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I am reading Sophie's World written by Jostein Gaarder. At the beginning, there was one fact which blew my mind (a little).
According to this book, Greek philosophers thought that the world always existed. But why did they think about it like that? Was it only because their mythology, or is there logical explanation for this?
It is always hazardous to talk in broad terms of ancient Greek philosophy. In the case of the world, Plato* and Aristotle believed in the existence of a single, eternal world which none the less they conceived differently.
Anaximenes, Heracleitus, Diogenes and the Stoics appear to have believed in a continuous series of single worlds. Empedocles accepted a discontinuous series of single worlds with nothing - no kosmos - in the intervals between worlds.
Anaxagoras, Archelaus, and Metrodoros of Chios inclined to the view that there is a single world only, which came into existence with the beginning of time.
Quite a variety of views here !
As to Aristotle's view that the world is uncreated and eternal, this is a central claim of 'De Caelo' ['On the Heavens']. Aristotle's arguments may not be impressive but he does try to make a reasoned claim. It is briefly that the kosmos is too vast, complex, and tightly structured to be the work of any conceivable agent, let alone (a dig at Plato's 'Timaeus') a 'demiurge' or 'craftsman' (technites) who creates the organised world from pre-existing materials. Since no-one and nothing is a plausible creator of the kosmos, it must always have existed.
Weak as the argument may be, it is not myth or a reworking of myth but a genuine form of argument.
References
F.M. Crawford, 'Innumerable Worlds in Presocratic Philosophy', The Classical Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Jan., 1934), pp. 1-16.
W.K.C. Guthrie, 'A History of Greek Philosophy', VI, Cambridge : CUP, 1981, 86. (On Aristotle.)
Einstein when he formulated General Relativity believed in the 'eternity of the world', that is a steady state - he introduced a cosmological constant to stop the universe collapsing under it's own gravity. Hubble's work revealed that not to be the situation.
Cosmogenies, ideas about where the cosmos comes from, can only fall into so many types. But really they say more about our mental habits, than the universe.
