Is cosmology a historical science?

To explain the formation and the evolution of the Universe, cosmology settles universal laws. In this respect, cosmology belongs to the category of the nomothetic sciences, which write and think in mathematics. But cosmology is also akin to the historical sciences; like archaeology, geology or the biology of evolution, cosmology infers history from the vestiges of the past; moreover, it is not an experimental but an observational science. Due to this ambivalence, cosmology confronts divergent epistemological options. Nomothetic and historical sciences use indeed different, even opposite conceptions of such fundamental notions as time, causality and chance. Is it possible to make the history of the Universe intelligible without referring to the narrative conception of history congruent with the course of the historical world?.