Quantum Cosmology and the Age of the Universe

Abstract

In this article I study how the problem of time of canonical approaches to quantum gravity affects the simple minisuperspace models used in quantum cosmology. I follow some authors who have argued that this issue makes the quantization of general relativity problematic to conclude that the same applies in the case of quantum cosmology. In particular, I argue that temporal structures are lost in quantization and that this is a problem, as they encode part of the empirical content of classical cosmology, such as the age of the universe.