A new perspective on Einstein's philosophy of cosmology

The recent discovery that Einstein once attempted - and quickly abandoned - a steady-state model of the expanding universe sheds new light on his philosophical journey from static to dynamic cosmologies.Comment: Revised book chapter. To be published in 'The Philosophy of Cosmology:Foundations and Perspectives'. Eds J.Silk and J.Barrow (Cambridge University Press

Historical Aspects of Post-1850 Cosmology

Cosmology as an exact physical science is of new date, but it has long roots in the past. This essay is concerned with four important themes in the history of cosmological thought which, if taken together, offer a fairly comprehensive account of some of the key developments that have led to the modern understanding of the universe. Apart from the first section, dealing with early views of curved space, it focuses on mainstream cosmology from the expanding universe about 1930 to the emergence of the standard big bang model in the 1960s. This development includes theories we would not today consider "mainstream," such as the steady state model of the universe. The last section outlines what might be called the prehistory of the concept of dark energy, that is, ideas that were discussed before dark energy was actually inferred from supernovae observations in the late 1990s.Comment: 22 pages; Lectures at XVIII Special Courses at Observatorio Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, October 2013. AIP Proceedings (in press