“The Matrix trilogy provides an interesting smorgasbord of philosophical questions and issues. Yet underlying the metaphysical questions (What is real? ; What is the nature of reality?), the epistemological questions (How do I know what is real?), and the ethical questions (what am I really supposed to do?) there lies the larger context of the cosmology of the Matrix. That is, the most important philosophical questions addressed in the Matrix are fundamentally cosmological questions. Cosmology seeks the mutual and consistent integration of the answers to particular philosophical and scientific questions with a view to providing a model that, as comprehensively as possible, explains 1. the origin of the world and humanity 2. the purpose of the world and humanity 3. the destiny of the world and humanity Plato’s Timaeus is the classical archetype of philosophical cosmology in the West. Whitehead’s Process and Reality is perhaps the last comprehensive work in this field in the West.1 Today, in the wake of the present separation of philosophy and physics (formerly natural philosophy), cosmology has by and large been left to the astrophysicists, and its domain restricted to the physical universe.”
A somewhat abbreviated version of this paper (from which the above extract is quoted) was published as Chapter 11 of the book, More Matrix and Philosophy: Revolutions and Reloaded Decoded, edited by Wiliam Irwin, 2005.
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