How does the Cosmos create itself?

Howard Bloom’s 555-page thesis, though superficially tedious, tries to answer one simple question: How does a godless cosmos create itself? Bloom uses “godless” but neither the book nor this article is a treatise on atheism. A better way to phrase the question is: How is there something rather than nothing? What are the laws that govern the creation of everything? Are they infinitely as complex as the products of the Universe, or might they instead be surprisingly simple?

1. Repetition.