Is the universe a meaningless collection of lifeless matter? We live on a small planet in an out-of-the-way corner of an insignificant galaxy, and though our lives might feel real and important, is that just a delusion? After all, the only thing that’s really going on is that atoms are randomly careening off of one another in an uncaring world. So the story goes.

Though many people think this modern view is scientific, it’s not the only option available to us. In fact, the people most responsible for the development of scientific thinking, the ancient Greeks, had a very different vision of the universe. It’s worth taking a look at how they understood the world around them.

Like all ancient peoples, the Greeks were amazed by the order they found in the world. They wondered at the fact that things do not happen at random. Instead, the universe is remarkably predictable. Drop a ball 100 times, and it will fall to the ground every single time. Boil water, and it will evaporate. Act pridefully—as so many Greek heroes do—and, like them, you will suffer a great fall.

The Greeks had a word to describe the order they found in the world: kosmos. And while this term is the root of our English word “cosmos,” it refers to something quite different from “outer space.” Instead, kosmos means “harmoniously ordered universe.”

The first thinker to use the term was Heraclitus, one of the most important early Greek philosophers. Heraclitus is famous for his observation that, “We step into and do not step into the same rivers. We are and we are not.” As you’d expect, he was a very interesting thinker.

Heraclitus saw that in our universe, change and permanence, identity and evolution, and growth and decay are unified. Permeating it all, he thought, is profound harmony. It is this harmony that allows us to flourish.

It’s important to note that there is nothing mythological about this conception of the universe. To the contrary, it is entirely based on verifiable human experience. Just step outside and see how many different life forms you can find. Regardless of whether they eat bugs, plants, or animals, their growth and reproduction is dependent on the death and decay of other beings. Harmony is evident everywhere you look. Welcome to the kosmos.

The Greeks contrasted the kosmos they experienced to the idea of khaos, which translates rather nicely into our English word “chaos.” A chaotic universe would be the opposite of a kosmos. Think for a moment about what that would look like.

In a chaotic universe, there would be no regularity or order to speak of. As a result, complex forms like human beings could never take shape. But if, for the sake of imagination, we were to step into this chaos, we would be in for a wild ride. If we dropped a ball 100 times, it would fly in a different direction each time. There would be no laws of physics in such a world—and no planets, stars, or elements, either. The whole thing would be incomprehensible to us

A chaotic universe would be truly random. And since we clearly don’t live in that world, we can rule out some of the common mistakes that modern people make when they say that our universe is ultimately random. Clearly, we live in a universe that is permeated by a profound order, governed by laws that we can comprehend.

For me at least, that is already enough to say that we live in a kosmos. And in turn, perhaps our harmoniously ordered world isn’t as meaningless as many modern thinkers propose.

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