Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The astrophysical study of the origin and evolution of the universe.
  • noun A specific theory or model of the origin and evolution of the universe.
  • noun A philosophical, religious, or mythical explanation of the origin of the universe.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The theory or science of the origin of the universe, or of its present constitution and order; a doctrine or account of the creation; specifically, the doctrine that the universe had a beginning in time.
  • noun The origination of the universe; creation.
  • noun Synonyms See cosmology.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The creation of the world or universe; a theory or account of such creation.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The study of the origin, and sometimes the development, of the universe or the solar system, in astrophysics, religion, and other fields.
  • noun Any specific theory, model, myth, or other account of the origin of the universe.
  • noun The creation of the universe.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the branch of astrophysics that studies the origin and evolution and structure of the universe

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek κοσμογονία (kosmogonia), from κόσμος (kosmos, "world") + γόνος (gonos, "creation").

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Examples

  • Originally, it opened with the three Bone cousins, Fone, Phoney, and Smiley Bone, lost in the desert after being run out of Boneville; the new version begins with a lengthy, dull cutscene in which Thorn gives a narration of Bone's cosmogony from the text of Crown of Horns.

    Archive 2007-05-01 2007

  • Originally, it opened with the three Bone cousins, Fone, Phoney, and Smiley Bone, lost in the desert after being run out of Boneville; the new version begins with a lengthy, dull cutscene in which Thorn gives a narration of Bone's cosmogony from the text of Crown of Horns.

    Video Game Review: Bone 1 and 2 2007

  • Its cosmogony is a myth read literally: its history is, for the most part, a highly immoral distortion, and its ethics are those of the

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • I had had no lessons in cosmogony, and I had no spontaneous revelation of the true position of the earth in the universe.

    The Promised Land 1912

  • The word cosmogony is, however, usually applied to mythic accounts of the world's origin current among the peoples of antiquity and the more modern races which have not been touched by recent scientific methods.

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 4: Clandestinity-Diocesan Chancery 1840-1916 1913

  • The most conspicuous figure in Chinese cosmogony is P'an Ku.

    Myths and Legends of China 1909

  • The end of the cosmogony is the astronomical system described in section 4.2 below, in which ten heavenly bodies including the earth encircle the central fire.

    Philolaus Huffman, Carl 2008

  • Just as the cosmogony is the archetype of all creation, cosmic time, which the cosmogony brings forth, is the paradigmatic model for all other times -- that is, for the times specifically belonging to the various categories of existing things.

    Meditation: In illo tempore William Harryman 2007

  • Chæremon had no reason for saying that the Ancient Egyptians, inventors of the sacred fables, and adorers of the Sun and the other luminaries, saw in the Universe only a machine, without life and without intelligence, either in its whole or in its parts; and that their cosmogony was a pure Epicureanism, which required only matter and movement to organize its world and govern it.

    Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry Albert Pike 1850

  • With the Phoenician sages the cosmogony was their theogony and 'vice versa'.

    Literary Remains, Volume 2 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1803

Comments

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  • Learned this by reading a letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams. He was explaining his view of Calvinism.

    December 24, 2008

  • Seems to be an archaic term for cosmology.

    January 2, 2009

  • Some think there are mischievous progeny

    Descended from tales of cosmogony.

    No maker need be

    A he nor a she

    But a being of holy androgyny.

    October 9, 2018