Chaos and Order: How Philosophy Term Paper

Science, Krieglestein says, attempts to explain chaos, and to the extent it cannot, it then ignores it (30). However, science is using the language it has in this moment, to explain chaos. Like the philosophers, Descarte and Kant, science relies upon its investigation in much the same was the philosophers rely upon nature and rationalism to convert chaos to order. That it is the nature, if not the universe, of mankind to gravitate towards order. This is man's obsession with chaos, to turn it into order.

One of the most recognized names in the history of philosophy is Plato. Dante Germino, Eric Voegelin (2000) shed some light on Plato's obsession with chaos and order, or philosophy, writing, "The motives that induced the young man of a well-connected family not to pursue his natural career in the politics of Athens but insteadto become a philosopher, the founder of a school, anda man of letters, are revealedby Plato himself through an auto biographical passage of the Seventh Letter (324b-326b), written about 353, when he was in his seventies:

When I was young I felt like so many others: As soon as I become my own master, I thought, I would immediately enter public life. But my way was crossed by certain events in the affairs of the polis (Germino and Voegelin 58)."

Krieglestein moves mankind's philosophy and ratio into modernity with a discussion of mankind, who was created by God, whom, having been created, then goes on to create machines - the ultimate creator of order (30). Machines are the bookmark that maintain the order, freeing man to contemplate the next "order" of chaos, or to convert the energy of chaos into the next product of order.

It is no surprise, then, that man harnessed the ultimate tool of order, mathematics (31). With mathematics, mankind has been able to successfully bring about order from chaos on earth, and to finally venture out into the universe where there exists enough chaos to occupy mankind infinitely.Just as the ancient Greeks, Egyptians, and the philosophers throughout history have tried to explain the beginnings of the universe, and mankind; today's ultimate philosopher, the man who seeks to bring order out of the greater chaotic universe, and someone who has mastered the ultimate tool with which to accomplish that, say researchers Johns D. Barrow and Joseph Silk (1983), is Stephen Hawkings. Hawkings is a mathematician, scientist and philosopher, who works daily on the unraveling the mysteries of the universe.

Krieglestein provided an exploration of chaos and order from the ancients, to Freud, to Marx, and into the present. "Though the idea of chaos as a positive and constructive energy has been present since early civilizations, the Western mind only saw its negative aspects (33)."

Meaning that we moved not to understand chaos, but to eliminate it, and to eradicate it from our lives; whereas, Krieglestein says, the ancients balanced chaos and order. They considered it a natural part of the 'order" of things.

Be that as it may, it is equally natural for mankind to work towards creating from chaos, order.

Works Cited

http://www.questiaschool.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=100807488

Barrow, John D., and Joseph Silk. The Left Hand of Creation: The Origin and Evolution of the Expanding Universe. New York: Basic Books, 1983. Questia. 12 Dec. 2007 http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=100807490.

The Epic of Gilgamesh. Trans. Maureen Gallery Kovacs. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989. Questia. 12 Dec. 2007 http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=49056422.

A www.questiaschool.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=106066470

Germino, Dante, ed. Order and History: Plato and Aristotle. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000. Questia. 12 Dec. 2007 http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=106066474......