information.

 

Call for Papers

What is Life?

Call For Papers: Submission Deadline 1st May 2008

Cosmos and History aims to provide a forum for those questioning the most fundamental assumptions about the cosmos and our place within it, striving to provide more adequate foundations for the sciences and the humanities, and attempting to redefine the goals of humanity accordingly. As the title implies, the journal is particularly concerned to overcome the division between the sciences and the humanities. This is becoming increasingly important as we move towards a global ecological catastrophe. The life sciences are pivotal both in relation to understanding and overcoming the opposition between the physical sciences and the humanities and in relation to understanding and overcoming the ecologically destructive trajectory of modern civilization. For this reason we have decided to devote special edition in 2008 to the question What is life?

We are now calling for papers for this special edition, which we hope to later publish as a book.

For further information please contact the special issue editor:
Arran Gare: agare@swin.edu.au