From Void to Genesis: Pure Absence, Self-Reference, and the Conditions of Cosmological Intelligibility

From Void to Genesis develops a philosophical argument against the claim that pure absence can function as an intelligible self-grounding origin. The paper defines pure absence as the absence of all entities, relations, laws, distinctions, and conditions of articulation, then argues that any attempt to treat it as explanatory ground requires at least one determinate distinction. If that distinction is internal to pure absence, pure absence is no longer pure; if external, it is not self-grounding; if relational, it already presupposes the articulated structure that pure absence excludes. The paper’s positive thesis is that, if intelligible origin-discourse is pursued, its minimum presupposition is minimal difference: the first irreducible non-identity sufficient for determinacy to arise. Genesis is therefore understood not as a physical event or theological act, but as the first ontological articulation required for anything to count as determinate, relational, or manifest. The paper also situates the void as a limit-concept across Greek, Vedic, Daoist, Buddhist, Jewish mystical, Christian apophatic, Islamic kalām, and phenomenological traditions, and uses Russell, Gödel, Tarski, and Turing as formal analogues for the failure of total self-grounding.