Cosmology concerns the nature and structure of the observable universe. At this point in time, philosophy has nothing to contribute to cosmology. Only the methods of the physical sciences are capable of yielding information about the nature and structure of the observable universe that is based on anything other than conjecture or speculation. Put another way, the physical sciences now provide the only basis for forming apparently justified apparently true beliefs about the observable universe. Indeed, philosophy only had anything to contribute to our understanding of the observable universe when it was not distinguished from science, and only because it included what are now considered the methods of the physical sciences within its ambit.      

The observable universe as described by the physical sciences features four fundamental forces or interactions (gravitation, electromagnetism, and the weak and strong nuclear forces); two basic classes of elementary particles, fermions and bosons—with 24 total elementary fermions including leptons, quarks, antileptons, and antiquarks, and 5 elementary bosons (a possible sixth, the graviton, remains hypothetical only) including both gauge or vector and Higgs or scalar varieties; and 26 or so fundamental dimensionless constants. According to the theory of special relativity, the laws of physics are invariant in all inertial frames of reference and yet the speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers. According to general relativity, gravity is a geometric phenomenon resulting from the curvature of space and time. The laws of classical mechanics still provide highly accurate results for objects that are not extremely small or extremely massive and for velocities not approaching the speed of light. Ample evidence shows that the universe expanded from a high-density, high-temperature state starting about 13.8 billion years ago, though all attempts to explain how or if the universe began or what state it was in “before” that expansion began—if it is even possible to speak of a state that existed “before” time—are speculative.

Regarding the world of living things, according to the theory of evolution by natural selection heritable characteristics vary among populations of organisms over successive generations as a result of genetic variation brought about by genomic mutations and other processes. Natural selection and genetic drift then interact with these processes that bring about genetic variation, resulting in some characteristics becoming more common and others less common among given populations of organisms. Eventually these processes result in distinct populations of organisms evolving into different species. Now, the theory of evolution does not provide an account as to how or why life came about in the first place, nor does it purport to do so. Any attempt to explain the origins of life is purely conjectural, as there is no evidence either way. As such, any belief about the origins of life is guaranteed not to be apparently justified or apparently true.