Cosmology (from Greek κοσμολογία - κόσμος, kosmos, "universe"; and -λογία, -logia, "study") is study of the Universe in its totality, and by extension, humanity's place in it. Though the word cosmology is recent (first used in 1730 in Christian Wolff's Cosmologia Generalis), study of the Universe has a long history involving science, philosophy, esotericism, and religion. In recent times, physics and astrophysics have to play a central role in shaping the understanding of the universe through scientific observation and experiment; or what is known as physical cosmology shaped through both mathematics and observation in the analysis of the whole universe.

In other words, in this discipline, which focuses on the universe as it exists on the largest scale and at the earliest moments, is generally understood to begin with the big bang (possibly combined with cosmic inflation) – an expansion of space from which the Universe itself is thought to have emerged ~13.7±0.2×109 (13.7 billion) years ago. From its violent beginnings and until its various speculative ends, cosmologists propose that the history of the Universe has been governed entirely by physical laws. Theories of an impersonal universe governed by physical laws were first proposed by Roger Bacon, a somewhat persecuted member of the Catholic Church.

Between the domains of religion and science, stands the philosophical perspective of metaphysical cosmology. This ancient field of study seeks to draw intuitive conclusions about the nature of the universe, man, god and/or their relationships based on the extension of some set of presumed facts borrowed from spiritual experience and/or observation. But metaphysical cosmology has also been observed as the placing of man in the universe in relationship to all other entities.

This is demonstrated by the observation made by Marcus Aurelius of a man's place in that relationship: "He who does not know what the world is does not know where he is, and he who does not know for what purpose the world exists, does not know who he is, nor what the world is."[citation needed] This is the purpose of the ancient metaphysical cosmology. However, Stoicism rejected Aristotle's theory of universals as being "in the things themselves," calling them "figments of the mind." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy adopting the concept of universals as being "concepts," and therefore of the mind, and therefore controllable by free will. Thus, we get the analysis of Aurelius' that the nature of the universe is not from "intuition," but from a free-will, conceptual understanding of the nature of the universe.[original research?]

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