10/10/2019 Dejon Kurti PD 7

10/10/2019

Dejon Kurti PD 7

Aim: How does the Greek mythological story of creation highlight the troubles between the

family structure, the sexes, the struggles for dominance and control, and the child paying for

the sins of the parents?

At the start of today’s lesson, we were presented with a quote made by John Milton:

"First there was Chaos, the vast immeasurable abyss, outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful,

wild."

The Do Now was to analyze this quote and see its perspective on the origins of the universe,

which to no one’s surprise generated a lot of discussion.

Milton’s diction conveys that the origins of the universe was lawless, chaotic, and Kelly made

an excellent point: the Gods didn’t restore order, they instilled it.

Allen built on that, saying that the Greeks tried to rationalize it by comparing it to something

scary they do know: the dark sea.  Alex immediately followed up on that point, saying that the

sea was the embodiment of the unknown for the Greeks—they saw the world as a disk

surrounded by water.  

After much discussion, we arrived at a general consensus.  The Greeks personified Chaos

(notice the capital C in Chaos, spelled out the same way a first name is).  They didn’t see it

as imbalance or disorder—they saw it as nothing.  

Now here’s when things started getting really interesting and philosophical. 

Ms. Fusaro asked the class to even attempt thinking of nothing.  

“Think of what color nothing is.”

After a lot of different colors were thrown around, it was clear that what the concept was

beyond our own comprehension—we tried our best to rationalize it.

The Greeks believed that out of absolute nothingness, the universe was created.

After this discussion, we read an article on the Big Bang, and the result was a personal revelation. 

I consider myself a man of science, and yet that word does nothing to comfort me in the context

of this discussion.  We can’t rationalize what came before the Big Bang or how it came to be—

it’s unfathomable to us. While my group then talked about what came first, the chicken or the

egg, some of my classmates made excellent points.

Cornelia drew a parallel from the Big Bang to the Greek’s story of creation, saying that

although we consider the Big Bang to be science, it’s simply a new creation story we’ve

made for ourselves.  Iandra added on, saying that we’re just like the Greeks in that we don’t

know much about our origin—we’ve only slapped a new label on it.  

Ms. Fusaro summed it up perfectly.  The Greeks called it chaos, and today we call it a singularity,

but really both just mean that there was a whole bunch of nothingness.  What’s even more

interesting is that in all of mankind’s history, there have been a plethora of wars fought over ideological

and religious differences, yet one thing is constant for every religion: at the start, there was nothing.  

To end things off, Ms. Fusaro’s beautiful sketch (that thing in the top right is supposed to be a sun) illustrated that light takes time to travel—what we see out into the stars is the past, not the present.  Allen put it perfectly when he said that there’s no reason that the Big Bang won’t be seen as our mythology a thousand years from now, and while we may never know our origins, Steven put it well. 

“The universe lives within us… The very existence of the universe is acknowledged

because of us—living beings.  We are the universe.” 

Reflection: 

Today’s lesson was a revelation for me in that mankind, hundreds of years into the future,

still doesn’t know more about what preceded our creation than the Greeks.  Sure, we have

science that can explain what happened next and why the universe is the way it is today, but

we’re not even close to knowing what happened at the start of it all.  Today’s lesson made it

clear that although we are curious, just as curious (if not more) than the Greeks, humanity

can’t fathom nothingness. You can’t picture it, analyze it, think about it—it’s just somehow

not supposed to exist.  The Greeks made it clear through their mythology that the universe

was chaotic at its start—there was nothing. That’s how they saw it, and that’s still how we

see it today. This lesson was given not only to help us understand more about the Greeks and

why they wrote these myths, but to also better understand ourselves.  We’re all the same in

that we want peace of mind. We explain it using physics, the Greeks explained it using Chaos

—that’s all. After such a philosophical and deep lesson, I’ve come to see that I can’t take

every “fact” in our world at face value—what we know is bound to change with passing time.