TY - CHAP

T1 - Physical Cosmology

AU - Halvorson, Hans

AU - Kragh, Helge

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2013 Taylor & Francis.

PY - 2012

Y1 - 2012

N2 - Christianity and other monotheistic religions (Islam and Judaism) assume a transcendent and sovereign God who created the universe and continually maintains its existence. Theworld only exists because of an ultimate and supernatural cause which is, as Newton said, “not blind and fortuitous, but very well skilled in Mechanicks and Geometry7” (Cohen 1978: 282). Whether in a general philosophical sense or in a scientific sense, cosmologyhas always been part of theism, but it is only relatively recently that cosmology based on physics and astronomy has entered the discussion concerning the existence and role of God. A limited application of physics to the study of the universe can be found in the second half of the nineteenth century when the cosmological consequences of the law of entropy increase were eagerly discussed in relation to the Christian doctrines of a world with a beginning and end in time. However, physical cosmology is essentially a twentieth-century science which emerged as a result of the discovery in about 1930 that the universe is in a state of expansion that possibly started a finite time ago. Cosmology as a subdiscipline of physics differsin some respects from mathematical, philosophical and classical observational cosmology, butof course the different approaches are in constant interaction. In a modern sense, physical cosmology became established after the discovery of the cosmic microwave background in 1965 which quickly turned the hot big-bang model into the standard model of the universe. Jim Peebles’ Physical Cosmology of 1971, possibly the first book with this title, may be taken as the beginning of modern physical cosmology.

AB - Christianity and other monotheistic religions (Islam and Judaism) assume a transcendent and sovereign God who created the universe and continually maintains its existence. Theworld only exists because of an ultimate and supernatural cause which is, as Newton said, “not blind and fortuitous, but very well skilled in Mechanicks and Geometry7” (Cohen 1978: 282). Whether in a general philosophical sense or in a scientific sense, cosmologyhas always been part of theism, but it is only relatively recently that cosmology based on physics and astronomy has entered the discussion concerning the existence and role of God. A limited application of physics to the study of the universe can be found in the second half of the nineteenth century when the cosmological consequences of the law of entropy increase were eagerly discussed in relation to the Christian doctrines of a world with a beginning and end in time. However, physical cosmology is essentially a twentieth-century science which emerged as a result of the discovery in about 1930 that the universe is in a state of expansion that possibly started a finite time ago. Cosmology as a subdiscipline of physics differsin some respects from mathematical, philosophical and classical observational cosmology, butof course the different approaches are in constant interaction. In a modern sense, physical cosmology became established after the discovery of the cosmic microwave background in 1965 which quickly turned the hot big-bang model into the standard model of the universe. Jim Peebles’ Physical Cosmology of 1971, possibly the first book with this title, may be taken as the beginning of modern physical cosmology.

U2 - 10.4324/9780203123294

DO - 10.4324/9780203123294

M3 - Book chapter

AN - SCOPUS:85064368298

SN - 9780415881647

SP - 241

EP - 255

BT - The Routledge Companion to Theism

A2 - Taliaferro, Charles

A2 - Harrison, Victoria S.

A2 - Goetz, Stewart

PB - Routledge

ER -