When the author's first visit to the Creation appeared more than a decade ago, it caused an immediate storm, with reactions ranging from high admiration to contempt. Regarded as a classic, and widely quoted, it has continued to arouse interest. Here now is his Creation Revisited, which retains the unsettling mixture of reductionist attitude and poetic style of the earlier work. Written for a wide readership, it is an engrossing exploration of the truly great questions of existence, such as why there are three dimension of space, why there is only one direction of time, how matter can emerge from nothing , and - what many regard as beyond our grasp - whether it is possible to speculate scientifically on the events that preceded the creation. Peter Atkins approaches these and other fundamental questions on the nature of the universe, and how it came into being without external intervention, with the view that there is nothing that cannot be understood. The path to our understanding is to peel away appearances to expose a core, a core which is always of unsurpassed simplicity. This book is intended for all readers with an interest in the nature of the Universe and the other great questions of existence.