One philosophical question is so exquisitely compact, so breathtakingly deep, that it can only be regarded as a miniature masterpiece. It seems that Leibniz was the first to express it in the haunting words “Why is there something rather than nothing?” It is clear that not even “God” could be the answer here, for even if God created all things and even the universe itself, we could still ask why God existed. If the divine existence is pronounced “necessary”, we could ask in turn “Why this necessity?”

Some philosophers find Leibniz's question so frustrating and unanswerable that they declare it to be absurd, a grammatical confusion of some sort. Others, however, have felt its sharp bite, its evocation of the “miracle of existence”. Modern scientists tend to shun this sort of question altogether. They concentrate instead on “how” questions. They trace how one event caused another, or how one body emerged from more primitive ingredients. Teleology, the study of purpose, of ultimate origins and fate, has been expelled from science.

Nonetheless, every human society has struggled to answer questions about the origins of our world, and have believed in what anthropologists call creation myths. From the Judaic story of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis in the Bible, and the Greek myths of Chronus and Zeus, to the Japanese tales collected in the Nihongi, each explains the emergence of our world from a primordial chaos.