"what is cosmology?" we must define the word cosmology first.

It comes from the Greek: 'cosmologia'

(order, orderly making ready, stuffs) + 'logos' (word, reason, plan). It is the study of the Universe in its
totality.

In specific, the 'earth-centric' Ptolemaic system with it's perfect circles and small 'epicycles'
was the accepted theory to explain the motion of the divine bodies. In the picture above,
the Earth is at the centre with the Sun, Moon and planets all revolving around Earth.

It was the best theory until Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo proposed a 'sun-centric' system
in the 16th century. Although Greek, Indian and Muslim scholars expressed the sun-centric
theory centuries before Copernicus, his recurrence that the Sun, rather than the Earth, is at
the center of the solar system is considered among the most vital milestones in the history
of current astronomy.

Newton's Cosmology

Through Isaac Newton's 1687 journal of 'Principia Mathematica', the problem of the motion
of the divine bodies was resolved. Newton delivered a physical tool for Kepler's laws of
planetary motion. His law of universal gravitation determined the differences affected by
gravitational interaction between the planets in the former systems.

Einstein's Cosmology

Scientific cosmology actually introduced in 1917, when Albert Einstein's issued the final
change to his theory of gravity in the paper 'Cosmological Considerations of the General
Theory of Relativity'. This paper encouraged early cosmologists such as Willem de Sitter,
Karl Schwarzschild and Arthur Eddington to search the astronomical significances of the
theory of relativity.

The Golden Age of Cosmology

Latest explanations made by the COBE and WMAP satellites identifying and precisely
measuring this background radiation have effectively, converted cosmology from a highly
hypothetical science into a analytical science. This has directed many to raise to new times
as the "golden age of cosmology".