Praise Caleb Scharf, writing in
Nature, said that "it would be easy for this remarkable story to revel in self-congratulation, but Krauss steers it soberly and with grace".
Ray Jayawardhana, Canada Research Chair in observational astrophysics at the
University of Toronto, wrote for
The Globe and Mail that Krauss "delivers a spirited, fast-paced romp through modern cosmology and its strong underpinnings in astronomical observations and particle physics theory" and that he "makes a persuasive case that the ultimate question of cosmic origin – how something, namely the universe, could arise from nothing – belongs in the realm of science rather than theology or philosophy". In
New Scientist,
Michael Brooks wrote, "Krauss will be preaching only to the converted. That said, we should be happy to be preached to so intelligently. The same can't be said about the Dawkins afterword, which is both superfluous and silly."
Critique George Ellis, in an interview in
Scientific American, said that "Krauss does not address why the laws of physics exist, why they have the form they have, or in what kind of manifestation they existed before the universe existed (which he must believe if he believes they brought the universe into existence). Who or what dreamt up
symmetry principles,
Lagrangians, specific symmetry groups,
gauge theories, and so on? He does not begin to answer these questions." He criticized the philosophical viewpoint of the book, saying "It's very ironic when he says philosophy is
bunk and then himself engages in this kind of attempt at philosophy." In
The New York Times,
philosopher of science and physicist
David Albert said the book failed to live up to its title; he said Krauss dismissed concerns about what Albert calls his misuse of the term
nothing, since if matter comes from
relativistic quantum fields, the question becomes where did those fields come from, which Krauss does not discuss. The Albert critique was reported on in multiple venues. 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." ==See also==