Eternal Inflation and the Hermeneutics of the Infinite: Interpreting Cosmology at the Edge of Meaning

Article
Open Access
by Heitor Matallo Junior1
1 Federal University of Piaui (Teresina, Pi, Brazil)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29202/phil-cosm/36/7
Received: 28 October 2025 / Accepted: 30 December 2025 / Published: 1 February 2026

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Abstract

The theory of eternal inflation — according to which our observable universe is just one bubble within an endlessly self-replicating multiverse — presents not only a physical but also a hermeneutic challenge. It describes a cosmos that surpasses the possibility of complete representation, where every act of measurement remains limited by a local horizon, and prediction dissolves into contingency. The infinity it introduces is not numeric but interpretive: an open proliferation of possible worlds and meanings that exceeds the conceptual reach of the observer. This article argues that eternal inflation marks a crucial moment in the modern philosophical history of science, where cosmology confronts its own limits of comprehensibility. Drawing on hermeneutic theory — from Gadamer’s horizon of understanding to Cassirer’s symbolic forms — it explores how cosmological formalism becomes an epistemology of the infinite, creating models that are mathematically consistent yet semantically unstable. At this point, cosmology becomes a self-reflective hermeneutics: a discipline interpreting the impossibility of its own closure. The goal is not to dissolve the tension between mathematics and meaning, but to see that tension as the condition of knowledge today — a universe that interprets faster than it can be understood.

Keywords: Eternal inflation; multiverse; quantum cosmology; hermeneutics; epistemology of physics.

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Matallo Jr, Heitor (2026) Eternal Inflation and the Hermeneutics of the Infinite: Interpreting Cosmology at the Edge of Meaning. Philosophy and Cosmology, Volume 36, 176-192. https://doi.org/10.29202/phil-cosm/36/7
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