Inflation and the Beginning of the Universe

The question of whether there was a Beginning of the Universe is a truly challenging puzzle for physics and for philosophy. Classical general relativity implies that our observable universe originated in a singularity fifteen billion years ago, but this may be merely a reflection of the incompleteness of the theory. Inflationary theory and quantum cosmology provide our best current attempt to describe these early moments. It has been claimed that the inflationary mechanism renders moot the question of exactly how the universe began. I argue that, on the contrary, if one asks the question of what was in the past, we find ourselves staring directly back at a putative Beginning after all.