Is there a universe? Bafflingly, scientific cosmologists, from Einstein to Hawking, have invariably failed to face up to this question. This is all the more curious because some of them have claimed to know that the universe can only be such as prescribed by their theories. Some even claimed that their expertise enables them to create, in theory at least, entire universes literally out of nothing. For their strange attitudes towards the universe, this greatest object of empirical human enquiry, scientists have not been taken to task by philosophers. In this book the author, an historian and philosopher of science, probes into this puzzling state of affairs. He also points out that slighting the question, is there a universe, has serious consequences for science as well as philosophy, to say nothing of theology. Most importantly, he shows that it is possible to answer the question in a convincingly demonstrative way.