Conceptual foundations and issues in cosmology

Leszek Sokołowski

In these lectures I discuss some fundamental conceptual problems of cosmology, which are usually omitted in the standard courses, though they significantly influence our understanding of the Universe. These include the very notion of the Universe and consequences of its uniqueness, applicability of physical quantities such as distance and velocity in cosmology, the issue of various fine tunings and consequences of that the Universe had its origin in the initial Big Bang singularity. The fundamental features of the Universe were determined soon after the Big Bang and this epoch is hidden under the physics horizon and practically inaccessible to us. Cosmology is disparate from other physical sciences.

Proceedings of the Polish Astronomical Society, vol. 4, 16-35 (2017)

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