A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing
Softcover edition
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| Author | Lawrence M. Krauss |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject |
Physics Cosmology |
| Genre | Popular science |
| Publisher | Free Press |
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Publication date
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January 10, 2012 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Softcover), e-book |
| Pages | 224 pp |
| ISBN | |
| 523.1/8 | |
| LC Class | QB981 .K773 2012 |
| Preceded by | Quantum Man |
A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing is a non-fiction book by the physicist Lawrence M. Krauss, initially published on January 10, 2012 by Free Press. It discusses modern cosmogony and its implications for the debate about the existence of God. The main theme of the book is how "we have discovered that all signs suggest a universe that could and plausibly did arise from a deeper nothing - involving the absence of space itself - and which may one day return to nothing via processes that may not only be comprehensible but also processes that do not require any external control or direction." This is Krauss's ninth non-fiction book.
The book ends with an afterword by Richard Dawkins in which he compares the potential impact of the book to that of The Origin of Species — a comparison that Krauss himself called "pretentious".Christopher Hitchens had agreed to write a foreword for the book prior to his death but was too ill to complete it. To write the book, Krauss expanded material from a lecture on the cosmological implications of a flat expanding universe he gave to the Richard Dawkins Foundation at the 2009 Atheist Alliance International conference. The book appeared on The New York Times bestseller list on January 29, 2012.
In the New York Times, philosopher of science and physicist David Albert said the book failed to live up to its title, and he criticized Krauss for dismissing concerns about his misuse of the term nothing. Commenting on the philosophical debate sparked by the book, the physicist Sean M. Carroll asked, "Do advances in modern physics and cosmology help us address these underlying questions, of why there is something called the universe at all, and why there are things called 'the laws of physics,' and why those laws seem to take the form of quantum mechanics, and why some particular wave function and Hamiltonian? In a word: no. I don't see how they could."
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