I have come to notice that Stephen Hawking's statements that there is nothing "south of the South Pole" means that there is no "limit" of "the act of creation". He says we can speak of time in the past, take away the future half, then take away another half, and go on to infinity this way (Zeno?). But there is no limit it is approaching. It blurs out into the continuous, into the foggy past

1) how do we explain this mathematically

2) how do we explain this philosophically.

I can't answer 1 and was actually looking for help with it. But 2 is a subject I read on. I propose looking at Hawking's thesis through the eyes of Buddhist philosophy and Schopenhauer. If there can be a "thought without a thinker" and "action without an actor" , as Buddhist say, then the world can be seen as spontaneous action. Or pure "will without a willer". Not only does Schopenhauer lend support to these ideas, Neitchsze does as well. I believe their philosophies can add some interesting angles to cosmological theories about wave functions at the beginning of the universe. There is much interesting work to be done in this field. Stephen Hawking's last book was criticized politely by Roger Penrose, who proposes other alternatives. Sean Carroll works in this field as well..