MODERN cosmology has been spectacularly successful at explaining why the universe is as it is – a geometrically flat expanding space pockmarked with stars and galaxies. But this very success means that attempts to understand its origin increasingly stray into issues beyond physics and into the realm of philosophy, for which cosmologists rarely have any formal training. Likewise, when philosophers, untrained in astrophysical subtleties, pronounce on cosmology, the cosmologists are unimpressed. Clearly both groups have much to learn from each other.
The philosophy of cosmology is not just unstructured pondering about where it all comes from or the meaning, if any, of our presence in the universe. It is the systematic survey of everything that possibly could have happened, and then reconciling this with what actually did happen in our corner of physical reality.
What can be said, scientifically speaking, about these possibilities? For a start, many physicists are ...
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