In an attempt at answering these questions in this work, we have to leave the territory of physical cosmology and enter the field of philosophy. We shall consider the properties of the universe on the four levels: the level of facts obtained from direct astronomical observations by physical methods, the classical and quantum theories of Big Bang and the metaphysical level. The latter lead to a certain general model of reality and this model can provide answers to the fundamental existential questions. Moreover, the model offers a holistic and consistent view of the reality, in full agreement with contemporary physics.  However, because astronomically large numbers appear rather a lot, the power notation has been used: for instance a milliard (american - billion) seconds is written as 10⁹ s, and one millionth fraction of a meter is 10^-6 m.  One of the most profound questions of science is that about the origin, evolution and structure of the universe. It has been for ages the subject of interest of philosophers and theologians, but the answer was far beyond science. Only the rapid development of sciences in the 20^th century has made it possible to attempt at answering it in a consistent and general way. The 20^th century witnessed the birth of a new field of science – cosmology (known also as physical cosmology) – concerned with the study of the universe as a whole. Unfortunately, cosmology, which is a science based on empirical and mathematical methodology of physics, cannot provide answers to such fundamental questions as: Is there any sense in the existence of the universe? What was before the universe came into being? Why is the universe rational? What is the man’s position in the universe?

Quantum cosmology explains the emergence of the universe as a spontaneous creation from ‘nothing’, however, this notion in the quantum cosmology is not the equivalent of the common meaning. The explanation assumes that from the very beginning there were quantum theory principles admitting spontaneous appearance of a fluctuation from which after a few milliard years the cosmos as we know it today formed. Moreover, the basis for everything should have been the omnipresent world of mathematics and logic. Thus, the fundamentals of quantum cosmology need the developed structure of rationality, which we will look for in the following. When constructing technical devices man very often, more or less deliberately, copies the solutions found in nature. In particular we have recently witnessed a great development of devices simulating the reality, among them digital devices creating the so-called virtual reality. The principle of operation of these devices is the only possible simulation of reality, so the key assumption is that the natural physical reality functions on similar principles as the devices creating virtual reality. In other words, we assume that the constructors of devices creating virtual reality unconsciously copied nature. The devices usually are connected to two people wearing special uniforms responding to the movements of their bodies and equipped with a microphone, stereoscopic monitors and headphones generating spatial sound field. The uniforms are connected to a computer and through a communication system supply the computer with data on the position of their bodies and sound information. The computer by means of these uniforms passes the appropriate visual and sound information the people wearing them. Appropriate computer programming makes the people believe that they are in a certain virtual reality different from that in which they actually are. For instance the computer can give them the impression that they are fencing while in reality they are far from each other.

The control of access to consciousness is inherently metacognitive. That is, it requires knowledge about our ownmental functioning, and about the material that is to be selected or rejected. Voluntary attention would seem to require conscious metacognition, or the ability to have conscious access to and control over the different things that can become conscious.  Metacognition is a major topic in its own right, one we can only touch on here. It is widely believed that knowledge of one's own performance is required for successful learning. Among students in school, good learners continually monitor their own progress; poor learners seem to avoid doing so, as if fearing that the results might be too awful to contemplate. But by avoiding conscious knowledge of results, they lose the ability to guide their own learning in the most effective way.  We have previously maintained that consciousness is involved especially in the learning of new things, those that demand more adaptation. If that is so, then attention (as metacognitive control of consciousness) seems to be necessary for voluntary, purposeful learning.  Many of the most important uses of consciousness are metacognitive. Normal access to Short Term Memory involves metacognitive control of retrieval, rehearsal, and report. Long Term Memory retrieval is equally metacognitive. One cannot know consciously why or how one did something in the past without metacognitive access. One cannot deliberately repeat an action by evoking its controlling goal image without metacognition, nor can one construct a reasonably accurate and acceptable self concept without extensive metacognitive operations. All these functions require sophisticated, and partly conscious, metacognitive access and control, which inevitably becomes a major theme of this book from here on. One of our main concerns in this chapter is the role of conscious metacognition in voluntary attention.  One cannot choose consciously between two alternative conscious topics without anticipating something about the alternatives. That is, one must represent to oneself what is to be gained by watching the football game on television rather than reading an interesting book.

There are never in nature two beings which are perfectly alike and in which it would not be possible to find a difference that is internal or founded upon an intrinsic denomination. (Leibniz, 1714, §9.) In due course we shall come across two possible candidates for what Leibniz called intrinsic denominations. But there have been major changes in logic since Leibniz`s time, and a purely metaphysical theory of substance is unlikely to command much assent today: we shall and little reason to plump for either of them. There is a widespread view that, apart from the trivialization of the PII whereupon identity is made out in terms of predicates that themselves involve identity, there are straightforward exceptions to every version of this principle. It is a mistaken view; as we shall see, there is a natural analysis of identity available for any formal language that is immune to the usual counter-examples; the principle is not, I hold, in any difficulties from this quarter. The problem, rather, concerns the justification for the PII - why embrace such a principle? What is wrong with identity taken as primitive? Leibniz`s principles made for an elegant and coherent philosophy. In part meta- physical, in part methodological, they addressed fundamental questions - in the treatment of symmetry, in the relationship of physics to mathematics, in logic - that are if anything even more pressing today than they were in Leibniz`s time. As I shall read them, they also expressed a distinctive and uncompromising form of realism, a commitment to the adequacy of purely descriptive concepts. This doctrine has been called semantic universalism by van Fraassen, and the generalist picture by O.Leary-Hawthorne and Cover: it will become clearer in due course just what it entails. There are two basic  principles that will be consider: the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) and the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles (PII). Analysis and explanation are to proceed without any limits. The perspective is impersonal: any epistemological limitation, to do with our human situation or perceptual apparatus, is to be viewed as a purely practical matter, rejecting no fundamental constraint. This puts in place a part of the generalist picture. The PSR clearly promotes the use of mathematical concepts in physics.

The quantum mechanical description of an assembly of particles of the same type ( a fermion gas, for example) includes nothing to individuate or differentiate these particles from each other. One option was to postulate  individuating factors (thisness, haecceity) which do not enter the quantum state -- an empirically superfluous hidden variable. Another option was to say that this very question reveals an inadequacy: the proper formulation will be in terms of fields, denying the existence of individual or individuatable particles. A still further option was deny the identity of indiscernibles, and say that these particles are distinct without being in any way different. This 'problem of identical particles' and the options it allows for interpretation can be used as paradigm to motivate Ladyman's exploration, following Weyl, of invariance as definitive clue to structure. In the above 'identical particle' debate, the salient scientific fact is that the quantum mechanical state is permutation invariant. This may be glossed as : only those features which are permutation invariant belong to structure -- if there are other features they belong to 'content'. Any such other features there may be characterize what bears that structure, in a way which goes beyond what science describes. Reading the scientists who write about this, we certainly see ample precedent for this gloss, though it remains generally quite unclear which options are being taken up. Thus Weyl: Objectivity means invariance with respect to the group of automorphisms James Ladyman (1998a, 1998b) argues that the guiding idea for structural realism was equivocal between two positions. These positions are sharpened forms of what I called reification and radical structuralism. Ladyman sharpens these into: an epistemological position: 'ordinary' scientific realism plus the view that all we can come to know (have reason to believe, can hypothesize?) about is the structure of nature alone. An ontological position: that the structure of nature described by scientific theories is really -- properly understood -- all there is to nature. The former requires that sense be made of two dichotomies: epistemic dichotomy: what we have epistemic access to (can come to know, can theorize about in a scientifically significant way) and what we have no such access to. The structure of nature and those features which are not structure (matter or content) We certainly have examples of views for which we can draw such distinctions.  Which topic and it consequences Weyl places in historical perspective: the founders of modern science [...] discarded the sense qualities, on account of their subjectivity, as building material of the objective world which our perceptions reflect.