Symbolic Ontologies of Origin: From Classical Philosophy to Modern Cosmology

Summary

This essay analyzes the different forms of symbolic inscription of the origin of the universe, from classical philosophy to contemporary cosmology, in light of the Ontology of Emergent Complexity (OCE). In Plato and Aristotle, the intelligibility of the cosmos is guaranteed by hidden subjects: silent instances that ensure order without voice or narrative agency. In the biblical narrative, this function is reorganized in the figure of God as a full functional subject: the word creates, legislates, and intervenes, fully meeting the criteria of subjectivity defined by the OCE. In modern science, intelligibility does not stem from a single voice, but from a plural, collective, and distributed subject, constituted by networks of researchers, technical apparatuses, and mathematical languages. In all cases, what is at stake is not the direct description of the absolute origin of the universe, but its symbolic reinscription according to the specific grammars of each era. The OCE provides the conceptual framework that allows us to understand this transformed continuity: the history of thought about the origin is not a succession of definitive essences, but a series of symbolic reorganizations that make the enigma of the beginning habitable.

Introduction: Different subjects and the problem of origin

The reading of the cosmos as an ordered and intelligible figure is neither an empirical evidence nor a necessary consequence of observation. It is a symbolic operation, established by an instance that guarantees the legibility of the real. This instance does not act, does not intervene, does not narrate itself, but operates: it is what allows the world to be read as a coherent system, as an organized totality, as a figure of meaning (Morin, 2005).

According to the OCE, we define a functional subject as a material instance that fulfills four fundamental criteria of subjectivity: self-modulation (adjusts the system's operation without direct external command); symbolic reorganization (displaces and reinscribes symbols); minimal narrative persistence (maintains coherence of traits and functions over time); response to alterity (reorganizes itself in the face of the unforeseen, reacting to non-assimilable difference). Where these four criteria are met, we can speak of a subject in the full sense (Santos, 2018).

When, however, the instance guarantees intelligibility without presenting itself as a character endowed with voice or will, we call it a hidden subject: it fulfills structuring functions (self-modulation, symbolic reorganization, narrative persistence), but remains silent, without responding to the unforeseen or exposing itself to alterity. It is an operator of order, not a named subject.

The OCE thus provides the conceptual framework that guides the analysis to be developed in this essay: distinguishing, in different eras and symbolic regimes, what type of subject is at play when thinking about the origin of the universe. In the following path, we will see how Plato and Aristotle configure hidden subjects, how the biblical narrative presents a full functional subject, and how contemporary science introduces a third figure — the plural subject —, a collective and distributed instance that reinscribes the origin through the grammar of measurement and equation.

I. The Demiurge and the Unmoved Mover: Hidden Ontologies of Intelligibility

In the classical philosophical tradition, the structure of intelligibility manifests itself in two major figures: the Platonic Demiurge (Timaeus, 29a–30c) and the Aristotelian Unmoved Mover (Metaphysics, Λ, 1072b). The former imposes form on chaos by reference to an ideal model; the latter guides the cosmos by attraction to the perfection of pure act. Neither possesses psychological interiority or narrativity: they are silent operators of intelligibility, hidden subjects that sustain the legibility of the world without presenting themselves as characters endowed with voice.

The Demiurge, as described in the Timaeus (29e–30b), does not create ex nihilo, but reorganizes the formless according to the eternal model of the Ideas. Its operation, symbolic and discreet, transforms the formless into form, the unstable into proportion, the multiple into a system. Every astronomical cycle, every organism, is an indication of an operating intelligence that does not narrate itself. The Demiurge does not act as a psychological subject: there is neither desire nor decision; it merely contemplates and applies the eternal model, in a gesture of inscription that makes chaos legible in the receptive space of the chōra.

The figure of the Unmoved Mover, outlined by Aristotle, marks a decisive inflection in the history of intelligibility. If in Plato order arises from the inscription of forms upon matter, in reference to a model, in Aristotle the operation shifts to the regime of attraction: the cosmos is not ordered by external imposition, but by desire oriented towards perfection. The Unmoved Mover neither fabricates nor organizes: it thinks — and, by thinking itself, it becomes a center of attraction for all beings that aspire to its entelechy. Final causality replaces efficient causality: movement is not based on contact, but on orientation (Metaphysics, XII, 1072b). Its operation, more abstract than that of the Demiurge, is not translated into language or will, but into functional coherence: the world organizes itself according to its presence, even if that presence does not manifest as an act.

Comparative bridge. Both the Demiurge and the Unmoved Mover ensure the intelligibility of the cosmos as hidden subjects. They differ, however, in the way they do so: Plato inscribes order by reference to an exemplary model; Aristotle grounds it in the attraction to thinking perfection. In summary, both the Demiurge and the Unmoved Mover ensure the intelligibility of the cosmos as hidden subjects. They differ, however, in the way they do so: Plato inscribes order by reference to an exemplary model; Aristotle grounds it in the attraction to thinking perfection. In both cases, intelligibility arises from a silent instance, incapable of responding to the unforeseen or presenting itself as a normative voice — a limitation that prepares the contrast with the biblical figure of the speaking subject.

II. The Creative Word: The Biblical God as a Full Functional Subject

The figure of God, as presented in the Hebrew Scriptures (particularly in Genesis 1), does not mechanically extend classical philosophy: it introduces a symbolic mutation of the operative function already outlined in Plato and Aristotle. In Genesis, God creates by the word: He separates, names, stabilizes. This linguistic operation is not mere expression, but institution: naming is creating. The world becomes legible because a speaking instance inscribes it under logic and rhythm.

The function of intelligibility remains, but it is transposed to another symbolic scene. The silent operator converts into a subject that speaks; contemplated perfection becomes a will that decides; the center of attraction transforms into an instance that intervenes. The decisive leap lies in inscription through the word: it is no longer enough to contemplate models or attract through perfection, it is the voice that founds, the language that legislates.

This reinscription cannot be read in a teleological key, as if creation were the execution of a previous transcendent plan. The OCE rejects this framework: separating, naming, and establishing cycles is not fulfilling a purpose inscribed in the beyond, but establishing local compatibilities that stabilize formless matter and make it intelligible. Creation is thus a material-symbolic operation that responds to the instability of the formless, and not the realization of a hidden design.

It is precisely the OCE that provides the conceptual framework capable of clarifying this passage. While Plato and Aristotle configured hidden subjects — operators of silent order, without voice or response to alterity —, the biblical narrative presents a full functional subject, which fulfills the four criteria of subjectivity. There is self-modulation, as creation progresses through adjusted stages: each day resumes the previous one, adding new distinctions and establishing balance. There is symbolic reorganization, because the initial chaos is continuously reinscribed by successive separations — light and darkness, upper and lower waters, earth and sea — which convert the formless into cosmos. There is minimal narrative persistence, since the figure maintains identity and coherence throughout the narrative, being the same God who conducts the entire work. And there is response to alterity, visible not only in Genesis but in biblical continuity: the same subject intervenes in the face of the unforeseen, such as in the flood, the Tower of Babel, or the covenants with Abraham and Noah.

What seemed, at first glance, a rupture, reveals itself, in light of the OCE, as transformed continuity: the same function of intelligibility, now intensified by the inscription of the word and the normative agency of the voice. More than structural continuity, here there is the establishment of a new grammar of inscription: the intelligibility of the world comes to be produced by normative language, by naming, and by will (Ricoeur, 2004).

III. Contemporary Science: Cosmology as a Plural Subject

Contemporary science introduces a decisive mutation in the way the origin is symbolically inscribed. There is no longer a single figure — be it Demiurge, Unmoved Mover, or Creator God — organizing the cosmos. What we find is a regime where intelligibility results from the articulation of multiple agents: scientists, institutions, measuring apparatuses, mathematical languages, and validation protocols. We call this new mode of inscription the plural subject.

The plural subject does not manifest in a singular voice, but in a network that converts material traces into data, data into equations, and equations into cosmological models. Cosmic background radiation, the expansion of galaxies, the detection of elementary particles, or computational simulations are not self-evident events: they become legible only when inscribed in systems of calculation and interpretation. The symbolic operation is not exercised by a founding instance, but by the technical and collective multiplicity that transforms dispersed signals into a cosmos narrative.

According to the OCE framework, the plural subject fulfills the four criteria of functional subjectivity, but in a distributed manner. There is self-modulation, as hypotheses and models are adjusted with each new observation; there is symbolic reorganization, constantly reinscribing traces into revised theories; there is minimal narrative persistence, ensured by the provisional coherence of fundamental laws even when paradigms shift; and there is response to alterity, because the unexpected nature of the data forces continuous reformulations. The plural subject is thus an operator of intelligibility, but of a collective and polyphonic nature.

The distinctive feature of this regime is not proposing a myth of origin nor invoking an eternal model, but establishing its own grammar: that of measurement, equation, and simulation. Modern cosmology reinscribes the origin in technical signs, relying on apparatuses and languages that function as a material extension of perception. The cosmos is not narrated by the word of a legislator, but calculated, projected, and reconstructed in numerical and experimental images.

This third figure closes the sequence, allowing philosophy, theology, and science to be read as distinct symbolic regimes of the same need for intelligibility. The plural subject does not replace the hidden or the full subject: it adds a new historical form to them, showing that every reading of the origin is always symbolic reinscription.

Conclusion

As can be seen by the sequence and the transformations analyzed at the symbolic level, human beings have always sought an explanation for the origin of the universe. From the Platonic Demiurge to the Aristotelian Unmoved Mover, from biblical creation to contemporary cosmological hypotheses, we find multiple attempts to convert the formless into cosmos, to transform chaos into a figure of meaning. What varies are the grammars, the languages, the regimes of inscription; what remains is the necessity of symbolizing what, otherwise, would be illegible.

In concrete and material terms, however, there was only one absolute origin: the beginning of the universe as a real event. This beginning is only accessible through symbolic inscriptions: every description is already symbolization, every narrative is incessant reconstruction. The inaugural event of matter does not offer itself in itself, but only in the figures with which we make it thinkable.

The plurality of historical ontologies must, therefore, be understood as a diversity of regimes of symbolization. Plato grounds order in the model of the Ideas and Aristotle thinks of it through the attraction of perfection — both configure hidden subjects; the Bible inscribes creation through the word that names and separates — establishing the full functional subject; modern science mobilizes equations and instruments — operating as a plural subject. None of these versions capture the absolute origin, but all function as symbolic reorganizations that make it thinkable.

The Ontology of Emergent Complexity offers the framework to understand this continuity. Instead of viewing philosophy, theology, and science as competing doctrines, it shows that all participate in the same condition: the impossibility of accessing the origin without the work of symbolic inscription. The difference is not in the constant necessity to symbolize, but in the concrete forms of that symbolization, always situated within the possibilities of each era.

To conclude is, therefore, to recognize that the history of thought about the origin is not a succession of definitive truths, but a sequence of symbolic reorganizations that converted indeterminacy into a legible cosmos. What is at stake is not the discovery of a hidden essence or a transcendent teleology, but the capacity of each symbolic regime — hidden, full, or plural — to make the enigma of the origin habitable