Consider the following extract:
A skillful cook can make delectable dishes without quite being able to tell us how. (Conversely, the possession of a good recipe book is not sufficient to make a good cook.) By embedded understanding, I mean, this practical knowledge that remains pre-reflective and inarticulate. It is an understanding we acquire by being initiated into the practices of a society. The term 'common sense' is broader and covers embedded understanding but also, at the very least, our spontaneous and ad hoc reflections, including reflections that are closely aligned to our practices, which might be called practical reflections. It usually also includes stories, epics, folk tales, legends, myths that have been passed on from one generation to another and with the help of which we make sense of and evaluate the entire universe. Such nearly systematic but non-theoretical reflections which knit together in a seamless web the physical, biological, social, mental and spiritual worlds may be called cosmologies. Cosmologies frequently inform and become part of a society's common sense.
According to Merriam-Webster, cosmology has the following meanings:
- A branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of the universe.
- A theory or doctrine describing the natural order of the universe.
- A branch of astronomy that deals with the origin, structure, and space-time relationships of the universe. (also : a theory dealing with these matters)
Which sense of the word is the author referring to by cosmologies? Why is it being used in a plural form here?
Thank you in advance. :)
