Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz wrote: "Why is there something rather than nothing? The sufficient reason ... is found in a substance which ... is a necessary being bearing the reason for its existence within itself."[33] Philosopher of physics Dean Rickles has argued that numbers and mathematics (or their underlying laws) may necessarily exist.[34][35] (Particles can emerge from nothing under the effects of quantum physics and possibly under other physical laws that may have existed at the start of the Big Bang.)