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This chapter discusses the concept of cosmogony according to philosopher Immanuel Kant. The fundamental character of Kant's cosmology has only been considered from a natural sciences perspective. It is for this reason that its place in the history of literary forms has been ignored. It is a matter of logical consequence that Kant directs his attention to cosmology and that he seeks to establish it as a modern science. The point where the act of knowing can take place must be first created. The knowing subject must first establish itself as such.

The globe as subject With few exceptions, historians of science have paid little attention to a major branch of natural philosophy in the eighteenth century: the science of the system of the earth and its products. Distinguished general surveys, such as those of Dampier, Singer, Hall, Gillispie and Taton, have no connected analysis of the sciences of the terraqueous globe. The volume Natural Philosophy through the Eighteenth Century barely mentions the physical environment. Most historians of science are still writing (sometimes Whiggish) ‘tunnel histories’, tracing the progress of modern scientific disciplines, rather than exploring the cognitive landscapes of the past. And much scholarship in this field remains stubbornly biographical rather than problem-oriented. Why has there been this neglect of the sciences of the physical environment, of the earth as such? It is partly a reflection of the focusing down of science itself, where formerly dominant all-embracing frameworks, like the Great Chain of Being, have splintered into specialties like palaeobotany and seismology. It is partly also a response to persuasive philosophies of science. Ever since the influential classifications of natural knowledge by Comte, J. S. Mill and Jevons, leading philosophers have argued that the ideal science is one of universal categories, amenable to abstraction and quantification. Thus physics rather than the ‘extensive’ environmental sciences becomes their model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chapter Four of the book "Rice As Self: Japanese Identities Through Time" by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney is presented. It explores on the cosmogony and cosmology of rice. It examines the cultural institutions and symbols of ancient Japan, which show a gradual but decisive development of the powers and meanings was assigned to rice. It highlights the development of the supremacy of rice which is associated with its symbolic equation with deities and its relationship with the ancient imperial system.

The country, the little ones will be taking it, in due time, this country here. Holding this place, looking after this country … We, the old ones, The old men will all pass away … In that other time, ‘what's-it-called,’ the Ancestors set the world down as it is. Therefore we will each pass away, in the fullness of time. We here, The old men and women, The old ones, will each pass away. The old men too, will each pass away, in due time. Then the young men will be taking the country, in due time. The world, long ago, the Ancestors set it in place as it is. Through the rhythm of Jack Bruno's ‘Elegy’, time defeats time itself. Unedited, the effect is even more complete. In a short piece of oratory, phrases asserting that people will ‘pass away’ in the ‘fullness of time’ recur on more than a dozen occasions. The repetitive pulse seems endless. Lives, no matter how beloved, do not matter as lives. They are denied temporal extension; there is no room for them to be protracted in memory and so to stretch into history. Yet for all this we are not witnessing mere ‘ahistoricity’ or ‘timelessness’. Terms such as these linger unduly in the shadows of an often unremarked reality. Time and history are not left to decay passively but rather are stripped of their being by the uncompromising forms of space set down by the Ancestors. Only they endure, and the human lot is, ultimately and alone, ‘holding this place’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction of matter Length, breadth, and depth are the three dimensions of matter corresponding to the linear axis of magnetism, the superficial charge given to bodies by static electricity, and the inner chemical effects of a galvanic cell. They can be seen as the keys to the creation of three-dimensional matter and of the cosmos, whereas the activity of the powers of attraction and repulsion, symbolized in the magnet and corresponding to the power of length, represents the first stage of that construction. Because the creation of matter and of the cosmos was initiated and effected by an act of divine will, matter could provide an image of that act of will, reminding one of the spiritual origin of nature. Thus Coleridge once described matter as “the phantom of the Absolute Will.” To him, matter was at once a reality and an abstraction, to be distinguished from body: “When we think Body in the abstract, we call the result Matter: when we imagine Matter in the concrete, we call it Body.” His concept was here analogous to Aristotle's, wherein matter and form underlay the actuality of bodies. But for Coleridge, unlike Aristotle, matter could exist independently of body – for example, in the phenomenon of light, which he regarded as material although not corporeal. Matter, then, was generated by an interaction of polar powers, existed in virtue of those powers, and was essentially active. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tale "The Irish Invasion Myths: The Celtic Cosmogony," by T. W. Rolleston is presented.

The article discusses chapter VII of the book "The Myths of the New World." It says that the spirit of waters is usually portrayed by cosmogonies. It states that the myth concerning flood unconsciously attempts the reconciliation of creation in time with matter's eternity has been proven in American mythology. Furthermore, it notes that the belief in nature's epochs further attempt the achievement of reconciliation.