Modern cosmology often presents itself as the most triumphant extension of physics: a discipline that has traced the history of the universe from fractions of a second after the Big Bang to the formation of galaxies, stars and planets. Yet beneath this empirical success lies a persistent and unavoidable metaphysical tension.

This is the tension between understanding the universe as a timeless structure governed by invariant laws; as opposed to a universe understood as an unfolding process shaped by time, change and history. Is the universe a 'complete being' or is it still 'becoming'?

If the universe is a 'complete being', unchanging and stable, there can be certainty regarding the laws of physics upon which everything operates. But if it is in the process of 'becoming', its shape, mechanism and the very firmament of its structure may be undergoing change, which would render all discovered laws of physics temporary and revisable.

At first glance, equations of physics that describe spacetime curvature, models that explain cosmic expansion, and simulations that reproduce large-scale structure ensure the triumphal success of physical cosmology. However, this confidence dissolves once we ask more fundamental questions: What is time in cosmology? What does it mean for the universe to "begin"? Are laws prior to the universe, or emergent within it? These are not technical questions resolvable by better instruments or more math. They are questions that question the very conceptual framework through which physics itself becomes intelligible — they are questions of metaphysics.

This tension between Being and Becoming was recorded in early Greek philosophy. Parmenides........

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