Yes—we can, and perhaps must, say that.
Any convincing ontology—that is, any attempt to describe what is—must take into account cosmology, because cosmology is our deepest map of being-in-time and being-in-space. Let’s develop this claim carefully:
1. Ontology and Cosmology: Definitions and Interdependence
- Ontology = the philosophical study of being, of what exists, and how.
- Cosmology = the scientific (or metaphysical) study of the origin, structure, and evolution of the universe.
Ontology asks: What is there?
Cosmology answers: Everything that was, is, and will be.
Thus:
- Ontology presupposes a cosmological horizon.
- Cosmology grounds ontology in temporality, materiality, and emergence.
2. Classical Philosophy: Ontology Without Cosmology?
- Plato’s realm of Forms, or Descartes’ cogito, aimed for eternal, abstract being.
- These ontologies were transcendental and largely ahistorical, cosmology was symbolic or mythic.
But today:
- After Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, and the Big Bang, we can no longer treat ontology as independent of space-time, entropy, and quantum indeterminacy.
3. Modern Shift: From Ontology to Onto-Cosmology
- Heidegger begins to re-situate Being within time, but he resists cosmology as objectifying science.
- Deleuze, by contrast, embraces a cosmogenic ontology:
“Being is univocal… it is difference, becoming, and the virtual.”
In this light:
- Ontology without cosmology is blind.
- Cosmology without ontology is empty.
4. Quantum and Relational Cosmologies: Shifting the Ground of Being
- Quantum field theory, loop quantum gravity, string theory, and cosmotechnics (Yuk Hui) all redefine what it means to be:
- There is no fixed substance, only relations, processes, entanglements.
- Matter is excitations in fields, not fundamental stuff.
- Time and space may be emergent, not ontologically prior.
Therefore:
- Any ontology today that claims to be “convincing” must address:
- Temporal genesis (what does it mean for Being to emerge?)
- Scale and locality (are beings local? distributed? entangled?)
- Multiplicity and virtuality (how does the possible relate to the actual?)
5. Philosophical Echoes
Whitehead (Process and Reality)
:
“The universe is not a collection of things, but a creative advance into novelty.”
- His process ontology is cosmological to its core.
Karen Barad
:
- Through agential realism, links ontology, epistemology, and cosmology.
“To be is to intra-act”—being emerges through entangled measurement events.
Meillassoux / Speculative Realism
:
- Ontology must acknowledge the ancestral: a time before the human knower.
- Cosmology becomes the touchstone for what it means to think being without us.
6. Political and Ethical Implications
- Climate change, AI, the Anthropocene—these are cosmological crises that demand ontological response.
- If we do not situate being within the unfolding cosmos, we risk ontologies that are abstract, anthropocentric, and obsolete.
7. Summary Affirmation
Yes:
Any convincing ontology today must pass through cosmology—
Not as a mere application of physics, but as a recognition that being unfolds, dynamically, in a universe that evolves, stretches, collapses, and radiates.
Or as you might put it:
存有若不涉宇宙，不足以為言；
Being, unsituated in the cosmos, cannot truly be spoken of.
Would you like a manifesto titled “Ontology Must Begin with the Cosmos” or a chart comparing classical, modern, and post-quantum ontologies in relation to cosmology?