The Point of Departure and the Dialectic of Underwear

We're still pondering the foundations of common sense, the first pillar being "The 'world' as the ordered whole of beings." All other pillars are number two, or lower. 

The point is, we don't just register a... how did William James put it?

"One great blooming, buzzing confusion."

That's the one. He was talking about the perception of babies, but it turns out that babies too distill order from chaos, for example, recognizing their mother's voice, preferring smiling faces, and babbling in their own proto-language.  

Do we find the order, or impose it? One would have to say both, more or less, the question being where one begins -- which is what separates common sense realism from its alternatives: "The evidence of the existence of things"

constitutes the the beginning, the 'point of departure' of every kind of metaphysics and the condition of the possibility of metaphysics itself, if by metaphysics one means the passage 'from the phenomenon to the foundation.'"  

That is indeed what we mean: the reality beneath, behind, and above appearances. For in the end,

The universe is important if it is appearance, and insignificant if it is reality. 

Insignificant because it refers to nothing, nor does anything refer to it. But we know by its order -- its intelligibility -- that the cosmos refers to the intellect, and the intellect to it. But how? How is it that we are able to discern the deeper order beneath appearances? 

In other words, why aren't we just bombarded by disconnected sensations, but rather, implicitly recognize the Cosmic Area Rug that pulls the whole together?

my thesis is that the first evidence of common sense, the very first truth, is that there are things and that one may refer to them in a sensible manner saying "all things" or "everything." The sense in which this can be said becomes clear in ordinary language when words such as "world" or "universe" appear as synonyms of "everything" (Livi).

Say "cosmos" and you're halfway to God.

Good point, because only a creature made in God's image could know of the rug he has woven, its very warp and weft consisting of verticality and horizontality, Absolute and Infinite, immanence and transcendence, matter and form, time and eternity, melody and harmony, etc.

Boxers and briefs.

Yes, thesis and antitheses, the synthesis of which being the Hegelian boxer brief, correct Gemini?

That's an excellent and humorous way to illustrate Hegel's dialectic, and you've perfectly captured the essence of the concept. Your example of briefs, boxers, and boxer briefs is a classic modern-day take on this philosophical framework.

Now, no one sees God's face and lives. Perhaps that's an awkward way to say it, for maybe it means "while alive here on earth." But my point is, nor does anyone see the cosmos and live, and for the same reason. Just as we intuit God, the first cause, we also intuit an ordered cosmos, which in turn must be the effect of a higher cause.

It's something we don't even think about, but why assume there is a universe? Science certainly can never prove it:

How can a scientific cosmologist be sure his model of the cosmos is truly about the strict totality of consistently interacting bits of matter? Can scientific cosmology contain the proof of the existence of such a totality (Jaki)?

Of course not: Gödel strikes again. Nevertheless, our modern scientism-ists can't be bothered 

to face up to the question: "Is there a Universe?" Instead, they took an increasingly flippant attitude toward the Universe, that most encompassing of all physical realities (ibid.).

In point of fact, there can be no science of the cosmos, since there can be no science of the unique. Voegelin gets it: 

Constructs concerning the structure of the physical universe as a whole cannot be empirically validated. Why, then, do physicists engage again and again in their construction?

Boredom? Loneliness? No, 

The only possible answer to this question seems to be that physicists are men who as human beings feel obliged to develop an image of the universe.

In other words, just like the restavus from time immemorial, they can't help creating "a mytho-speculative symbol that will satisfy our desire to know the structure of the universe in which we live." Nevertheless, "from physics follows nothing but physics," so they entrap themselves in their own absurcularity while pretending to have transcended it. Jaki:

Insofar as the scientist uses his scientific method, he has no right to talk of the Universe.... Much less can science answer the question, "Is there a Universe?" 

For it is not possible "for scientists or for their instruments to go outside the universe in order to observe it and provide thereby an experimental verification of it." 

Now, we know durn well there is a universe, but how? Jaki cites Cardinal Newman, who said that the universe is so great, that "only the thought of its Maker is greater." Or again: to know there is a cosmos is to be halfway to God.

Here is an allegorical image for your post, contrasting the "blooming, buzzing confusion" of chaos with the order of a unified cosmos that points to a divine source.