theory ÉTIENNE KLEIN THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE First, a remark: if we are to take the word “origin” seriously, and if we are discussing the origins of the universe, we must envisage the need to describe the transition between the absence of something and the appearance of another thing. Thinking about the origin of the universe requires, first of all, thinking about the absence of a universe. The origin is the transition between a total absence of a universe and the appearance of a first thing. The real question is whether we are capable of conceiving this idea of an absence of universe — that is to say, a kind of nothingness, which Henri Bergson said was a destructive idea in itself, meaning that as soon as you start to think of nothingness, you involuntarily attribute to it properties that it cannot have, since it is nothingness. To think…