Fecund universes
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The fecund universes theory of cosmology advanced by Lee Smolin suggests that the rules of biology apply on the grandest scales. (It is also often, somewhat inaptly, referred to as "cosmological natural selection".) It is summarized in his book aimed at a lay audience, The Life of the Cosmos (ISBN 0-19-510837-X).
In this view, a collapsing black hole causes the emergence of a new universe on the "other side", whose fundamental constant parameters (speed of light, Planck length and so forth) may differ slightly from those of the universe where the black hole collapsed. Each universe therefore gives rise to as many new universes as it has black holes. (Thus the theory contains the evolutionary ideas of "reproduction" and "mutation" of universes, but has no analogue of natural selection.)
If this theory is correct, the odds strongly favor this universe being not the first to ever exist, but a descendant of many that have existed through time. And, since a universe with conditions favoring production of many 'child' universes, i.e. favoring black hole creation, would have many more 'children' than one that did not, it is reasonable to expect a late universe to have 'evolved' towards conditions favoring black holes.
Some critics have claimed that this theory is not falsifiable, and therefore unscientific. By definition, existence of "other universes" cannot be verified by scientific tools working within the time-space and physics laws of our universe. Smolin's counter-argument is that an observation of very many black holes in the known universe would be evidence for this view, while if black holes are rare or unusual, it would be quite strong evidence against; and since the hypothesized evolutionary process would be expected to find local maxima in fecundity, were a small change in cosmological parameters found to give rise to a universe favoring black hole production more than ours, this too would provide evidence against the theory.
Louis Crane has proposed a meduso-anthropic principle, which suggests that universes could be fine-tuned for life by intelligent beings themselves manufacturing new universes. He argues that the destiny of highly evolved intelligence (perhaps our distant progeny) is to infuse the entire universe with life (similar to what Ray Kurzweil proposed in The Singularity is Near, eventually to accomplish the ultimate feat of cosmic reproduction by spawning one or more “baby universes,” which will themselves be endowed with life generating properties.
Smolin's fecund universes theory was the subject of a science fiction short story by David Brin, entitled "What Continues, What Fails ...", and was a common theme in Stephen Baxter's novel Manifold: Time and the rest of the manifold trilogy.
