Humanity in the Becoming of Worlds: 1 The Human in the Cosmos of Possibility

The human has always been more than a biological species. We are a placed being — situated within larger cosmoi of possibility. The way a collective construes the cosmos is never indifferent to how it construes itself: to speak of world is to speak, implicitly, of the human place within it.

This is not a question of beliefs about the cosmos, nor of representations of external reality. It is a question of possibility: how relational construals open some pathways of becoming while closing others, how they tether human potential to wider symbolic architectures.

In myth, the human is inscribed within cycles of creation and renewal, positioned among gods and ancestors. In theology, the human is bound to law, salvation, and eternity. In science, the human oscillates between insignificance in a vast cosmos and indispensability as the knowing subject. Each placement is a cut in possibility, orienting the human by embedding us in a larger order.

The task of this series is to follow those placements. We will trace how mythic, theological, and scientific cosmoi configure human possibility; how they orient our becoming within larger relational orders; and how a relational ontology reframes this entire question. For if possibility is always perspectival and co-individuated, then “the human” is not a fixed category but a shifting point of alignment within the unfolding of cosmos.

To study the human, then, is not to isolate our species from the world but to see how worlds and humans co-arise. The human is a figure of possibility cut into the weave of cosmos — one strand among many in the becoming of worlds.