The Depictions of the Cosmos in Popular Culture: in Searching of the Sense of Wholeness

Abstract

The aim of this paper is the recognition of the basic forms of depiction of the cosmos in popular culture, in particular in literature and film. By showing the premises underlying procedures of artistic creations, the authors also draw up proprietary strategies thanks to which the presented worlds are characterized by their entirety and integrity. For achievement of this purpose, they show the non-artistic and non-aesthetic sources of the cosmic representations/ imagery. The authors show the consequence of the inescapable inhomogeneity of the image of the cosmos in fantasy, and secondly they analyze how strategies associated with the scientific vision of the cosmos are closer to a rational worldview and how they bring the massive public the latest advances in cosmology, astronomy and quantum physics. It is proved that that contemporary popular art is increasingly closely related to the modern state of scientific research in both the exact sciences and broadly understood religious studies or anthropology. The cosmos, thanks to popular creativity, becomes an acceptable, open and comprehensible space, while not being the most important challenge and mystery for humankind. The results obtained the numbers of tools in artistic criticism and sphere of humanistic reflection and journalism in branch of popular culture. They enable a better understanding of the mechanisms of popularity of fantastic creativity and its impact on the recipient’s awareness and give important tools in the process of popularizing the latest scientific discoveries.

Keywords

• the Universe
• Speculative fiction
• Fantasy
• Science fiction
• Image of the Cosmos