Abstract

This paper studies the ontology of the term “ex nihilo” as used by physicists in the context of constructing quantum cosmogenesis models. The meaning of the term “ex nihilo” in the representative approaches of Tryon and Fomin, Zeldovich–Grishchuk, Vilenkin and Hartle–Hawking is indicated and, in each case, the word “nothing” turns out to be actually “something”. We also examine the epistemological status of quantum cosmogony models and show that they are effective theories of the early evolution of the universe at the Planck epoch.
    These theories’ baseline – the low level of emergence – is always a physical reality (e.g. quantum vacuum fluctuations). The high level of emergence is a de Sitter universe. The mechanisms of emergence are quantum processes and lead to a classical world. The multiplicity of these approaches corresponds to the different proposals for quantum mechanism.
    Moreover, the paper undertakes Woleński’s question: “Is physics based on philosophical assumptions?” The question is placed in the context of cosmology understood as the physics of the universe. We argue that if such assumptions cannot be found in the models of quantum cosmogony, neither can they be found in cosmology as such. In the paper it is demonstrated that all models of quantum origin are realizations of the idea of emergence of the classical world from quantum rules acting in the quantum universe, thus a lower state of the emergence cannot be empty at the very beginning.