The world as abode: order and purpose

Abstract

In this article two texts are presented -the Expositio Totius Mundi and the Topographia Christiana- in relation with the form in which the human being interprets his world and, therefore, the place that in it he occupies. The starting point of the following reflections is the C. Glacken‘s book, suggestive and scholarly work in which the author speaks about the relation that existed, from early times, between nature and culture, in the western thought. It is probable that, in its final form, this article is too far from Glacken‘s work; but, two ideas are considered in the theme of the present study: Glacken speaks of order and purpose of the human work as reflection of the order and purpose of the cosmos, whose sense man tries to discover. In the Antiquity, order and purpose belong to myth, like total explanation; in the Christian world, to Revelation.