Graniczny charakter kosmologii (Prolegomena do filozofii kosmologii)

Abstract

Three lectures present some methodological problems of cosmology in the following order: Lecture I: Different meanings of the term „philosophy of cosmology” are analysed. Philosophically the most interesting problems are the so-called frontier problems, i. e. problems which originate at the very borders of empirical method applicability. Lecture II: What does it mean the „universe”? Evidently, the term has many meanings. A common feature of all of them seems to be the following circumstance. Frontiers of what is called, at a given epoch, the universe are always fuzzy: observations reach limits of measurement errors, theoretical concepts break down. However, the science goes on, and what once was a frontier becomes a „local detail” within a new world. The universe of our knowledge expands. Lecture III: There is a certain structure called „universe”. This structure may be investigated either with the help of local methods or with the help of non-local ones. In the first case, one has the traditional physics, in the second case – cosmology. It turns out that even the traditional physics and astronomy tacitly presuppose some global assumptions. Cosmology cannot be avoided.