cosmology

n. study of the origin and structure of the universe

Cosmology, from the Greek: κοσμολογία (cosmologia, κόσμος (cosmos) order + λογος (logos) word, reason, plan) is the quantitative (usually mathematical) 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.
See more at Wikipedia.org...

(n.)
The science of the world or universe; or a treatise relating to the structure and parts of the system of creation, the elements of bodies, the modifications of material things, the laws of motion, and the order and course of nature.
  

Cosmology The science of the structure, laws, and operations of the universe. "Occult Cosmology may be mastered if the student bears in mind that there is but One Universal Element, which is infinite, unborn, and undying, and that all the rest -- as in the world of phenomena -- are but so many differentiated aspects and transformations . . . of that One, from Cosmical down to microcosmical effects" (SD 1:75).

The study of why the universe is like it is, how it came into being, how it will evolve and how it will end.