The term cosmology stands for a family of related inquiries, all in some sense concerned with the world at large. Two main subgroups of uses may be distinguished: those belonging to philosophy and those belonging to science.

"Cosmology" has received wide currency as a name for a branch of metaphysics, ever since Christian von Wolff, in his Discursus Praeliminaris de Philosophia in Genere (1728), gave cosmology a prominent place in his classificatory scheme of the main forms of philosophical knowledge and distinguished this branch from ontology, theology, and psychology. (See Discourse on Philosophy in General, translated by R. J. Blackwell, Indianapolis, 1963, Para. 77). Despite the severe strictures that Immanuel Kant leveled against the pursuit of rational cosmology in his Critique of Pure Reason, the term has continued to enjoy a standard use among many philosophers. For example, it occupies a central place in the manuals of scholastic philosophy; these adhere...