Disney's attitude is not new. I disagree with him, and with his idea of what cosmology is & should be doing. I think cosmology has been extremely successful, and is as valid as any other science. This does not mean that I think modern cosmologists are infallible, or bound to be right. But I strongly disagree with Disney's implicit assumption that cosmologists are morons.

1. The Case Against Cosmology, M.J. Disney, General Relativity and Gravitation 32(6): 1125-1134, June 2000
   Abstract: It is argued that some of the recent claims for cosmology are grossly overblown. Cosmology rests on a very small database: it suffers from many fundamental difficulties as a science (if it is a science at all) whilst observations of distant phenomena are difficult to make and harder to interpret. It is suggested that cosmological inferences should be tentatively made and sceptically received.
   
2. Laudatores Temporis Acti, or Why Cosmology is Alive and Well -- A Reply to Disney Milan M. Cirkovic, General Relativity and Gravitation 34: 119-130, February 2002
   Abstract: A recent criticism of cosmological methodology and achievements by Disney (2000) is assessed. Some historical and epistemological fallacies in the said article have been highlighted. It is shown that -- both empirically and epistemologically -- modern cosmology lies on sounder foundations than it is portrayed. A brief historical account demonstrates that this form of unsatisfaction with cosmology has had a long tradition, and rather meagre results in the course of the XX century.
   
3. A Sober Assessment of Cosmology at the New Millennium, Michael S. Turner, The Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 113(784): 653-657, June 2001
   Extract: Before I begin my sober assessment of cosmology, let me discuss the mission statement for the enterprise. As one might expect, this is where the divergence of views often begins. By my definition, cosmology is the scientific quest to understand the most salient features of the universe in which we live. Since most of the history of the universe is uninteresting thermal equilibrium, the interesting moments, those rare departures from thermal boringness which lead to notable features today, are a manageable set.
   
   Others take a much different view. As an extreme example consider Disney (2000), who defines cosmology as the quest to understand the entire spacetime history of the universe (in response to Disney, see Peebles 2000). Not surprisingly, he concludes that the achievements of cosmologists have been minimal and that cosmology may not be a science at all. While more than two decades ago the relativist Ellis (1975) educated us all on the impossibility of Disney's goal — we are absolutely limited in our knowledge of the universe by our past light cone — that has not prevented significant progress toward understanding how the basic features of our portion of the universe came about as well as their implications for the universe as a whole.
   
4. The Mathematical Universe, Max Tegmark, eprint arXiv:0704.0646
   Abstract: I explore physics implications of the External Reality Hypothesis (ERH) that there exists an external physical reality completely independent of us humans. I argue that with a sufficiently broad definition of mathematics, it implies the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH) that our physical world is an abstract mathematical structure. I discuss various implications of the ERH and MUH, ranging from standard physics topics like symmetries, irreducible representations, units, free parameters and initial conditions to broader issues like consciousness, parallel universes and Godel incompleteness. I hypothesize that only computable and decidable (in Godel's sense) structures exist, which alleviates the cosmological measure problem and help explain why our physical laws appear so simple. I also comment on the intimate relation between mathematical structures, computations, simulations and physical systems.

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