In the Greek world, the cosmos was, imagined as a unified living organism, eminently ordered and perfectly beautiful. In modern science, the cosmos is 'out there', but in traditional societies it is not only all around, but also 'in here', permeating everything from objects to thoughts and feelings. The 'Cosmologies' conference, given in 2009 in Bath, UK, is the seventh in a series of annual conferences hosted by the Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture, based in the School of Archaeology, History and Anthropology at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David. The papers published in this volume, which represent the breadth and depth of the Centre's work, include a variety of approaches to understanding the many ways in which human beings relate their lives to the cosmos from the ancient world to the modern, using perspectives informed by history and anthropology.
