  How special (or not) is the epoch we are living in? What is the appropriate
reference class for embedding the observations made at the present time? How
probable -- or else -- is anything we observe in the fulness of time?
Contemporary cosmology and astrobiology bring those seemingly old-fashioned
philosophical issues back into focus. There are several examples of
contemporary research which use the assumption of typicality in time (or
temporal Copernicanism) explicitly or implicitly, while not truly elaborating
upon the meaning of this assumption. The present paper brings attention to the
underlying and often uncritically accepted assumptions in these cases. It also
aims to defend a more radical position that typicality in time is not -- and
cannot ever be -- well-defined, in contrast to the typicality in space, and the
typicality in various specific parameter spaces. This, of course, does not mean
that we are atypical in time; instead, the notion of typicality in time is
necessarily somewhat vague and restricted. In principle, it could be
strengthened by further defining the relevant context, e.g., by referring to
typicality within the Solar lifetime, or some similar restricting clause.

History and Philosophy of Physics;Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics;Earth and Planetary Astrophysics;Popular Physics