from chaos to cosmos artwork by ROBERT BEATTY from the book FLOODGATE COMPANION published by FLOATING WORLD COMICS We use the words “chaos” and “cosmos” as if they were a given, as if they have always been here, and we have always known what they mean. And yet the genesis of these words — and of their different significations — is mysterious and still very much debated today. Before cosmos, there was chaos. Both notions are antithetical in nature: cosmos comes at the time of the rationalization of the world, in the fifth and fourth centuries BC. It is tightly connected to the birth of geometry and philosophy, while chaos comes from an entirely different framework: mythology and much earlier accounts. Chaos and Cosmos represent the ways of the world, but in two very different manners: chaos is primarily etiological — it relates to an attempt at explaining how the…