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Scientific cosmology is the study of the universe through astronomy and physics. However, cosmology also has a significant cultural impact. People construct anthropological cosmologies (notions about the way the world works), drawing in scientific theories in order to construct models for activities in disciplines, such as politics and psychology. In addition, the arts (literature, film and painting, for example) comment on cosmological ideas and use them to develop plot lines and content. This chapter illustrates examples of such work, arguing that scientific cosmology should be understood as a significant cultural influence.

"This book brings together process and postmodern theologians to reflect on the crucial topic of energy, asking: What are some of the connections between energy and theology? How do ideas about humanity and divinity interrelate with how we live our lives? Its chapters address energy in at least three distinct ways. First, in terms of physics, the discovery of dark energy in 1998 uncovered a mysterious force that seems to be driving the expansion of the universe. Here cosmology converges with theological reflection about the nature and origin of the universe. Second, the social and ecological contexts of energy use and the current energy crisis have theological implications insofar as they are caught up with ultimate human meanings and values. Finally, in more traditional theological terms of divine spiritual energy, we can ask how human conceptions of energy relate to divine energy in terms of creative power. The book sketches out a fresh eco-theology of energy, and proposes new ways to think about the relationship between science and religion."--Publisher's abstract

The topic of this essay is Trotsky's attitude to dialectical philosophy and the natural sciences. We will first summarize the tradition whose mantle Trotsky inherited as it was developed by Engels. We will then consider Trotsky's relationship to the natural sciences. Trotsky, echoing Engels proclamations decades earlier, maintained that a dialectical philosophy is an essential guide to the work of the scientist while at the same time granting the autonomy and freedom of scientists to pursue their research. Trotsky had a lifelong interest in following the developments in the natural sciences. He also had an intuitive grasp of some important developments in the natural sciences that would only come to fruition decades after his death. We will then present a case study of how a dialectical approach to nature can assist in overcoming a crisis that is plaguing contemporary physics. Specifically we will discuss how a dialectical approach to nature can inform cosmology in the 21st century and avoid the philosophical pitfalls and dead-ends that mark the contemporary crisis in physics.

Abstract In this investigation, we examined children's knowledge of cosmology in relation to the shape of the earth and the day‐night cycle. Using explicit questioning involving a choice of alternative answers and 3D models, we carried out a comparison of children aged 4–9 years living in Australia and England. Though Australia and England have a close cultural affinity, there are differences in children's early exposure to cosmological concepts. Australian children who have early instruction in this domain were nearly always significantly in advance of their English counterparts. In general, they most often produced responses compatible with a conception of a round earth on which people can live all over without falling off. We consider coherence and fragmentation in children's knowledge in terms of the timing of culturally transmitted information, and in relation to questioning methods used in previous research that may have underestimated children's competence.

It is shown that the canonical cosmological model of the Universe – Big Bang Theory (BBT) contains unacceptably many unsolvable contradictions either to facts, or logic, or, finally, to physics. They can be categorized into several groups: 1) unacceptable, 2) unsubstantiated, and 3) multivalued. To the unac­ceptable fragments of the concept of BBT it is reasonable to include ideas about: a) "singularity"; b) "cosmological inflation"; c) "infinite death of Nature". Un­reasonable include: a) hypothesis about materiality of space-time, b) recognition of the possibility of their birth and death. Among the interpretations admitting other ones with high probability are: a) the principle of equivalence of the iner­tial and gravitational masses, b) the gravitational redshift, c) the effect of deflec­tion of light near large masses. Among the interpretations, which do not cause doubts, it is possible to note an explanation of the black hole nature, following from Newton's classical theory of gravitation. The source of insoluble contradic­tions of the BBT was Einstein's General Theory of Relativity (GTR), which was created on the basis of strictly deterministic classical mechanics. The underde­velopment of quantum mechanics at the beginning of the twentieth century mis­led the author of the GTR about the equivalence of inertial and gravitational masses. A consequence of this delusion was the erroneous recognition of space-time as material substances. It, in turn, led to a lot of unexplained events in the past of the Universe, and fantastic predictions about its future. But the most striking thing that distinguishes GTR is its violation of the fundamental law of conservation of energy, which cosmological theorists turn a blind eye to. This allows us to consider it a legacy of classical physics of the nineteenth century, unsatisfactory from the perspective of probabilistic physics of the twenty-first century.

The present paper represents an attempt for a very generic string inspired theory of gravitation, based on a stringy action in the teleparallel gravity which includes a specific functional which depends on the scalar field and its kinetic energy, as well as the torsion and boundary terms, embedding also possible effects from the teleparallel Gauss–Bonnet invariants. We focus our study in FLRW cosmology. After we deduce the cosmological equations for the associated generic theory of gravitation, we focus on string inspired couplings which are studied by considering different analytical techniques. The first analytical technique is based on the linear stability theory, by introducing proper dimensionless variables which enables us to study the structure of the phase space and the associated physical effects. In this case we have obtained different cosmological solutions which corresponds to matter and dark energy dominated solutions, achieving a possible transition between matter and dark energy dominated epochs. For each type of cosmological solutions we have discussed the corresponding physical features, attaining viable constraints for the coupling constants due to dynamical effects. The dynamical study of the physical features included also a numerical analysis by fine–tuning the initial conditions deep into the matter era, obtaining possible trajectories for the effective equation of state for specific coupling functions. ; This article is based upon work from CANTATA COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) action CA15117, EU Framework Programme Horizon 2020. SB is supported by Mobilitas Pluss N◦MOBJD423 by the Estonian government. PR acknowledges the Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune, India for granting visiting associateship. MM would like to thank V. Baran for support. SDO is partially supported by Russian Ministry of Science and High Education, project No FEWF-2020-003. The authors thank Tomi S. Koivisto for spotting an important typo in the manuscript.