  In a room with five cosmologists there there may easily be ten theories of
cosmogenesis. Cosmogenesis is a popular topic for speculation because it is
philosophically deep and because such speculations are unlikely to be proven
wrong in the near future. The scenario we present here was intended mainly as a
pedagogical illustration or toy model, but it turns out to possibly have a more
serious and interesting result - a rationale for the spatial flatness of the
Universe. Our basic assumptions are that the cosmological scale factor obeys
the standard Friedman equation of general relativistic cosmology and that the
equation is dominated by a cosmological constant term and a curvature term; the
dynamics of the Universe is then (approximately) the same as that of a tipping
pencil. The scale factor cannot remain at an unstable initial value of zero and
must increase (i.e. the Universe must come into existence) according to the
uncertainty principle, that is due to quantum fluctuations; in other words we
propose in a precise but limited context an answer to Heidegger's famous
question "Why is there something rather than nothing." The mechanism is the
same as that whereby an idealized pencil balanced on its point cannot remain so
and must tip over. If it is moreover assumed that the Universe expands at the
minimum asymptotic rate consistent with the uncertainty principle then the
result is spatial flatness.
