  This article presents a brief review of some historical and philosophical
aspects of Einstein's 1917 paper 'Cosmological Considerations in the General
Theory of Relativity', a landmark work that denoted the starting point of
modern theoretical cosmology. Our presentation includes a discussion of
Einstein's early views of issues such as the relativity of inertia, the
curvature of space and the cosmological constant. Particular attention is paid
to lesser-known aspects of Einstein's paper such as his failure to test his
model against observation, his failure to consider the stability of the model
and a slight mathematical confusion concerning the introduction of the
cosmological constant term. Taken in conjunction with his later cosmological
works, we find that Einstein's approach to cosmology was characterized by a
pragmatic search for the simplest model of the universe that was consistent
with the principles of relativity and with contemporaneous astronomical
observation.
