10 Synthesis: Cosmology as Construal

The genealogy of Western cosmology reveals not a linear accumulation of knowledge but a series of construals, each reframing the cosmos as a relational field of potential. From mythic order and harmonic proportion to mechanistic law, relativistic contingency, quantum indeterminacy, and participatory reflexivity, each cosmological moment has constituted a distinct horizon of possibility. The cosmos is not merely discovered but historically construed, and possibility itself is reshaped by these construals.

At the heart of this genealogy lies a persistent oscillation between closure and openness. Medieval theology constrained potential within divine hierarchy; Newtonian mechanics compressed possibility into determinism; quantum theory and relativity reopened it into contingency and indeterminacy. Each construal strategy does not simply describe the cosmos but redefines what it means for something to be possible within the conditions of thought, measurement, and relation available at that time.

This synthesis highlights three critical features of cosmology as construal:

1. Relationality: Cosmology always operates through relations — between celestial bodies, mathematical ratios, physical laws, or observer and observed. The cosmos is never a solitary entity but a web of interdependencies that structure potential.

2. Reflexivity: In the modern and contemporary era, cosmology recognises its own participation in shaping possibility. Observation, measurement, and symbolic modelling are not neutral but actively co-constitute the horizons of the cosmos they describe.

3. Historical Conditioning: Each cosmological construal emerges within a specific intellectual, cultural, and symbolic context. Possibility is not timeless but historically contingent, redefined as new frameworks of understanding open or foreclose what can be imagined, theorised, or enacted.

Thus, cosmology must be read not as the discovery of a pre-given totality but as the becoming of possibility itself. Each shift in construal is also a shift in ontology, a transformation in how the cosmos and its potentials can be apprehended. The universe we inhabit is not only relationally constituted but also historically layered, carrying within it the sediment of prior cosmologies and the anticipations of future ones.

In this sense, cosmology is never outside of human thought; it is a reflexive dialogue between the cosmos and its construal, an ongoing co-evolution of potential and understanding. To trace its genealogy is to see that possibility itself has a history — one written not only in the stars but in the ways we construe their meaning.