Explanations that Transform The World (Penguin Press Science)

David Deutsch fails to deliver a complete work to succeed his magnificent work, "The Fabric of Reality." I really enjoyed the first 121 pages or so, but when undetected, uncorrected errors creep in for no good reason, one wonders just how serious the author takes his own premise. As such, the remainder of the book became a chore to finish. A big disappointment to a promising start.

INTRIGUING AND NICELY WRITTEN, BUT TAKE YOUR TIME AND CHECK REFERENCES. ONLY A QUARTER OF THE WAY THROUGH IT BUT HAVE ORDERED IT FOR SON AND ALSO ONE OF POPPER'S BOOK. SO, IF NOTHING ELSE, IT IS VERY STIMULATING. NOT SURE ABOUT MULTI-UNIVERSES THOUGH.

JIM BABB

It takes disparate topics and unites them in one powerful worldview. Topics range from physics and philosophy to voting systems and alphabets to optimism and objective aesthetics to evolution and creationism, and even morality. Each topic has enlightening individual analysis, but even better than that is the worldview behind the analysis, which comes out as one reads the entire book. The Beginning of Infinity is about a way of thinking. It is the most rational way of thinking ever to be explained.

You might think that David Deutsch is a genius (and he is) and that therefore his way of thinking won't work for you. That is not the case. His worldview can help anyone with any topic. It's not equally useful for all fields -- it fares better with important topics -- but it always has a surprisingly large amount of relevance and use. And unlike many philosophers who want to sound impressive, Deutsch has made a concerted effort to write clearly and accessibly. This isn't a book written only for the initiated.

I've identified three main themes which I think best describe the most important message of the book.

The first theme is the titular one. Like Deutsch's previous book, chapters conclude with short summaries and terminology sections. But he's got a new section too: the meanings of the beginning of infinity encountered in the previous chapter. So what kind of infinity is Deutsch concerned with? Primarily progress. Humans are capable of an infinite amount of progress. We can improve things without limit, and learn without limit. This covers not just material improvement but also moral improvement. Some impressive types of potential progress discussed in the book include building space stations in deep space, immortality and creating a more open, tolerant and free society.

The second theme, which is the most fundamental, is epistemological. Epistemology is the study of knowledge. Deutsch discusses issues like how we learn, and the correct and effective ways of thinking. Insights from this field, such as how to be rational, the inevitability of mistakes and the need to be able to correct mistakes (rather than rely on avoiding them all in the first place) underlie everything else. For example, Deutsch proposes an epistemological principle as the most important moral idea. I won't keep you in suspense: it is the moral imperative not to destroy the means of correcting mistakes. But if you want to fully understand what this means you'll have to read the book!

The third theme, which is prevalent without usually being stated explicitly, is liberalism in its original, not left-wing, meaning. Liberalism draws on the other two themes. It is about organizing society to allow for human progress, rational lifestyles, knowledge creation, and the correcting of mistakes. To do this its biggest principle is not to approach conflicts and disagreements with the use of force because force does not discover the truth of the matter and everyone should seek to figure out the truth and do that rather than taking a might makes right approach. Liberalism is the philosophy of open societies and the only one capable of supporting unlimited progress. In contrast to open societies, Deutsch also discusses static societies which do not make progress. He explains how they will eventually fail and cease to exist because there are always new and unforeseeable problems which they cannot adapt to. Only a liberal society which moves forward has the means of dealing with the unknown problems the future holds.

There is a lot to love about The Beginning of Infinity. If you are narrowly interested in physics you should read it for the chapter explaining what the multiverse is like -- and when you do you may also be challenged by the chapter on bad philosophies of science and intrigued by the chapter on the reality of abstractions. If you are only interested in math and computation, you'll want to read the chapter on AI, but you'll also enjoy the chapter about the concept of infinity. If you're an artist you'll appreciate the discussion of the beauty of flowers, and the wit of the Socratic dialog. Whatever the case may be, the philosophy running throughout has universal interest.

I bought this book with high hopes of reading the wisdom of an eminent quantum physicist, but found it disappointing in many ways. It is so contradictory on some points that, were it a mechanical device, one might expect it to burst into flames in one's hands, due to its own self destruction.

First, the good parts. DD serves up a lot of highly opinionated philosophy, so it'll give you a good mental workout. He's a devout Popperian, so he debunks many other ideas, including empiricism, induction, analogy, and so on, favoring a model of knowledge creation solely due to conjectures and criticism. And he takes this much further, holding that traditions of criticism are what make societies great and governments wise.

Second, he provides an explanation of quantum mechanics solely in terms of fungibility and the Everett Many Worlds theory, which he admits very few physicists accept. This too is fascinating. When's the last time you read a spirited, in depth presentation and defense of Many Worlds? A treat for thinkers.

However, just when you'd think he'd wrap up with a triumphant recap of how great a job Many Worlds and fungibility do of explaining QM, he drops it and moves on. Another reader said he got it on the second pass. Good for them.

After this the book jumps off the deep end, becoming a poorly researched discussion of how Dawkins' memes can explain all of society and culture - seemingly trying to claim social explanatory power for physics, but failing, since it's at a higher level of emergence (hint: try cybernetics) than he can reach.

Analogies are worthless -- he hasn't read the literature on analogy.

Induction doesn't exist -- what was Fleming doing when he saw the ring of dead bacteria around the green mold? He wasn't looking for it, and had no conjecture in mind.

UFOs and the paranormal don't exist - he bemoans the eminent scientists who have allowed themselves to be deceived by new age conjurers.

He often refers to intelligent, highly advanced, extraterrestrials, but only as hypotheticals in astrophysics problems, not as something actual that one might be concerned about.

Those who think the collapse of the World Trade Center, which was designed to withstand an aircraft collision, was a conspiracy are terribly deluded.

But his most infuriating point, which merits the title of this review, is where he condemns memes that persist by limiting criticism of themselves, by which he means the old fashioned, pre-Enlightenment memes of Medieval "authority," but unwittingly he's referring to himself, at all the points where he condemns psychic phenomena as not existing, despite strong and growing empirical evidence. If anything will condemn us to limited future growth, it will be denial of actual data.

The used book price of $6 should have been a tip off. If you like philosophy this can be a good mental workout, but after a while it turns into how many reasoning errors can you spot? And for the casual reader, I'd say forget it.

thoughtful writing, not preachy...the ultimate perhaps in human optimism. I read the kindle edition with irritating typos, kerning collisions, and other formatting errors. I hope it didn't go into print this way. high quality content like this deserves better production standards.

I stumbled across this book by accident, and it changed my life. It is the product of a beautiful mind which has thought deeply about topics that matter in an attempt to understand the world, and who as fortunate will have it, is able to communicate his findings to the rest of us.

There are three different way
1. In some ways this books articulates things I have somewhere deep in my mind suspected, but had never been able to articulate. For example how the author describes the inevitable results of competition in parliamentary systems.
2. It other ways the book gives a new perspective on something I have known about for a long time, that when described seemed so obvious it's hard to imagine I ever saw it differently. For example on how the author views knowledge and knowledge creation.
3. And in some ways the author introduces me to completely new ideas I have never thought about, but which when known influences many, many other ideas. For example the importance of universal systems, like universal computation. (And why the essence of people is that we are universal explainers)
4. And lastly, the author sometimes explain ideas I have struggled long to understand, but finally doing it in a way that makes sense giving me profound feelings of insight. For example on the multiverse or postmodernism.

The book is profoundly hopeful. In so many of these topics, I was filled with dread and fear, as I only saw miserable explanations. With this book, I filled my intellectual arsenal with reasons to look at the world with hope again. Whether it be how to view human beings, or the lucid description of why all problems can be solved, I am left feeling that the world is more beautiful than I thought before.

While I was reading it and talked to friends about the content, I was several times told things like "I love the way you think", "You have a beautiful mind". Of course I couldn't take responsibility for being the source of the ideas. But I did feel like it was true, my thoughts did become more meaningful and beautiful having read this book. And I strongly urge you to do the same.

David Deutsch presents some of the most compelling, life-changing ideas that I have ever encountered. David extends much of Karl Popper's work, which is arguably the best epistemological (knowledge generation) model that we have to date. Specifically, Knowledge is an iterative process akin to evolution. Putative knowledge is conjectured, and unfit knowledge is rejected away. David discusses what makes a good conjecture (hard-to-vary, explanatory). David also draws some profound conclusions (e.g. all problems are solvable with the right knowledge, humans are the only beings capable of using explanatory knowledge, the current prosperity stems from the knowledge generation process). David also presents some profound ideas about Artificial Intelligence, orthogonal to any other argument I've heard. He also explains the multiverse theory in the most intuitive manner I've experienced.

This is a book that should be as regarded as some of the best nonfiction to date (e.g. Sapiens, The Better Angels of Our Nature). The text drips with such profundity that I found myself asking for David to slow down and explain in more detail multiple times throughout. I can recommend no other book higher to scientifically-minded individuals.

The writing could be much better. The editor seemed to be asleep at the wheel multiple times throughout the book. I found myself rereading passages multiple times because the writing wasn't clear enough. I also agree that the latter third of the book is weaker and less compelling. Nonetheless, I look forward to reading this multiple times over and letting it continue to change the way I think about my career and life goals.

I became interested in reading more from David Deutsch after reading a very thought provoking article (http://goo.gl/kGqzKz) in Aeon Magazine talking about the big picture of AI. This book was most valuable to me mainly as a source of unorthodox ideas on this topic. One such idea is one that I've believed for a long time: "If you can't program it, you haven't understood it." You might disagree, but the important thing here is that this book is packed full of such things. They might not be true, provable, or appeal to you, but they will make you think and more fully develop your own thinking.

As exemplified by the "Terminology" sections at the end of each chapter, I would call this book's organization quirky. Not a disorganized mess, but not exactly an especially elegant and compelling layout of ideas. My hypothesis is that the author drinks a lot of coffee. Unsurprisingly based on where I was first introduced to the author, I would say that this book would be better as a series of about 50 magazine articles. My apologies if I missed some grand unifying point made by the book as a whole, but it seemed like the author was just writing a book because he had a lot of ideas, not because he had a coherent point to make with more support than would be possible with a shorter form.

I personally am a bit skeptical about the eponymous idea of infinity. I'm not saying it's not a thing, but it clearly is a ball for philosophers and mathematicians to play with. This book spent what I felt was an inordinate amount of ink on the topic, but maybe you'll appreciate that. It did help me understand the nature of the thinking mathematicians do with respect to the topic, but it didn't really do anything to improve my real life beyond being an intellectual curiosity.

The book really did fly all over the memesphere (I just made that word up - I hope that's ok). I found the author's discussion about electoral fairness to be fascinating and a good introduction to the topic. But the reason for why this topic was included escaped me.

Normally when people are being philosophical and utter the word "quantum" the discussion is over for me. I cut Deutsch some slack here because he is an actual quantum physicist who likes to think about philosophy. Despite being free from the conspicuous obfuscation and befuddlement that "quantum" theory/mechanics is usually designed to bring into philosophical discussions, I'm still not convinced that the topic is worth my attention. It is my impression that quantum theory is full of what the author would call "bad explanations". For example, I'm no expert but check out the De Broglie-Bohm interpretation of quantum experiments (and goo.gl/P3jguD). That seems like the good explanation quantum theory lacks. But what do I know? It's just jarring when the author's main point is that knowledge and progress move forward based on "good explanations", and then come a series of extreme science fiction sounding explanations that do not sound good at all (apparently somewhere in a multiverse I'm writing a better review and Deutsch is writing a better book).

I don't want to leave the impression that I didn't find the book worthwhile. I respected the author's lack of concern for orthodox thinking. For example, I loved his brilliant (and possibly quite wrong) explanation of why human creativity seemed to accelerate very suddenly in historical terms: Creativity evolved slowly without being noticed by being used to _maintain conformity_. Brilliant. Thought provoking stuff like that really made this book an interesting read. I'll definitely look forward to magazine articles by Deutsch.

This is an ambitious book centered around the nature of explanation, why it has been an important part of science (misunderstood by many who think of science as merely prediction), and why it is important for the future of the universe.

He provides good insights on jump during the Enlightenment to thinking in universals (e.g. laws of nature that apply to a potentially infinite scope). But he overstates some of its implications. He seems confident that greater-than-human intelligences will view his concept of "universal explainers" as the category that identifies which beings have the rights of people. I find this about as convincing as attempts to find a specific time when a fetus acquires the rights of personhood. I can imagine AIs deciding that humans fail often enough at universalizing their thought to be less than a person, or that they will decide that monkeys are on a trajectory toward the same kind of universality.

He neglects to mention some interesting evidence of the spread of universal thinking - James Flynn's explanation of the Flynn Effect documents that low IQ cultures don't use the abstract thought that we sometimes take for granted, and describes IQ increases as an escape from concrete thinking.

Deutsch has a number of interesting complaints about people who attempt science but are confused about the philosophy of science, such as people who imagine that measuring heritability of a trait tells us something important without further inquiry - he notes that being enslaved was heritable in 1860, but that was useless for telling us how to change slavery.

He has interesting explanations for why anthropic arguments, the simulation argument, and the doomsday argument are weaker in a spatially infinite universe. But I was disappointed that he didn't provide good references for his claim that the universe is infinite - a claim which I gather is controversial and hasn't gotten as much attention as it deserves.

He sometimes gets carried away with his ambition and seems to forget his rule that explanations should be hard to vary in order to make it hard to fool ourselves.

He focuses on the beauty of flowers in an attempt to convince us that beauty is partially objective. But he doesn't describe this objective beauty in a way that would make it hard to alter to fit whatever evidence he wants it to fit. I see an obvious alternative explanation for humans finding flowers beautiful - they indicate where fruit will be.

He argues that creativity evolved to help people find better ways of faithfully transmitting knowledge (understanding someone can require creative interpretation of the knowledge that they are imperfectly expressing). That might be true, but I can easily create other explanations that fit the evidence he's trying to explain, such as that creativity enabled people to make better choices about when to seek a new home.

He imagines that he has a simple way to demonstrate that hunter-gatherer societies could not have lived in a golden age (the lack of growth of their knowledge):
"Since static societies cannot exist without effectively extinguishing the growth of knowledge, they cannot allow their members much opportunity to pursue happiness." But that requires implausible assumptions such as that happiness depends more on the pursuit of knowledge than availability of sex. And it's not clear that hunter-gatherer societies were stable - they may have been just a few mistakes away from extinction, and accumulating knowledge faster than any previous species had. (I think Deutsch lives in a better society than hunter-gatherers, but it would take a complex argument to show that the average person today does).

But I generally enjoyed his arguments even when I thought they were wrong.

If you want a thought-provoking book that is suitable for airplane reading, this would be a great choice. Like Steven Pinker’s more recent “Enlightenment Now”, this book argues for the importance of the free exchange of ideas and critical thinking. It also champions a (overly) narrow take on the Enlightenment that will probably irk historians, but which seems to be a necessary medicine in the current climate of anti-intellectualism and anti-institutionalize. The argumentation, which mostly concerns epistemology, is original, clear, and generally interesting. The author has a knack not just for for integrating wide-ranging ideas, but also taking other popular writers to task where he thinks they err (e.g., Jared Diamond). Whatever your political persuasion or views on science as a human endeavor, this book should leave you with some new ideas.

None of this is to say that this book is without its flaws. For instance, it makes a foray into aesthetics in one chapter, but the argument presented is not well-developed. Indeed, it is noticeably the shortest in the book, ending just as soon as they key claims are laid out. There is also a chapter with a tongue-in-cheek Socratic dialogue. I enjoyed it, but it will not be everyone’s cup of tea.

In sum, this book makes a lot of bold claims about knowledge and human progresss. The language is probably too strong in many places, but the argumentation should suffice to at least make you think. There is also a good amount of humor thrown in. I would be surprised if the average reader did not learn something from this book.

This book would have gotten 5 stars from me if it had only been the brilliant deconstruction of science, scientism and philosophy that it is in its first chapters. But DD has an agenda, and even in the first chapters that agenda comes across loud and clear: DD is a salesman -- a front man, if you like -- for Artificial Intelligence. Unlike Steven Hawking, who vehemently warns against AI, DD is rabid for a future in which AI will be as safe (so he says) as it will be certain. I don't buy it.

I also don't buy the rest of his politics. It is simple logic that we should not have even begun to burn mega-loads of carbon -- THE building block of all life -- spewing it into our naturally-balanced atmosphere. So now we should do everything in our power to stop doing that. Treating this issue as the emergency it is will create solutions sooner, while vaguely believing in optimism, as DD recommends, will drag out the effort. This simple logic is not clear to DD. He is drunk on the future and has no room in his vocabulary for any word relating to caution. He also has little time for the complexities of the human psyche. For this reason, and this reason alone, his voice should be taken with a grain of NaCl --or as a (unwitting?) shill for global corporations.

I appreciate that he realizes that we will never reach a "perfect" state through science -- or through any of our endeavors -- but by its end this book is a shameful throwback to a paradigm that is clearly the essence of our main problem: more, more, more, growth, growth, growth, on the backs of an organism (the homosapien) who's greatest need is self-recognition -- which science or math can only fractionally provide. Science is one of the things we do; we are not science. Few of us adore the future and denigrate the past -- or will ever want to -- as much as he does. I hope we won't. His solution for our political ills is nothing more than sloganeering.

His biased reading of Jared Diamond's thesis of the western and eastern hemispheres is inexcusably ham-handed. The principle of beauty will always be just one aspect of it. He selects a time-sensitive example for his neo-Darwinian explanation of evolution (birds that hatch in March instead of April) -- a slick choice. It is unclear that mutations which do not involve securing such a monopolistic jump on resources would work as well within the neo-Darwinian explanation -- and we'd have to throw out the entire field of epigenetics to suit him. DD, believing he is an anthropologist, overstates our discomfort with our environment as a species. Tell that to the Inuit. We have always invented our way to tolerable habitability. Our preference for social stagnation (read: stability) has not been the result of oppression. If given even a semblance of a choice, we really do opt for it -- and always will, no matter what the cost (unless a sure bet on opportunism temporarily seduces us). The Enlightenment has, until now, offered us an unusually sustained context for opportunism; it has not been a proof for optimism. How 19th Century can you get!

However, I will run with DD's deconstruction of science and scientism. It was very worth the read. BTW, I did purchase the Kindle version, and read it from screen 1 to the end. Why isn't "Verified Purchase" showing up?

This book is mostly about one simple yet profound idea: good explanations. Good explanations, according to Deutsch, are the epistemological foundations for how we've come so far and how we can keep going infinitely still. In a beautifully poetic metaphor, Deutsch leaves behind notions of utopia, but endorses a meliorism that is an infinite process with no end, and every point in which we find ourselves within that process is always the beginning of the rest of infinite. Deutsch is a true child of the Enlightenment, and a champion of philosopher Karl Popper's ideas of falsifiability and open societies, which he bases much of his philosophical ideas upon.

So what are good explanations? They are the best theories of how we make sense of our experience of the world that stand up to the test of our best attempts at falsifying them. And what do our best explanations tell us about the world? That universality, as in Turing completeness, is a fundamental property of certain finite systems that transform them into being capable of infinite possibilities. And how do these ideas help us? They point the way towards a process of continual discovery and improvement by creating open societies which provide the best environments that allow for good explanations to flourish within a universal reality capable of expanding infinitely in both space and time.

Unlike other books that cover these unabashedly optimistic perspectives, Deutsch actually goes to great lengths to anchor his rational optimism on a bedrock of science and reason. This is not just naive positive thinking, speculative exponential trend fitting, or imaginative science fiction. This is a detailed attempt at showing how and why good explanations are, themselves, a good explanation for us being optimistic about our infinite future.

I found the book very moving at times -- the author's great optimism is infectious and special, based on both the ability of, and freedom for, creativity of the mind. His faith is in mankind's need to answer difficult questions and not be put off by the problems and further questions those answers produce. It is, perhaps, the single best reason for democracy (as imperfect as he shows, and indeed proves, it to be) and against totalitarian rule -- by government, by religion, and by society as a whole. The Enlightenment, which is Deutsch's magic pool of nutrients and energy that is still bubbling to this day, is the key to all we value in life because it helps us both improve our lives and find meaning in them.

After the first four chapters, i found it best to skip around to various topics covered by each chapter. I will be honest, i did not read it all (only about 60%) but I got so much from what I read.

Amidst the optimism is a warning from Deutsch: Creativity brings knowledge, and just like evolution seems to play dirty tricks on some creatures, the evolution of knowledge can create "a hideous practical joke" and cause answers to be so satisfying as to stultify future creativity and create a static society.

I just finished the first chapter and from what I've read I'm not much interested in reading it through. He discards the supreme importance of observation in the formulation of ideas regarding natural phenomena which is patently false. Observation is sine qua non of knowing anything. I can't imagine knowing anything, let alone surviving, without any sensory perception. Helen Keller was an extraordinary person in that she survived and acquired knowledge without having sight and hearing. He spends much time criticizing inductive reasoning which is ultimately about generalization. His magic conjuring analogy is tiresome and analogies while instructive prove nothing.

His statements regarding observation to test ideas and select the best hypothesis is certainly true but this sort of observation is about corroboration and more focused. I may skip around and see what else he has to say.

Books that combine an excellent review of quantum physics with a provocative world view should probably merit a baseline three stars, and this one does. That said, The Beginning of Infinity does not seem to have the makings of a classic in the genre.

As numerous reviews have pointed out, this book is a David Deutsch "Theory of Everything", not in terms of uniting all four of the basic forces of physics (though in a sense he does that), but in the sense of expanding quantum physics into a theory that encompasses everything that we humans tend to hold meaningful. Thus the book includes attempts to show that an absolute standard of beauty, a system of ethics, and even systems of politics and (loosely interpreted) parenting and education can be derived from Deutsch's unique point of view.

In The Beginning of Infinity, Deutsch goes to great creative lengths in an attempt to make quantum physics less mysterious and more comprehensible. In this he succeeds better than many other authors. As an educated person that has made an effort to keep up over the last five decades with advances in science, but still regularly gets pushed into "I'm FAIRLY sure I understand what is being said" territory, I found Deutsch's explanations illuminating and very helpful. Deutsch's explorations of the implications of the well-known single photon studies (leading many, but not Deutsch, to say that photons are "both particles and waves") are striking and deeply exciting. Deutsch is an acknowledged leader in quantum theory and quantum computing, and when he discusses topics that he knows best, he seems to be on the most solid ground (as solid as anything can be in this quantum world!). It is when he strays from his area of expertise that he begins to take on the colorations of many other great scientists that wander off into clouds of quirkiness when they leave their area of expertise. Linus Pauling on Vitamin C, James Watson on race, Lynn Margulis on the cause of AIDS come to mind.

When Deutsch jumps with all four limbs into philosophy, anthropology, politics, and education, he does so with a maximum of enthusiasm, and not a little combativeness. Often defending his positions by preemptively consigning any and all opponents to an "ism" (e.g. empiricism, reductionism, rationalism, "isms" ad infinitum), Deutsch's arguments vary wildly between seeming shockingly superficial and too profound to easily grasp. It is instructive, if you have the time, to watch the TED lecture (YouTube) that Deutsch gave in 2005: it gives a sense of just how static his points of view have remained over nearly a decade.

When Deutsch discusses Artificial Intelligence, he seems woefully out of touch with the literature that has emerged over the last five to seven years. When he discusses why mankind is a species of animal that is different in kind, rather than degree, he ignores (and is often factually incorrect) when citing animal research data regarding non-human language capabilities and levels of consciousness. When he describes humans as "universal constructors" and/or "universal explainers" (i.e. capable of infinite progress in both related arenas) his arguments often, again, seem out of touch with current research on neuroanatomy, consciousness, and far more in synch with the powerful drive we humans have to think of ourselves as unique in all the universe.

Deutsch's estimation of the human mind's infinite capacity requires him to climb further and further out on epistemological limbs. If one could compare Deutsch's science of the human brain to the field of astronomy, it would be fair to say that he runs a very significant risk of being a Pre-Copernican: it's probably just not true that EVERYTHING with advanced computational capacity revolves around the human mind, now and forever.

Deutsch diverges almost imperceptibly, but very significantly, from much contemporary evolutionary/complexity/emergence theory when he uses the word "knowledge" in place of the word "information". Whereas a fair amount of contemporary thought has been devoted to the emergent phenomena that occur as more and more information (down to and including the color and spin of quarks) coalesces in a process that started with whatever we think the Big Bang may have been, by using the word knowledge instead of information, Deutsch appears to coopt the evolution of information by establishing human ownership of it. If information, starting in its most basic form (quarks? Superstrings?) evolves in increasingly complex ways over the life of the multiverse, then humans are simply a particular (in this case, primate) manifestation of an inevitable process that is independent of humans. An evolutionary process that is akin, then, to what Kevin Kelly seems to allude to in his striking book What Technology Wants. If on the other hand, "knowledge" is the key evolutionary factor, then humans (who translate information into knowledge and are the sole possesors of knowledge) are absolutely necessary for forward motion. Motion toward infinity, Deutsch proposes, needs the current version of Homo sapiens (Deutsch distinguishes between current and past versions). Which is an attractive proposal to me from an egotistical point of view, I'll admit. But then....I read the morning paper. And it makes me hope that the Multiverse, in all its Information, has more in store for the future than Mankind Uber Alles.

I hesitate to give this book 1 star because there were several well thought out sections of the book -- particularly about how memes evolve in culture. However, while he is clearly well educated in quantum theory, he showed himself to be just as biased as many previous scientists were about the meaning and interpretations of new discoveries or theories. He ridicules "bad explanations" in previous theories about the universe (such as turtles holding up the earth); and he throws those ideas in with what he considers "bad explanations" today associated with intelligent design. But he appears to fail at the most basic level in judging his own ideas which HE arrogantly designates as "good explanations". Consider the concept of multiverses -- multiple universes. He seems virtually certain that they exist. Quantum theory allows for these and the mathematics of multiverses appears to work in explaining how the quantum world works. And he seems to denigrate most other quantum theorists who don't buy into the multiverse explanation (they are called the "shut-up-and-calculate" scientists because they recognized that while the math worked, the underlying explanations didn't necessarily make sense). Yet he seems to forget or not be aware of how many of the quantum "explanations" were based on similes that were certainly not literally true. For example, the mathematics of electrons "oscillating on springs" worked well and helped Heisenberg develop his theories. So the concept of "useful similes" developed -- for example, someone suggested it is "as if" electrons were oscillating on springs; but NO ONE thought there were literally balls on springs. It is "as if" particles are probabilistic clouds and it is "as if" they congeal into a specific form when observed. It is "as if" there were multiple universes, etc. In fact, if I understand correctly, one interpretation is that the quantum universe is more or less unique to me and it's "as if" it was created just for me and nothing happens unless I PERSONALLY observe it. Such bizarre fundamentals may exclude higher powers and intelligent design to some; but to others such as myself, a "good explanation" for all this is that a higher power created this bizarre universe and can also control it.

Consider also the concept of gravity. Until Einstein, it appeared clear that gravity was simply a force and objects were attracted to each other based on mass (method unknown). So it was "as if" objects were attracted to each other and the math worked well enough. Yet Einstein had a totally different explanation which turned out to be a better explanation. So Mr. Deutsch shouldn't be so quick to take an "as if" simile (such as multiverses) that seems to work and tell the world that THIS is literally true. It's almost "as if" Mr. Deutsch wants every other scientist to read his book and heed his warnings about never being certain of anything, but he himself can arrogantly proclaim his own ideas as immune to the phenomena he describes so well.

This was, by far, one of the more mind-changing books I’ve read. It’s also one of the most difficult (but that’s not really saying much). Deutsch is incredibly detailed, and needs to be in order to take you from common misconceptions to nearly unimaginable futures that await humanity. I definitely didn’t digest everything this first time through, but I learned plenty to chew on for a long time.

My only criticism is that sometimes Deutsch over-explained concepts I was already familiar with, bogging down the flow in a few instances.

This is my favorite non-fiction book, bar none. Deutsch masterfully tears down bad ideas and builds up better ones, with the understanding that even his knowledge is only at the beginning of infinity, waiting to be superceeded by better misconceptions.

Positively, this book tries to explain the world with what we know today rather than based on expanding on the celebrated theories supported by great thinkers of other era. As a result, it is modern, novel and rational for readers with latest knowledge. The book contains many interesting scientific and mathematical explanations. Some of the messages are strong and driven home effectively. The criticism’s of some of the past theories are also strong with desired results.

That said, the book contains enormous flaws as one starts thinking more.

The author falls in the same trap of falling for his own pet explanations as the right ones that it criticizes others for. For example, the multiverse epistemology behind quantum mechanics appears nothing but a leap of faith that the author strongly abhors in – let’s say – all explanation theories involving God. Even if in the long run, this theory is provable, the fact that it is not today (except in mild form in some equations) should not have been a reason enough to discard other explanations.

There are many other criticisms one can draw when author summarily reject many theories in favour of his own views. But the biggest problem in the book is when author begins to stray away from explaining theories of existence to theories of how one should live. With the pre-decided conclusion that one must stay optimistic, the author turns more anthropomorphic and irrational without logic than most theories out there.

The author begins to miss the basic point: the world does not have to have humans surviving, if his own non-anthropomorphic bias for the world view is right. In this case, why should one waste nearly a third of the book in random ramblings trying to justify the reason why pessimistic Malthusian-type theories must be wrong. The author also turns too dogmatic in his own views and conclusions to provide any rational basis for rejecting these theories except anecdotal evidences of how such theories have so far not proven right.

In all, a book where one learns a lot about how to think but the book falls repeatedly flat while drawing its own conclusions. The conclusions may or may not be right but not the rigor of arguments presented here, which would jar most serious readers.

This book is just absolutely relentless in the way that it uses brilliant writing in a easy to read manner just to break pretty much all of my belief systems. The author's logic is inescapable and overwhelming. Each paragraph, hell, each sentence is a masterpiece of deep meaning using simple sentences. I simply cannot read the book for more than 20 minutes at a time, it is just too much to digest. No writer that I have have ever read has altered my perceptions on so many things and so quickly.
I will not try to describe the book, some have done a great job here but, trust me, it is a pale shadow of the book itself. David writes on so many subjects and I cannot find any fault in his logic, just none. Later on maybe, when my brain ache is gone away, heh.
I cannot recommend this book for most readers. For folks that have a hard time cleaning their desks, it would be a bitch to follow and comprehend. Those that are not strong skeptics would also dislike the book as you really have to read this being prepared to challenge what you think you know. It can be and is overwhelming at times and I could see how he could lose readers who cannot keep up.
My biggest concern is not with the book but to be able to LEARN from the book. It will take many rereadings before I can easily explain to someone else what the book says.
This is the best book I have read in the past 20 years or so, brain aches and all. The only books that come close are by Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins but they are very limited in the scope compared to this. The author is truly unique.
One man said that a work of a very smart people you could say to yourself "I could have thought of that." while with a work of genius, he would say to himself "I NEVER would have thought of that!" That fits my view of this book, a work of genius.
Why isn't this book sitting on the top of the NY Times nonfiction best seller list?

What a marvellous, empowering, life-affirming book.

Every once in a while a thinker-philosopher-scientist comes along who boldly proposes a different way of looking at the world - a fundamentally new way of seeing things.

Author David Deutsch is such a writer, and ‘The Beginning of Infinity’ is such a book.

According to Deutsch, we humans are only now taking the very first steps on an infinite journey of exploration and achievement, propelled by our own capacity for creative thought, problem solving, and constant striving for bigger and better things.

Written with often breathtaking clarity, sometimes veering into an insistent, pedantic certainty, Mr. Deutsch is a scientific philosopher who is well worth hearing out.

If you want to sample the goods before committing to the entire book, my recommendation would be that you start by reading the last two chapters first (# 17 ‘-Unsustainable’ and # 18 ‘The Beginning’).

In ‘Unsustainable’, his take-down of, as he puts it ‘Marx, Engels, and (Jared) Diamond’ alone proved well worth the price of admission for the whole work, so far as I was concerned.

Together these two chapters constitute only about forty pages (in the hardcover edition), but they are especially full of incredibly lucid, revolutionary, paradigm shifting thought from this concisely articulate man of extraordinarily audacious vision.

Check it out today!

"The Beginning of Infinity" by David Deutsch (BoI) is a great book that explores a range of important issues in physics, maths, explanations, the theory of knowledge (epistemology) and political and moral philosophy. This may make BoI sound somewhat daunting and impractical to many people. Who needs that sort of high flown stuff? However, one of the ideas in BoI is that explanation is important and that good explanations seem obvious and expand your horizons at the same time, and every explanation in BoI illustrates this point. In addition, the author explains himself very clearly, so there isn't a steep hill to climb to understand the explanations he gives. BoI is also entertaining and often quite witty. BoI will also repay repeated reading because there are a lot of ideas in it.

I'll give a brief sketch of some of the ideas you can expect to find in BoI. The first idea that I would emphasize is that explanation is central to living a rational and satisfying life. Good explanations are well adapted to solving problems - for example, the theory that the Earth orbits the sun is well adapted to explaining the seasons.

The next is that problems are inevitable because we will certainly make mistakes, and they are soluble because those mistakes can be fixed. The author explains that any way of changing the world that is not forbidden by the laws of physics is allowed. If there was some problem that we could never possibly solve, e.g. - some mathematical proofs can't be proven, then that would in itself be a fact about the laws of physics. Some people might say that parts of the world could be incomprehensible but that's a retrograde step back into the anti-rational worldview that says that something like God designed the universe for his own mysterious purposes that we can't comprehend. David Deutsch applies this perspective in interesting ways to a wide range of issues from the anthropic principle to political philosophy and global warming. He also explains why we should be optimistic: our knowledge is finite, our ignorance is infinite and the world is comprehensible so we may continue to make progress indefinitely if we choose to do so.

There is also stuff in BoI about irrational ideas that manage to propagate themselves in people despite the fact that they block progress. Deutsch explains some ideas about how to spot these ideas in yourself, so this book is not just theoretically interesting it can help you in your personal life.

Other interesting parts of BoI include a chapter in which the author explains quantum physics in english with no equations. There is a chapter about infinity in maths and physics - again with no equations. Another chapter explains why aesthetics is objective, still another discusses the reality of abstractions. I'm going to stop now, not because I've run out of things I could say about the book, but because I could write all day about it. And that's one reason why the title of this book is fitting - it is a beginning of infinity because it's a book you'll want to think about all the time after you've finished reading it.

The same is true of the David Deutsch's previous book The Fabric of Reality (Penguin Science), which everybody should also read.

The author fails in what is usually called the "principle of charity": he fails to give the view he opposes the strongest defense available, and ends up setting up weak straw men.

The book explores a vast scientific and epistemological territory and touches on a even vaster set of issues (morality, aesthetics, personal identity, ...). While nobody is expected to master the intricacies of all these fields at the same time, it should be the author responsibility to show how his point of view correlates with the ongoing discussions in the relative fields, ideally pointing to "references" to help the reader gain a deeper perspective.

Since the core of the book revolves around a certain epistemological position, roughly corresponding to Popper's Conjectures and Refutations, I would consider mandatory to answer to the objections presented by Kuhn's classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

While I could imagine that the author is not familiar with the standard literature in personal identity (e.g. Parfit's Reasons and Persons or Nozick's Philosophical Explanations), even though it would have been interesting to look at the multiverse implications for personal identity, I cannot suppose that he is not familiar with the standard arguments presented by Kuhn. He must have deliberately chosen not to address such arguments, leaving his core structure exposed to fairly common attacks, and removing much value to the edifice he builds on top of such assumptions.

The author paints a very misleading picture of instrumentalism (saying that it implies relativism: "once one has denied this [realism], the logical implication is that all claims about reality are equivalent to myths, none of them being better than the others in any objective sense. That is relativism").

He enunciates a paradoxical "criterion for reality" : "a particular thing is real if and only if it figures in our best explanation of something" (since our best explanations change over time, should we derive that the reality they describe also change over time? That's clearly not the objective world the author wanted to describe).

He falls into the easy trap of saying (pg. 26) that we should drop explanations that are falsified by observations, only for saying later on that we know that both our best physical theories (quantum mechanics and relativity) are false since incompatible with each other, while the difference between some anomaly and a true falsification can be made only after a new theory has been established and accepted (Kuhn says "The decision to reject one paradigm is always simultaneously the decision to accept another, and the judgment leading to that decision involves the comparison of both paradigms with nature and with each other.", "To reject one paradigm without simultaneously substituting another is to reject science itself.")

He argues (incredibly) that (pg.45) "the Earth's biosphere is incapable of supporting human life", that morality is objective (pg.121) "since the universe is explicable, it must be that morally right values are connected in this way with true factual theories, and morally wrong values with false theories".

He makes the mistake of saying that digital systems are not effected by errors (pg.141), while we know that normal error distributions imply there is always "some" probability that the signals falls outside the quantization threshold. Error probability can be reduced arbitrarily by adding redundancy, but can never be eliminated.

In general he doesn't clearly define his basic terms so we don't know, for example, what he really means for "explanation" and how he can ground his explanations into other terms without falling into circularity, unexplained statements, or infinity (!), as in Agrippa's trilemma.

He fails to comment on the fact that something can be unbounded without being infinite (it can for example tend asymptotically to a fixed value, so there is no max value, but there are values that will never be reached), he just says, pg. 165 "I use those concepts interchangeably, because in this context there is no substantive difference between them".

He says (pg. 221) that we should take very personally that Athens has been defeated by Sparta because "if any of those earlier experiments in optimism had succeeded, our species would be exploring the stars by now, and you and I would be immortal" (no further details given for this estimate ...). Also human will be immortal in a couple of generations (no details given ...)

and so on ...

As Einstein apparently said: "Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not yet completely sure about the universe.".

The author instead sees human beings at the pinnacle of the hierarchy of knowledge, since they are universal explainers. No knowledge is, in principle, impossible to them, and no "super human" mind can be possibly imagined (isn't that a very "finite" image of knowledge?)

He attacks Jared Diamond Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies while ignoring the clear arguments against historical determinism he explicitly makes in Collapse.

He attacks ecological sustainability saying that we should worry about creating more solution instead of less problems, while failing to give any argument to show that we are able to create more solutions than problems (which is what really matters). He doesn't bother to give detailed factual arguments for this position, but remains in the distant world of a priori truths, untroubled, for example, by the actual data of failing ecosystems.

The whole argument comes down to accepting that
1) all problems are solvable
2) humans are universal explainers
thus
3) human will eventually solve all problems.

There's a lot of handwaiving, but no real argument there.

The picture he paints might be attractive to some, but I found it really shallow, and that is a pity because the author is clearly a very intelligent individual. He should have devoted more time to secure his arguments, instead of using the book to attack the "-isms" he doesn't like ...

David Deutsch is one of the most optimistic and broad thinking authors. he combines humans, parallel universes, unlimited progress into one story. his humour is astonishing. people from STEM or physics may find his books as relatively superficial (no formulas) but his vision is exceptional. the guy naturally not only made theoretical foundations for quantum computing in 1980s, but also routinely explains how these discoveries were related for him with parallel universes. he simply says that uncertainty of quantum particles is because of these particles go to parallel universes. strongly recommended. tough to overestimate. very broad thinking

This is a fantastic book. You may not agree with all of his conclusions but I find it difficult to believe one could read this book and not be challenged by its ideas. It is a very unusual book that touches on topics in philosophy and science that aren't readily available to the average person, but David Deutsch has done a good job making the material accessible to the intelligent lay reader.

This book is optimistic about the future as the author believes that human knowledge will solve the problems created by previous human knowledge. I think he is right and he does an incredibly good job of arguing that thesis. I suspect however, that regardless of the quality of the content, many people who are anti-progress (and there are a lot of them out there) are going to dislike it. I hope somebody attempts a refutation of Deutsch. I would be interested in reading it and if anyone knows of something already available please speak up.

I highly recommend this book. It can't help but make you think. I learned a lot and thought a lot while I was reading it and I'm still thinking about it. That qualifies it for 5 stars in my world. Get it, you won't regret it even if you disagree with its conclusions.

It is rare that a single book triggers reexamination of everything you thought you knew about a single subject, and rarer still that such reading triggers reconsideration of everything you thought you knew. In the same sense that Newton swallowed Kepler and Einstein swallowed Newton, David Deutsch's tour de force has reordered my intellectual history and set me to deep questioning of truths I have held close for forty or more years.

If you look back through my hundreds of reviews on the store, you'll find Dawkins, Hofstadter, Diamond, Meadows, McKibben, Kurzweil, Pirsig, Ehrlich, Wilson, Gould, Jaynes and many more thinkers on the nature and fate of humanity. This morning I'm tempted to rewrite half of them, the assembled ideas now viewed through a new prism, with new eyes. Deutsch offers telling insights into the meaning of The Enlightenment, the implications for humanity, the ever-present danger of a return to pre-Enlightenment thinking, the pessimism at the core of doomsaying environmentalism and the nature of governance.

There are chapters which demand re-reading, particularly the section on quantum computing and the idea that photons are fungible, with its implications concerning the multiverse -- I was swimming a bit out of my depth in that puddle. But his critique of Paul Ehrlich, whose thinking profoundly affected life choices I've made over decades, and the concept of "sustainability" as the term is widely understood, rattled me to the core. His praise and critique of Dawkins and Hofstadter carves neatly through their strengths and weaknesses, and his skewering of Diamond's central thesis about the history of civilizations undercuts much of what I thought I understood about the world. Bucky Fuller's "Spaceship Earth" comes in for particular debunking, and again, throws much that I thought I knew into the trash heap.

Deep and difficult in places, this is nothing less than a masterpiece. This may be where your infinity begins.

David Deutsch's excellent (2011) book: The Beginning of Infinity has been a major influence on my recent work in the field of dysology.

Deutsch's clear writing helped me to see more clearly how the philosophy of science allows us to know what makes an explanation good or bad. I used his book as a framework to criticise the current notion of so called 'crime science' that is being propagated within the Jill Dando Institute for Security and Crime Science at the University College London.

Deutsch's explanation of Karl Popper's philosophy made clear for me several things that I already knew before reading it. What Deutsch did was to enable me to understand those ideas better, and to appreciate the magnitude of their importance in helping us tell good explanations from bad.

Deutsch is an expert universal explainer of existing knowledge and adds to what we know with more than a few new and important explanations of his own. For example, he has reversed my opinion regarding the hypothesis (that has become orthodoxy) that underpins Jared Diamond's award winning book Guns Germs and Steel.

If you are seriously interested in knowing what makes a good or bad explanation for anything then I suggest you buy Deutsch's book today. I bought mine from the store and saved money since it is retailing at my local book shop in Nottingham England for £25.

So far so good then because in many areas Deutsch meets the test set by the great mathematician David Hilbert who said at the second International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris in the summer of 1900:

"An old French mathematician said: `A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street.' This clearness and ease of comprehension, here insisted on for a mathematical theory, I should still more demand for a mathematical problem if it is to be perfect; for what is clear and easily comprehended attracts, the complicated repels us." (David Hilbert 1900).

Deutsch's Dog's Dilemma

Personally, I struggled with the explanation of infinity in this book regarding a thought experiment in a hotel with an infinite number of rooms. In the explanation a dog that is moved from room to room ceases - at some point - to exist. The dog is (or becomes) nowhere. That explanation was lost on me and seems to contradict later quantum mechanics arguments in the book that I understand are claiming that things will always exist once they have existed. But then I'm no quantum physicist. I'd like to know more about that dog and why it is no more and nowhere, just in case I end up interfering with photons and atoms in the multiverse to influence a distant - or very close - world where just such a hotel exists and where I am a dog being passed from room to room. Should I bite someone in the hotel, perhaps a version of David Deutsch, before it's too late? Would that act save me from non-existence and if so at what point must I bite before it's too late? If I do bite one of those hotel guests, making them drop me before they can pass me on, in what direction should I run so as not to cease to exist? If I run along the corridor in the same direction and at the same rate as I was being passed from room to room by the guests would I still cease to exist at some point? Would I never find my way out of the corridor of Infinity Hotel, and if so should I keep shifting my running directions so as not to cease to exist? Would the safest option be to remain static and chase my tail for amusement and exercise? But if that is the safest option then what is the difference between dogs existing in Infinity Hotel and human civilizations ceasing to exist due to their static thinking? In short, please tell me more about the poor darn dog so that the written explanation for the theory makes more sense and so that I can try to square it with other knowledge in this book about successful and unsuccessful societies.

Let me explain further what I meant by that last sentence and why the question about the dog troubles me. Deutsch makes a compellingly rational argument that good ideas have infinite reach. He goes on to make a brilliant contribution - through the clarity of his explanation of Richard Dawkins' theory and his own ideas on the subject - to our understanding of memes. To digress, it was this part of his book that sparked my own idea, as a criminologist, that perhaps crime is the ultimately selfish meme. For those unfamiliar with the concept, memes are ideas that survive in human culture in the same way as genes in do in living matter by selfishly passing themselves on. The Christian religion, for example, is a meme.

Ok back to my confusion, so what I can't understand from reading Deutsch's written explanation of infinity is what would happen in David Hilbert's Grand Infinity Hotel (see: Olein 2001 for the story behind Infinity Hotel) if it was an idea (a meme) that was so complicated it had to be written down was passed along from room to room rather than a dog? If that idea was a good explanation for infinity, according to Deutsch's explanation it could not have infinite reach because at some point along the infinite corridor of knowledge in Infinity Hotel the brilliant but complex idea would cease to exist. In that case how would it still have the capacity for infinite reach if it ceased to exist somewhere further along the infinite corridor of knowledge as a singularity? Infinity Hotel, which can always accommodate more infinitely countable guests even when it is full but it cannot accommodate good explanations that are so complex they have to be written down to be passed on as memes.

This leads me to ask the following question: Does the fact that good physically recorded explanations, just like other physical objects such as dogs, do not have a fundamental place and are not unlimited in their scope and power within the brilliant mathematical world of Hilbert's Grand Infinity Hotel have any significance for Deutsch's massive paradigm shifting claim that 'explanations' have a fundamental place in the universe?

I am not so self-deluded as to suppose that the above questions pose any kind of paradox that Deutsch will now have to deal with. Rather, I suspect I've made some kind of naive mistake in asking these questions - perhaps something close to Zeno's mistake (which Deutsch explains well). But that is my point, the book is written as much for non-quantum physicists as it is for them. Indeed, all the explanations are written in text, which is good because I hate equations and can't make head nor tail of most of them. But that leaves me with this Dog Dilemma, so that I'm now, in my ignorance as a social scientist, left awake at night to wonder whether there is a dog.

Infinity Hotel is obviously an analogy, but unless the analogy can tell us more about these obvious 'what happens if and why' questions about Deutsch's dog then as Deutsch himself teaches us in this book: "Arguments by analogy are fallacies. Almost any analogy between any two things contains some grain of truth, but one cannot tell what that is until one has an independent explanation for what is analogous to what and why." (p.371)

As far as vanishing dogs and annihilated memes go in Infinity Hotel, I'm not sure Deutsch does make such complexities explainable to the person in the street.

Another criticism that I do have is that when he first begins to write about abstractions Deutsch assumes the reader knows both what an abstraction is and what type of abstraction he is thinking of.

Once you read Deutsch's remarkable book, those past few paragraphs might not read anything like as crazy as you may think they are.

If you can think then I think that this book should change the way you think about thinking forever.

I did find the imagined ancient Greece philosopher's dream chapter very boring and so I skipped it because it seemed to have nothing new to add to what Deutsch had already explained in his careful and elegant explanatory prose.

But that's it for personal negative criticisms and my personal confusion. Because overall, this is - as so many others are saying - going to be a classic book. But wait. No! That's a prophecy and not a scientific prediction. So, I'm being irrational now and I could easily be very wrong. Why? Well, you'll have to read the book to find out.

I would willingly place a large wager on Professor David Deutsch - with this remarkable explanatory text - going on to inspire and guide an infinity of future thinking and knowledge progression. Deutsch is today the man to beat as the world's greatest living universal explainer. One day I would like to know his thoughts on Lovelock's Gaia Theory and on the whole notion of self-regulating complex systems - be they physical or social.

Besides the Kindle edition, I bought my hard copy of this book only three weeks ago and it's a first edition. Do you know what a first edition of Darwin's Origin of Species fetches today?

I feel like going out and snapping up another 100 of the printed version for my pension fund.

Reference

Hilbert, D. (1900) Mathematical Problems. Lecture delivered before the International Congress of Mathematicians at Paris in 1900. [...]

Olein, R. (2001) Hilbert's Problems. Mission College. Final Paper - Math G S01 [...]

Dr Mike Sutton is author of
Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret

Again, Deutsch tries to be the next Hofstadter and fails.

The first 11 chapters of "The Beginning of Infinity" are not the beginning of anything but a continuation of his multiversed exhilaration : basically, everyone else is wrong and Deutsch knows it all and better...

With the exception of his treatment of "the infinity hotel" in chapter 8, Deusch's attempts at extending his whimsical theory to mathematics fall short, just as in "The Fabric of Reality".

Deutsch is certainly a great quantum physicist, so we are told, but expresses his ideas with such a mix of arrogance and confusion that the end result is plain boredom... So far from Hofstadter's fluid, balanced, open and convincing approach.

Chapters 12 to 18 contain some more interesting ideas -- in fact mainly based on Popper's work -- about the evolution of culture and creativity.

All in all, repetitive and unconvincing.

I liked his new take on the Spaceship Earth and the Principle of Mediocrity. Deutsch thinks humanity is a great thing, as we are universal explainers and problem solvers, which is an optimistic counterpoint to the foundational ideas of so many other humanists--that humanity is a plague on the earth, and extremely lucky to even be here. These theories are essential to the humanist conversation.

But this book ranges wildly over so many topics that too many are treated too perfunctorily. I found it to be about 40% mind-expansion and 60% frustration--too often Deutsch introduces an intriguing idea that gets me excited, on topics I am already interested in and knowledgeable about even, but then fails to explain his unique perspective on it in a way I can understand. And then he's off to the next idea, and the bridge between the two hasn't been built.

His dashed-off conclusions are often opaque and enigmatic. The reading ends up being tiring. There's too many disappointments, and it leaves me feeling rather depressed and unfulfilled.

I have now purchased this book three times: when it first came out in electronic form on the store.co.uk (I don't know why publishers still insist on releasing books at different times in different places!), then as soon as the hardback arrived on Australia's shores and just now the audiobook from audible.com. This book is fantastic!

If you find writing about the rational world view exhilarating, you'll love this book. If you're a fan of Richard Dawkins, Brian Cox, Sam Harris, Paul Davies or any of the other great professional scientist science writers of our time, you'll love Deutsch. He's the next rung up the ladder once you've got a taste for the reach of scientific explanations. This book has surprises at every turn, but one great surprise is that you aren't hearing more about it. Rather than go over the praise others have written here, I might concentrate more upon the emotional reaction I had to it than comment on particular sections.

The Beginning of Infinity is a continuation of the intoxicating brilliance that began with The Fabric of Reality. Each page is infused with ultra rationality. Each paragraph is a cool draft of reason. And the ideas are a mixture of the new and the newly explained.

Deutsch does what many other science writers like Dawkins have been at pains to explain: demonstrate how rationality is not devoid of either high emotion or the beauty of great art. Indeed the contrary. I am a passionate reader of fiction, I watch movies and television and listen to music like anyone - but I don't think I've ever been quite so moved as I have by a book about science and philosophy. Somehow Deutsch has done more than other science writer, especially in this latest book. "The Beginning of Infinity" steals the ground from beneath your feet. It is probably classed by bookstores as "Popular Science" but it's far loftier than this. As others have said: it's ground breaking. This is not a mere re-presentation of amazing scientific ideas - it's a wholesale offering of a rational world-view.

Anyone who has ever read a book by Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett and wants to go beyond the science-religion debate would do well to pick up The Beginning of Infinity. Although Deutsch does not write much at all about religion, and this is not a book about religion by any stretch of the imagination, if you are at all interested in the current debate that seems to be raging in certain places between the `atheists' and rationalists and the religious right, then this book is like another broadsword in your armory. Without singling out the usual suspects, Deutsch provides fresh new insight into why it is that societies which are dogmatic perpetuate suffering and decline. Deutsch takes an extremely broad view of the deepest of ideas, beliefs and knowledge and through the use of clever examples shows how critical and rational thinking is what leads to progress. The Beginning of Infinity can be seen as a tour-de-force for rationalists who oppose dogma at all levels.

Recently Sam Harris' book "The Moral Landscape" explained how ethical truths are but a subset of scientific truth generally, based on the assumption that what is right or wrong has to at some level have something to do with the experience of conscious creatures. As one book claiming to provide a rational framework for how to live one's life I wondered if Deutsch's book would at all conflict with Harris' consensus shattering work. I need not have worried. These two books fit together like pieces of a puzzle - as indeed Deutsch explains such ideas should. What is true in science, philosophy, aesthetics and ethics cannot be in conflict.

Indeed readers of Sam Harris will note many parallels with his works. Sam has been concerned - as we all need to be - with the question of how one can be so well educated as to be able to become an engineer and learn to fly a plane and yet still believe they will get 72 virgins when they crash it into a building. David expands on meme theory that much of this comes down to the way we teach our children. "...people are acquiring scientific knowledge in an anaemic and instrumental way. Without a critical, discriminating approach to what they are learning, most of them are not effectively replicating the memes of science and reason into their minds. And so we live in a society in which people can spend their days conscientiously using laser technology to count cells in blood samples, and their evenings sitting cross-legged and chanting to draw supernatural energy out of the Earth."

For me, this book was spiritually enlightening through its rational approach to questions of existence and ultimate meaning (especially as I came to understand one of the core philosophies of BoI about how there can be no ultimate explanations in any arena). Soon after reading Paul Davies' "The Mind of God" in 1994 at the age of 16 I have over and again been blown away by science and philosophy writing. Taking on a physics and philosophy degree at university I read "The Fabric of Reality" by David Deutsch alongside my lecture readings of Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, Leibnitz, Spinoza and Hume while taking subjects in quantum theory, astrophysics and logic and computation. I have been impatient for the sequel.

I remember feeling "amazed" when reading Paul Davies' books about the big questions of existence that physics has begun the grapple with. Such popular science made me hungry for more. I was led to "The Fabric of Reality" and no other work has had such an impact upon me, except perhaps for "The End of Faith" and more recently "The Moral Landscape" by Sam Harris. These 3 works sit on my bookshelf above works by Davies and Dawkins and Descartes like top-shelf liquors which I can take down at any time for a draught. Perhaps it has been so many years now and I am so familiar with "The Fabric of Reality" having read and re-read and referenced and quoted in so many essays and assignments that I have forgotten just how it felt when I first encountered some of those ideas. I know they were earth shattering then. But where Descartes' Meditations have the power to shock when first encountered and Davies seems to leave one's mouth agape with wonder at the power and subtlety of science - only Deutsch seems to have the ability to truly overwhelm. This latest book is like taking a trip on every page.

I found reading this book that I was frequently, quite genuinely, overwhelmed. I would have to put the book aside and pace. Sometimes with a strange grin on my face as though I had been made privy to some profound secret of the universe - or that some cherished belief I had was now dissolving away. Whereas with Descartes I experienced a dizzying sense of vertigo - and I was thrilled that literature - ideas - had the power to do this - here the sense was of falling, flying and spinning continuously. This cooly, ultra rational work had me responding emotionally. I was thrilled but also in awe. It truly was a spiritual feeling - a sense of awesomeness and majesty. All of those adjectives that the religious use to speak about the greatness of their god - I felt here, reading this amazing work - because Deutsch really does permit one the ability to appreciate the infinite in ways they might never have considered before. I have studied philosophy, physics and mathematics at a tertiary level and have encountered earth-shattering ideas before. I did not think I could be surprised and amazed in the way I was as a teenager reading the works of the great physicists and philosophers. But I was.

And what this book has made me excited about (apart from simply turning back to page 1 to take the roller coaster again) is that there will always be new ideas just as amazing as what I have learned - just over the horizon. And that is truly a thrilling thought.

David Deutsch’s book, “The Beginning of Infinity”, is a quite challenging book to read. There’re some fairly deep and complex physics and mathematical ideas in this book. I found the book to be quite well-written and thought-provoking. Nevertheless, in this review I will attempt to provide good reasons why many of the viewpoints and beliefs expressed in the book are problematic and should be treated with great skepticism.

Firstly, I will point out that the physics subscribed to by Deutsch (I refer to his explanation of quantum phenomena) is not widely accepted by highly intelligent and sophisticated modern physicists. Here’s an admission in this respect by the author (page 262-264): “I had better warn the reader that the account that I shall give – known as the ‘many universes interpretation’ of quantum theory (rather inadequately, since there is much more to it than ‘universes’) – remains at the time of this writing a decidedly minority view among physicists.”

An aspect of Deutsch’s thesis seems to be pretty much that everything that is logically possible within the laws of physics will necessarily take place in some universe. He makes an awesomely audacious statement on page 300: “All fiction that does not violate the laws of physics is fact.” That means, then, that if a writer of fiction writes a story in which there exists a mass murderer who acquires so much power that he wipes out nine tenths of the human race, well, that author can rest assured that what he wrote does, in fact, take place somewhere in the (a?) universe. One could, in principle, fill entire libraries with books of outrageous fiction, but fiction that didn’t violate any laws of physics, and all those stories would actually be factual. This is far-fetched and bizarre to the extreme.

Deutsch defends Everett’s work on quantum theory (the many universes interpretation), and here’s what he has to say in defense of that theory: (p. 310-311): “Yet it took several more decades before Everett’s work was even noticed by more than a handful of physicists. Even now that it has become well known, it is endorsed by only a small minority. I have often been asked to explain this unusual phenomenon. Unfortunately I know of no entirely satisfactory explanation. But, to understand why it is perhaps not quite as bizarre and isolated an event as it may appear, one has to consider the broader context of bad philosophy.”
Maybe the reason this interpretation is so poorly accepted is because it is so outrageous and unreasonable a theory. To postulate the existence of infinitely many universes, when only one universe can be detected makes it appear that the creator of the postulate is desperate for answers – so desperate as to go out on a rather preposterous limb.

Another criticism I have of Deutsch’s book is his seemingly blind faith in AI (artificial intelligence). We have absolutely no justification for believing that any human-made computer can ever have an iota of consciousness. If mind transcends matter (in important ways – not so, however, as to be unable to interact with matter), then it seems evident that only an intelligence transcendent to the physical world could create mind (consciousness – qualia). At any rate, here’s what the author has to say (pages 162-163): “I think we have to face the fact, both with artificial evolution and with AI, that these are hard problems. There are serious unknowns in how those phenomena were achieved in nature. Trying to achieve them artificially without ever discovering those unknowns was perhaps worth trying. But it should be no surprise that it has failed. Specifically, we do not know why the DNA code, which evolved to describe bacteria, has enough reach to describe dinosaurs and humans. And although it seems obvious that an AI will have qualia and consciousness, we cannot explain those things. So long as we cannot explain them, how can we expect to simulate them in a computer? Or why should they emerge effortlessly from projects designed to achieve something else? But my guess is that when we do understand them, artificially implementing evolution and intelligence and its constellation of associated attributes will then be no great effort.”

Yes, Deutsch is a physicalist par excellence. He apparently believes that all mental life is exclusively a matter of physical entities in motion, apart from any “super-physical” or transcendent properties ever coming into play. To a spiritually oriented person, this can seem rather outrageous. Deutsch, though, would likely mock this as sheer superstition, something he claims that the “enlightenment” is gradually wiping out.

The author goes so far as to declare a coming “utopia” (he would not like that term – because there will always be problems, he says), wherein there will be immortality for humanity. Death will be eliminated (for humanity, at least). Here’s what he has to say (p. 455): “Illness and old age are going to be cured soon – certainly within the next few lifetimes – and technology will also be able to prevent deaths through homicide or accidents by creating backups of the states of brains, which could be uploader into new, blank brains in identical bodies if a person should die. … So there can be only one outcome: effective immortality for the whole human population, with the present generation being one of the last that will have short lives.”

I believe that most physicists of note would criticize Deutsch’s outlook as utterly fanciful, unrealistic, and not soundly founded in any extant scientific knowledge or methods for achieving such knowledge.

Deutsch does make this much of an admission concerning AI. He says that “We do not know what qualia are or how creativity works, despite having working examples of qualia and creativity inside all of us.” (p. 458). Of course, he expects science to figure out what qualia are and to then go about generating qualia. Given my own worldview, this is sheer fantasy, and it will never happen. Humanity is not God, and humanity – despite all its efforts to do so – will not become God-like to the point of creating conscious and living beings – not of any kind. AI will not come to the rescue. Mind will not be effectively controlled by human science.

Suffice it to say that I thoroughly enjoyed Deutsch’s book, notwithstanding the fact that I have many misgivings about much of what he claims can or will happen in the world of human science. Science is not our true God – it is a false god, and it cannot save us. For salvation, we need the infinitude and omnipotence of the Divine. Human science will never suffice.

For anyone interested in theoretical physics, quantum theory, computers, and AI, I would highly recommend Deutsch’s book.

"The Beginning of Infinity" by David Deutsch. A wide-ranging discourse on the nature of human progress and potential by an Oxford theoretical physicist with a wide knowledge of biology, philosophy, history, political institutions, etc. His primary thesis is that man survives and develops as a species by creating knowledge to solve problems, and that there is no limit to this process, hence the title. According to Deutsch, and Popper before him, the creation of knowledge, in science and elsewhere, begins with theoretical conjecture (i.e. an explanation), proceeds by criticizing and testing this explanation against observation, then correcting it. He believes that all problems are solvable and agrees with Popper that the conditions for advancement of mankind are a society that values innovation and inquiry above custom and conformity and that provides a means for correcting mistakes in explanations and leadership. Such societies were rare in the course of human history, flourishing for short periods in ancient Athens and renaissance Florence, but only taking root with the Enlightenment and the following Western tradition. His forays into the concept of infinity, quantum theory and parallel universes, the co-evolution of memes and genes, etc. are mind-expanding, to say the least. Deutch's rejection of the pessimistic "space-ship earth-- limited resource" mentality of the modern environmental movement in favor of problem solving and creation of new knowledge and resources (Weinberg's "technological" fix) raises a major issue about our future that needs critical examination.

When you're dealing with topics such as physics and reality, you sometimes lose me. But, what I can make of Deutsch's title is that we all should make things better when it comes to progress. Too often, this is not done for the sake of personal goals, etc. Conformity, mathematical impossibilities, and culture sustaining is enough to scare any reader/purchases. For those who have the nerve to pick up this title and give it a shot, you won't be disappointed. It is not my cup of tea...but, you can see a lot of merit in this book.

Reality. Reality as a basis for treatises that weave the complicated topics of physics, astronomy and epistemology are having a profound view of the world and universe and Deutsch give a different view of "The Fabric of Reality".

If you can handle the complications of this title. If you want to challenge your mind's capacity, pick up this title and respond to my view. Let me know what you think of Deuatsch and his infinity study...

Greetings,

Not a reviewer, not my thing.

This is best non-fiction book I've ever read, so felt responsible to post something.

Dr. Deutsch has done us an immense cultural service, distilling morality down to a single primary premise via his fictional dialogue between Socrates and Plato.

Socrates asks: how we get to objective truth.
“Could it be that the moral imperative not to destroy the means of correcting mistakes is the only moral imperative? That all other moral truths follow from it?”

Here's Dr. Deutsch's PRINCIPLE OF OPTIMISM:

“All evils are caused by insufficient knowledge.”

There's a great review in the NY Times by David Albert here:
[...]

And some excerpts from the book here:
[...]

Didn't comprehend much of the chapter on parallel universes as it's beyond my scientific range, and maybe my intelligence range.

But can't recommend this book enough.

Think it should be required reading.

Think this man is one of the most brilliant men on earth, and it's truly a pleasure to spend time with his mind.

The claims in this book are so radical that it's not possible to be neutral on it. Either it's garbage, or it will come to be regarded as truly seminal work, setting out a view of the world that they'll teach in school in 50 years time.

The fundamental claim is that knowledge has significance at cosmic scale, and that there is a category of being called "people" (which includes modern humans) who are capable of indefinitely acquiring and using that knowledge by virtue of the fact that they are a) universal explainers and b) universal constructors.

Some notable aspects of the book include...

The Structure: incredibly broad-ranging. There are chapters on quantum physics, "sustainability", bad philosophy, political voting systems, and "why are flowers beautiful?" Amazingly, they weave together to make his case. I suspect you will find some much more understandable and convincing than others. But ultimately the multi-pronged approach is necessary to put all the blocks in place. And every chapter makes more sense with the benefit of having read the others. In other words, this is a book which is intriguing first time round, and mind-blowing on second read as the pieces snap into place. But it's always been Deutsch's view that in a sense you can't understanding anything, without at least partially understanding everything. His structure reflects that.

The Arguments: always provocative and fun. eg. everything from Why David Attenborough's conclusions from the demise of Easter Island's civilization, to the problem of predicting the future motion of the cork in the bottle of champagne in the fridge at SETI. He takes on everyone: Richard Dawkins, Jared Diamond, Sir Martin Rees, Stephen Hawking... An unsympathetic reader would feel there was a giant ego being exercised, but to me this is more just the mind of a man driven by wherever reason takes him.

The Implications: couldn't be much more significant. If Deutsch is right our obsession with current thinking on Sustainability, Politics, Education, Public Policy all need serious revamp.

More important than that, though, this book will change your view as to who YOU are. Your (partial but growing) ability to understand and explain the world will come to seem something of extraordinary beauty and significance. Life will seem richer, and with infinite promise of more to come.

The first 10 chapters are one of the deepest account of epistemology that I have read in years.
It is firmly based on Popper's theories - in fact, one could criticize the book for being largely a regurgitation of Popper's ideas.
But this is where the book presents two ideas that are fundamentally original and opened new intellectual horizons (at least for me):
- the power of knowledge, how it empowers mankind;
- the moral imperative of the search for knowledge, and therefore that the promotion of error correction mechanisms must be part of the founding principles of any moral system.

From here to the end of the book, it is a little less even.
Chapter 11 is an argument about the multi-verse interpretation of quantum physics. It is poorly written, which is strange given the fact that the author is known for this (unorthodox) interpretation. You would have expected a better constructed argument coming from someone who has written the first ten chapters.

The balance of the book applies his ideas to real-life questions. They range from brilliant (what's the best voting system?) to average (although I agree with what Deutsch has to say about aesthetics, I was again a little disappointed).

Overall, I highly recommend this book, but beware:
- it is fairly dense
- it is not a "popular science" type book; this is more philosophy, ranging from epistemology to metaphysics to ethics.

David Deutsch's explanation of the transforming power of knowledge to change not only ourselves, but everything around us, has the potential to challenge and eliminate multiple parochial beliefs that hinder humanity's pursuit of its highest moral purposes.

Our current understanding of the laws of physics is that they describe a world, the structure of which can be modeled by general purpose (universal) computers as long as they have sufficient memory and processing speed. This was explained in David Deutsch's first book, The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications, and in this new masterpiece, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World.

What logically follows is that with the aid of computers that increase our own effective memory capacity and speed, human beings can become increasingly powerful universal computers, thereby gaining the ability to model and understand, with ever increasing accuracy, all aspects of reality.

But current laptops are also universal computers and their speed and memory capacity can be increased, as well. So what is the difference between us and them?

According to David Deutsch, it is our ability to explain things. We do not yet understand how to design this ability to explain things, otherwise we would be able to create computers that are intelligent, though David Deutsch has no doubt that one day we will.

Our ability to explain is a precious evolutionary advance with far-reaching consequences. This is so because the ability to explain one aspect of reality can have universal reach (apply not just to the circumstances that the explanation was designed for, but to the rest of the universe, as well, if the explanation correctly incorporates aspects of the universal laws of physics).

For example, understanding that the seasons are caused by the tilt of the earth relative to the sun allows us not only to understand the change of seasons on the planet earth, but also the universal idea that planets orbiting distant stars throughout the universe have changing seasons, even if we never experience any of their different seasons. David Deutsch points out that physicists in a laboratory have created temperatures so low that there is no natural state of the universe in which these temperatures are found. Though we may have initially wanted to learn about refrigeration and heating to be able to protect our food, regulate climate in our homes, and other reasons specific to survival: As far as we know it is possible that these extremely cold temperatures have never existed before in the history of the universe.

So the extent of our past experience or the details of our evolutionary history do not limit what we can know or do, because our ideas can correctly incorporate aspects of the universal laws of physics, which then give these same ideas unlimited reach to apply whenever and wherever a particular law of physics is relevant, throughout the universe. And this idea has immense consequences.

For example, we can explain phenomena well beyond the evolutionary environment that led to the design of our brain. Although our genes influence us, we are not ultimately limited by them because, for example, we can learn about the universal properties of self-reproducing objects (like DNA) and so learn to understand the mechanisms of genes, increasingly giving us the ability to change them if we do not like their effect. Evolution therefore puts no arbitrary restriction on what we can know or do, because human explanations can include truth-content about Nature itself, and so can reach beyond the parochial experiences that motivated us to create an understanding of them.

I am reminded of an art historian who told me that no brilliant artist fully understands his own work of art. Good knowledge, like good art, reaches beyond its creator or its appearance. As David Deutsch indirectly points out, my teacher was quite right because works of art contain knowledge, not only about the physical world but about beauty itself, which he argues is as real as prime numbers and many other abstractions. Hence they can influence us well-beyond the intention of the artist, just as the explanation of the seasons applies universally to planets throughout the universe, though we developed it to understand only our own.

To the extent that our explanations correctly utilize aspects of the laws of physics, they contain the truth that makes them apply always and everywhere in relevant circumstances. This is so because truth is invariant with respect to time and space -- it never changes. Therefore, explanations with truth-content also have aspects that are invariant. They are impossible to change without making them less true; that is, ruining their explanatory content. So, for example, good explanations are well-adapted to surviving criticism in minds that think about them, regardless of the person who does the thinking.

Because of this timeless, unvarying quality, good explanations become an essential accumulating part of the reality that they also explain, as bad ideas are eliminated and good ideas survive the criticism that they are subjected to within minds. This implies that there can be evolutionary advances in ideas and subsequent problems that we can consider and solve.

But where do new ideas come from? David Deutsch explains that they come from previous knowledge subjected to random variation (essentially evolutionary mutations in ideas) and recombination, so there is really no limit on our ability to come up with new possible explanations for things -- no limit on our ability to guess an explanation for something -- ultimately because random variations are also limitless.

This is so even though most guesses are not improvements. The crucial part in this rational process is "error-correction". After trying (and letting others try) to refute a new theory -- that is, criticize it by finding a logical or experimental contradiction in it -- if it survives criticism then it becomes the best explanation that we can think of -- the one we use, once other rival explanations are refuted. David Deutsch argues that new knowledge comes from random variations applied to previous knowledge -- what the philosopher of science Karl Popper (and David Deutsch borrowing from him) call "conjectures".

David Deutsch points out some profound consequences of the above worldview. If our ability to explain things with ever-increasing accuracy is true, then our ability to use that knowledge to make things better is limitless as well. Not only are we universal computers (that can potentially explain any phenomena in the universe), we are then also universal constructors of material objects. We can make use of our explanations to create anything that is not forbidden by the laws of physics. That includes societies with more physical resources, subject only to the limitations imposed by the fixed laws of physics, not biological or ecological limitations or other seeming barriers to improvement.

So "spaceship earth" (the idea that the earth has precious resources specifically needed by human beings) is a myth. David Deutsch points out that it would be entirely feasible to survive in the darkest places in the universe once we have developed the correct knowledge. And we currently survive where we do now not because of a particular accident of available resources but rather because of our ability to transform poor resources to make an environment that is hospitable to humans. We survive because of what our knowledge has done, when before us our evolutionary ancestors lived a horrid, meager, Malthusian existence, where any improvement in resource availability was soon taken away by a consequent population increase.

There are nonetheless multiple threats to us. But if David Deutsch is correct, then all of these threats, moral or otherwise, come from a lack of knowledge, not from any foundational evil that must ultimately cause us to fail. He points out that the great leap forward of the West occurred during the Western Enlightenment, not because of resource availability in Europe, as some have claimed, but rather because of a change in mind-set in which people stopped seeking truth from authority (or other supposedly justified sources), but instead adopted an attitude of correcting errors in ideas, regardless of their source.

David Deutsch points out that a good political system has certain similar characteristics to a scientific research program, ultimately because both derive from Enlightenment ideas. Using our democracies, if a politician makes decisions that are not good (just like if a scientist comes up with an explanation that does not work) the important thing is that we can non-violently vote the politician out of office (or in the case of the scientist, non-violently challenge a scientifically bad idea.) Non-violent error correction (not justification of ideas by some other authoritative idea or by some authority, David Deutsch explains) is the key part of any moral, political, or scientific process that can grow knowledge.

David Deutsch's brilliant book, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World, is a tour de force and is essential reading for those who recognize the ennobling aspects of rational thinking and for those who are tired of hearing ultimately irrational explanations of inherent limitations on what we can imagine or do. David Deutsch reminds us that the cause of suffering is actually stagnation and ignorance rather than progress and knowledge growth. If we reach beyond the mistaken parochial thinking that threatens the growth of knowledge, we humans can have a bright and exciting future as intelligent moral beings in the world -- and in the universe.

As anyone who has seen Professor Deutsch speak will have noticed (see, for example, his TED talk on "Our place in the cosmos"), David Deutsch has an awe-inspiringly brilliant mind. The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World is not one of those quick, cute books you enjoy then forget; it's the kind of book you read and re-read, one that stays with you, informing your thinking long into the future. I myself have been profoundly influenced by David Deutsch's ideas, and I suspect that if you read this book, you will be too. Indeed, I'd go so far as to predict that this book will still be being read generations from now. It's that good.

Books cited in this review: The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications;Fabric of Reality (Penguin Science);The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World;Beginning of Infinity (Allen Lane Science)

I will let you read the other comments but let me suggest you try the unabridged version from audible.com. In that format you are able to enjoyably review difficult work like this. It is difficult for me because it is counter intuitive but also shows "reality" from the quantum perspective . For me and others "Classical Physics" is the default means by which we assemble our perceptions into a narrative that makes sense.
That there are many if not an infinite of modes in which one proceed in gaining knowledge you even begin to wonder what the "World" might look like.
Marvel as acquaintances outline their experiences to you.

You are really missing an experience in reading ( for example ) by not experiencing audible.

"...the infinite potential of explanatory knowledge - the subject of this book." - David Deutsch

In this book Dr. Deutsch performs a public service by pointing out to his readers the essential role that speculation (or, as Deutsch and Karl Popper prefer, "conjecture") plays in the formation of scientific ideas. Speculation is not mentioned in the standard, brief explanation of the scientific method that appears in the first chapter of introductory science textbooks. Its role was something that I, for one, had to figure out for myself. I wasn't sure I had it right until hearing a recording of an old lecture by Nobel prize winner Richard Feynman, who, speaking about where scientists get their ideas, said "They make them up" (Feynman was much more succinct than Deutsch).

While I agree with Deutsch about conjecture, unlike him (and the Greek philosopher Plato) I see no point in disparaging the role of the senses in idea formation. I still go with "science starts with observation" before diverging from the text.

It is possible to argue with any number of the things Dr. Deutsch has to say in his book, and this is fine, and good exercise. I considered it a good thing when my head began filling up with arguments and questions I would like to ask the author, although some of the questions were on the level of "You say knowledge can have effects that do not diminish with distance, across the multiverse. What about knowledge's competitors? In your system would delusion and BS have the same reach? Can they run around the multiverse twice before knowledge puts its shoes on?"

A sample argument, details omitted for brevity:
Deutsch: Evolution provided all other species with the knowledge they need to survive, but not us.
Me: Ah, so evolution looked after butterflies and bunny rabbits, but through some unknown process skipped over us? Sorry, no sale. Let me give you some advice, Poindexter, stick to math. Okay, what else you got?

Deutsch carves in stone `Problems are Soluble' as a summary of his shining faith that the method of producing explanations that was worked out in the Enlightenment can solve all problems. Deutsch's admiration and enthusiasm for this method is very great, to the point where he could be seen as setting up an idol. I don't know if people who are given to worship should be told to beware or prepare to rejoice. Hopefully, future historians, writing with ochre on a cave wall, will not record "The Endarkenment began with the publication of Deutsch's `The Beginning of Infinity' in 2011." It might be best if students learn that what they, and Deutsch, have to work with is a tested but not necessarily invincible system and a bodily organ between their ears that can sometimes remember where it parked the car. Readers of Deutsch's work may find it useful to keep in mind that "knowledge" and "wisdom" are not synonyms.

While Deutsch doesn't hesitate to play the prophet (here "prophet" is intended to mean "a purveyor of concepts that are carved in stone") readers will find that a number of his assertions, predictions and explanations have wide gaps that are posted with some version of "to be filled in later."

Some of the material in this book is difficult enough that a really good explainer is called for. Deutsch is okay sometimes, not always. I was, without difficulty, able to follow Deutsch's explanation of why his electron - an infinite, multiversal collection of interfering, deterministic, fungible instances of the electron - does not fall into the proton. But then Deutsch introduces an experiment in which a single photon is run through a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, and says that the result of this experiment is the best evidence for a multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics. Since Deutsch is a devoted advocate of such an interpretation, it seems that he should, at this point in the book, exert his powers of explanation to the utmost in order to assure that his readers understand the experiment, its outcome, and Deutsch's view of the matter, but his explanation here sent me looking for other sources and a more complete discussion.

"The Beginning of Infinity" reaches its climax about two-thirds of the way through its 450 pages in a chapter on "Bad Philosophy," were Deutsch the multiverse-man calls on everything he has said before and confronts the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Deutsch here brings out his most well-honed arguments. His heaping of scorn on the Copenhagen interpretation will elicit the admiration of everyone who appreciates good scorn heaping.

Deutsch gets in some good shots, but, since this is science, the question of whether the multiverse, Copenhagen or some other alternative will be the interpretation of choice will be settled not by argument but by demonstration. A theoretical physicist is someone in search of a functional, reliable mathematical description of some aspect of nature. If and when some multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics is perceived as meeting these requirements better than competing interpretations it may well be adopted by more than a small minority of quantum physicists.

(Physicists who have adopted a multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics were a small minority when Deutsch published his first book in 1998, and, according to Deutsch, they remain a small minority today, which leads me to suspect that there are things that Dr. Deutsch is simply not telling us about multiverse interpretations of quantum mechanics. Then again, a sea-change of any sort might have to await the fashion sense of a younger generation of physicists).

I want to thank Dr. Deutsch for having taken the time to share his thoughts with me. This book is an opportunity to hear an Oxford don and Royal Society fellow stand up and blow some jazz on quite a number of topics, which is something not to be sneezed at. For that, for its good parts and for its function as a gym for mental exercise and tae-kwan-do I'll give it three stars, but do be prepared.

Deutsch: "The universe is explicable."
Me: Really? The universe has been explained? Gee, you'd think something like that would be in the newspapers. Oh, no, wait. I see. What you meant was "I think the universe is explicable." You should be more careful about the way you express yourself. People would understand you better. It might make your thinking clearer, too.

*****
"Deutsch has no doubt that science reveals the underlying nature of things... Deutsch has plausible answers to some of the greatest mysteries of all time. Why, for instance, are flowers beautiful to us as well as the insects they have evolved to attract?" -- Peter Forbes

'The Beginning of Infinity' is as bold as Deutsch's previous book: The Fabric of Reality, 1998, that earned him a fan base of strong supporters and enthusiasts, eagerly waiting for his next inspiring tome. Deutsch creatively addresses subjects from artificial intelligence to the evolution of human culture and intuitive originality; with matching profound conclusions. He argues that decent explanations inform not only moral and political philosophy but even aesthetics. While the 'Fabric of Reality' claimed that until a few centuries ago, most cultures assumed everything worth knowing was already known, 'The Beginning of Infinity' stipulates a philosophical exploration of the future of global progress, with surprisingly lucid and thought-provoking speculations. With no expert claiming that quantum mechanics is the ultimate microscopic science, one day Q.M. will undoubtedly be superseded, most probably as a result of experiments that indicate mutual incompatibility. Although the principles of a future GUT(Grand Unified Theory) could not be explained, they are to be simply postulated.

Since all human discoveries; of fire, hunting tools, agriculture, or the wheel maintained its progress, every proto-scientific tradition had explanations or almost every matter from human origins to the cause of earthquakes, or epidemic diseases. These primitive interpretation were contradictory and mostly wrong. Only rarely that someone dared thinking that the human condition could keep improving until the 17th-century scientific revolution in Europe broke out. Deutsch claims that the possibility for an unlimited creativity has arisen then, as a climax of the Enlightenment progress, identified by Gödel and Turing in the 1930s, ensuing Babbage earlier proposition of the enormous potential of machines computation capabilities. Since then, new knowledge and discoveries have evolved at an increasing rate with 'infinity' being the limit. He views this as an extending scientific and social revolution that exerted a creative force on the domains of moral and political philosophy. Its core issue was rejecting any pre-imposed authority of knowledge, restoring the tradition of critical examination to seek elucidation.

Underlining the consequence of 'iteration', a computational cycle of repeated operations, to improve a set of initial conditions through trial and error. Similarly, learning through mistakes, by error correction as the beginning of infinity, shows Deutsch as an admirer of Karl Popper. He rejects the explanations of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that the ascendance of the West is an outcome of geography and climate, instead he stresses the distinction of open societies, where criticism and innovation flourish. Deutsch rejects pessimism of an illusive technical inability, to cope with the pace and results of robust science-based inventions. He recounts how a pessimist friend argued, that color TV dependence on europium, a rare element would abort its development. Now we find this argument absurd, being based on a failure to anticipate the creation of other color display alternatives, as LCD monitors, based on liquid crystals technology. Here, Deutsch's discerns between prediction, rationally based on present knowledge, and prophecy, based on the inability to imagine future knowledge. James Maxwell's equations of electro-magnetism in the 1860s, predicted radio waves, from which have proceeded not just radio but TV, mobile telephony, radio astronomy, 3G wireless Internet, radar and microwave ovens, portrays the expanse of mathematics into the physical world, concerned with matter and energy.

Deutsch, an award-winning scientist with Ph.D. in quantum computation, whose expertise supports his intellect, examins the nature and interpretation of knowledge, as well as the implications of his creative presumptions. These are not limited to science but extend into cultural, moral and aesthetic spheres. While he is clearly a wide spectrum intellect and a deep thinker, who offers original mind-boggling arguments and fresh ideas, his task is made more burdensome by the breadth of his fields of interest. Alas, he doesn't possess George Gamow, or John Barrow's dexterity for clear concise prose.

The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications

I am not going to be comprehensive in my review. Others have said all that needs to be said of Deutsch's regrettably long-winded view on...EVERYTHING. The other reviews dutifully go over, either for or against, Deutsch's outlook on the limits (or lack thereof) of human knowledge and the way such knowledge leads to conclusions regarding universal constructs. No. What I'm disappointed with is the writing itself. Some of Deutsch's grand statements and conclusions are noteworthy; many are provocative; most are debatable. Whether or not one agrees or disagrees is really not even important. The writing itself is well....dull. Perhaps the problem is that Deutsch, whose intelligence is not up for debate, has WAY too much time on his hands...a rather desirable by product of his employment status. The problem when you have this much time to think, is that you end up thinking EVERYTHING you have to say is either correct or interesting. It's not. But the biggest offense here is the matter of fact, "let me tell you what I think over coffee" style of prose Deutsch invokes in describing his opinions. Ideas tend to drift into each without being set apart. This is not surprising since, as stated, he has a lot of time to think. I really enjoyed Deutsch's previous work (The Fabric of Reality). But this work is just plain boring and doesn't shed much light on knowledge. It provides a slightly, very slightly, interesting subjective set of conclusions. I just kept finding myself saying at the end of each chapter "so what; is that it?" Or in the middle of an interminally long chapter, I'd be thinking "get on with it." It's dry and dull for the most part.

This book is a mixture of topics related to the philosophy of science. Deutsch is a student of Popper. He doesn't think induction is useful - in particular, he believes in refutation and not confirmation - arguing that repeated observations which conform to a hypothesis don't make it more likely. This is an elementary mistake. Induction is well established as the basic foundation of the scientific method. Popperian falsificationism is a outdated and discredited philosophy of science. This falsificationism is one of the biggest themes in the book. It's flat wrong - and the lengthy mistaken defense of it means that this is a pretty dubious book.

In defense of the book, it discusses the concept of a "jump to universality". That is an interesting and useful idea. The book also has a chapter on the much neglected topic of memes. Deutsch endorses the idea - which might help it a little, since Deutsch is a famous physicist. Deutsch also argues against finitism, saying that infinity is real because the concept of infinity is useful. It seems fair enough.

There are some bits about machine intelligence. However these bits are not very good. For instance, Deutsch argues that computers will need humans to support them, saying: "universal computers cannot really be universal unless there are people present to provide energy and maintenance - indefinitely." (p. 146). This isn't right: machines need not be dependent on people.

However, the bottom line for this book is that Deutsch attempts to defend Popper - but he doesn't understand the opposition, or why they are right. It's really a rather sad waste of time and resources.

This book is a work of art and a work of genius. Every sentence is original, creative and packed with meaning, yet never technical. It will uplift you and enlighten you. I read dozens of nonfiction books a year and this one towers over the others. It synthesizes science, philosophy, computing, history, morality and art in a way I never thought possible.

The Beginning of Infinity takes disparate topics and unites them in one powerful worldview. Topics range from physics and philosophy to voting systems and alphabets to optimism and objective aesthetics to evolution and creationism, and even morality. Each topic has enlightening individual analysis, but even better than that is the worldview behind the analysis, which comes out as one reads the entire book. The Beginning of Infinity is about a way of thinking. It is the most rational way of thinking ever to be explained.

You might think that David Deutsch is a genius (and he is) and that therefore his way of thinking won't work for you. That is not the case. His worldview can help anyone with any topic. It's not equally useful for all fields -- it fares better with important topics -- but it always has a surprisingly large amount of relevance and use. And unlike many philosophers who want to sound impressive, Deutsch has made a concerted effort to write clearly and accessibly. This isn't a book written only for the initiated.

I've identified three main themes which I think best describe the most important message of the book.

The first theme is the titular one. Like Deutsch's previous book, chapters conclude with short summaries and terminology sections. But he's got a new section too: the meanings of the beginning of infinity encountered in the previous chapter. So what kind of infinity is Deutsch concerned with? Primarily progress. Humans are capable of an infinite amount of progress. We can improve things without limit, and learn without limit. This covers not just material improvement but also moral improvement. Some impressive types of potential progress discussed in the book include building space stations in deep space, immortality and creating a more open, tolerant and free society.

The second theme, which is the most fundamental, is epistemological. Epistemology is the study of knowledge. Deutsch discusses issues like how we learn, and the correct and effective ways of thinking. Insights from this field, such as how to be rational, the inevitability of mistakes and the need to be able to correct mistakes (rather than rely on avoiding them all in the first place) underlie everything else. For example, Deutsch proposes an epistemological principle as the most important moral idea. I won't keep you in suspense: it is the moral imperative not to destroy the means of correcting mistakes. But if you want to fully understand what this means you'll have to read the book!

The third theme, which is prevalent without usually being stated explicitly, is liberalism in its original, not left-wing, meaning. Liberalism draws on the other two themes. It is about organizing society to allow for human progress, rational lifestyles, knowledge creation, and the correcting of mistakes. To do this its biggest principle is not to approach conflicts and disagreements with the use of force because force does not discover the truth of the matter and everyone should seek to figure out the truth and do that rather than taking a might makes right approach. Liberalism is the philosophy of open societies and the only one capable of supporting unlimited progress. In contrast to open societies, Deutsch also discusses static societies which do not make progress. He explains how they will eventually fail and cease to exist because there are always new and unforeseeable problems which they cannot adapt to. Only a liberal society which moves forward has the means of dealing with the unknown problems the future holds.

There is a lot to love about The Beginning of Infinity. If you are narrowly interested in physics you should read it for the chapter explaining what the multiverse is like -- and when you do you may also be challenged by the chapter on bad philosophies of science and intrigued by the chapter on the reality of abstractions. If you are only interested in math and computation, you'll want to read the chapter on AI, but you'll also enjoy the chapter about the concept of infinity. If you're an artist you'll appreciate the discussion of the beauty of flowers, and the wit of the Socratic dialog. Whatever the case may be, the philosophy running throughout has universal interest.

The book gets off to a bad start. In the first few pages, the author tries to lay a foundation for his subsequent remarks by proving the non-existence of the inductive logic. The non-existence of it would leave scientists with only the deductive logic in distinguishing correct from incorrect inferences. This would leave them without a logical process for theorizing.

The author points out that an inductive logic would have to be based upon a principle of induction that makes inductive inferences likely to be true. The author asserts (page 5) that no one has every been able to formulate such a principle. Wrong!

In 1963, a PhD candidate in the theoretical physics program of the University of California, Berkeley proposed that this principle was "entropy minimax"; his name was Ronald Christensen. Over the subsequent 12 years Christensen perfected a computer algorithm by which a scientific theory could be logically induced; he and his colleagues tested the ability of this algorithm to induce scientific theories in real world applications. By now, we have 50 years of experience with this algorithm. It works.

Christensen's early work is documented in the seven volume "Entropy Minimax Sourcebook." Particularly useful volumes are "Multivariate Statistical Modeling" (ISBN-0-938-87614-7) and "Applications" (ISBN-0-938-87607-4).

Provocative, fun, wide ranging and challenging. The book is about the author's world view of how the enlightenment and critical thinking has changed the world. With fascinating forays into philosophy, evolution, culture and a great eclectic explanation of quantum mechanics. Ignore the reviews that complain about individual issues with the author's views or presentation, I can't imagine a worse disservice to the author or the book than reading it uncritically. So read, enjoy and think hard and critically about this wonderful book.

Deutsch resonates with me because I believe the centerpieces of his philosophy (that all universal problems are soluble and that all evil comes from lack of knowledge) is dead-on. This is a challenging book, but I urge anyone pondering accelerating technology and knowledge creation to read it.

I write this as I return to this page (after having listened to the Audible version) to order the hardback.

This book is often self-indulgent (skip Socrates' dialogue with the god), sometimes wrong (memes are Dawkinsian hogwash, not real, self-replicating systems), and one of the most 3-4 most important and brilliant books of the last 20 years, at least.

This book is worth the price just for the long overdue total debunking of Jared Diamond's 'Guns, Germs, and Environmental Determinist Gobbledegook'.

After getting the hardback, I may get the Kindle version, just to make it easier to clip out the good parts, and there are lots and lots of very, very good parts.

I have been a fan of David Deutsch ever since I found his posts in the Taking Children Seriously forum in the 1990s. I have read his earlier book a dozen times and each time discovered new and deeper understandings within it. This book too opens up whole new ways of thinking. The chapters on memes and creativity alone are worth books of their own. I expect to be pawing over this book for years to come. My hunch is this will be seen as a seminal work by future generations.

Deutsch is probably my favorite science writer. Not only does he have insatiable curiosity, but he has the ability to pursue his insights outside of the bounds of conventional thinking, in a way that makes Brian Greene (probably the most successful writer in the fields of high-energy physics and cosmology) seem almost parochial. But what truly distinguishes him in a field of great writers is his uncanny and consistent ability to write about the most difficult concepts in a way that neither insults your intelligence nor prevents understanding. As a contrast, I'm frequently completely lost in Brian Greene's fascinating slabs of cosmological explication.

Although Deutsch is very discursive, his core arguments have such an inevitability about them, that when you reach the destination it's with the same feeling of having completed a Henry James novel where the outcome is entirely and unavoidably dictated by the characteristics of the people he constructs in the theater of the mind, not by a story imposed upon characters.

His book "The Fabric of Reality" is one of the few popular books I've seen that deviates convincingly from the most common interpretations of quantum physics, and does so in a way that leaves you, if not a complete believer, unable to see the flaws in his arguments.

The way he writes, in "Fabric", is to start from some very simple, well-known experiments that expose the wave-particle duality of light (and other forms of electromagnetic radiation), and, ultimately, the quantum probabilistic nature of matter. Every step of logic that he develops from those simple experiments is easy to follow, and seem so obvious - because of the clarity of his writing - that you almost wonder why you'd never figured it out by yourself. But almost without knowing it, simply by following his seemingly flawless construction of idea upon idea, you find yourself a stranger in a very strange land, where famous thought experiments like Schroedinger's Cat are explicable not by probabilistic collapse of wave functions, when observed, but by the faintest possible interference of "shadow" particles from an infinity of parallel universes, occupying locations in other dimensions, but right next to our own.

And you want to believe, if only because the alternative, accepted explanations are so unsatisfactory, and don't bear the whiff of truth.
I recently started reading Deutsch's new book, The End of Infinity, in which he starts off again with relatively simple arguments about what constitutes a good explanation of a phenomenon, how you define something as being a problem, and what conditions are necessary for the creation of new knowledge, and builds towards the idea that knowledge creation by people (human or not) is one of the basic physical processes of the universe, and will ultimately play as great a role in fashioning the large-scale fabric of the universe as supernovae and dark matter.

It's all fascinating, thought-provoking stuff, and you should not be surprised if reading it gives you some ideas of your own. But I'm finding myself wondering about what motivates him to write these books, and my tentative conclusion is that he writes primarily out of the joy of satisfying his own curiosity in a forum which exposes his ideas and thought process, and only secondarily out of the opportunity to impart his ideas to excite others into following the same trends of thought.

In my way of thinking, he's the sort of person whose mind is constantly generating new explanations for everything around him, and then he happily devotes his time to unraveling and extending these germs of ideas to see where they lead. But I think that this tension within him - to come up with narrations that help explain the universe - sometimes blinds him to leaps of logic that aren't necessarily strong enough to support the additional explanations he remorselessly piles on top of the original ideas. This doesn't make him a less fascinating writer. In fact, almost the opposite is true, for it's in these gaps that the reader can build his or her own narration.
Deutsch argues early in the book about what conditions are needed for knowledge creation. He states that you need nothing more than matter, energy (or the ability to convert one from the other), and what he calls "evidence: the information needed to test scientific theories." As an example of my own, consider a free-floating mind in extragalactic space so remote from all visible matter that the sky was not only unrelievedly black but that the laws of physics made observation of large-scale structures impossible, since they'd all red-shifted beyond the perimeter available to an observer, taking into account the age of the universe. How could such a person construct a theory of gravity? There'd be no "evidence" to even suggest gravity might exist.

Implicit in Deutsch's argument at this stage (although it's been stated explicitly earlier) is that there is a fourth requirement: the existence of people. We - and beings like us - alone, in all creation, can create advanced knowledge (as opposed to information, or anthropological/animal culture.) His later conclusions - that the environments in which knowledge can be created overwhelmingly outnumber those where it cannot - depend upon the requirements he earlier established as being necessary for knowledge creation. But the route he takes from those requirements to the conclusion about the universality of knowledge creation environments requires a suspension of belief.

To build his argument, he postulates a cube of intergalactic "vacuum" in which the solar system could comfortably fit. Since space is overwhelmingly empty - matter structures as we know them are extreme outliers - , if he can prove that knowledge creation in that solar-system sized cube is possible, and even probable, given sufficient cosmological time, then he can validate his conclusion about the ubiquity of places where knowledge can be created.

As Deutsch says, although this cube of space is empty, cold and entirely black, there is actually no such place as a perfect vacuum in intergalactic space. Even a cube as remote as this one will contain over a billion tons of matter, mostly in the form of ionized hydrogen, and "this is more than enough mass to build, say, a space station and a colony of scientists creating an open-ended stream of knowledge - if (his italics) anyone were present who knew how to do that."

Fine, so he seems to be saying that, given unlimited technology (and, by this time, I've already accepted his conclusion that even the most outlandish forms of technical know-how must surely exist in cosmological time scales), humans could prosper in this infinitely inhospitable place, and create new knowledge. I can more or less buy that. And he argues from this that "a typical location in the universe is amenable to the open-ended creation of knowledge. And therefore so are almost all other kinds of environment..." And here's where starts to use some sleight of hand. He says "in the universe at large, knowledge-friendliness is the rule, not the exception."

His argument depends on showing that the conditions of matter, light and evidence can exist even in this remote location. I won't go into his proof, because it's not really relevant, but I can accept the truths of this argument. But what he completely side-steps is how those people - without whom knowledge creation is, as he earlier showed, impossible - got to that remote cube of space to create knowledge out of matter, light and evidence; and, moreover, why they did so. He never even explicitly states that people traveled to this far away cube, set up shop, and started creating knowledge (once they'd built their space station.) He just talks about how these people, however they originated, could use whatever evidence was available, to construct and test our present-day theories of cosmology. To paraphrase him: using super powerful telescopes beyond our imagination, they could see far enough away, and in great enough detail, to observe planets with tilted axes, and therefore conclude, without ever having seen a tulip, that those planets have seasons. All of that would be based entirely on an understanding of planetary motion, etc.

The fact that he never brings up in this argument how people would get there, or why they'd go there in the first place, seems to imply that he means that these people originated within the cube. But that's clearly impossible. In intergalactic space, all you've got, for the most part, is ionized hydrogen. Complex molecules cannot exist (since supernovae would be too distant), or self-construct themselves; and so replicating units such as RNA can never develop. This, in turn means, large scale structure is impossible. Even if you could conceive the idea of a formless intelligence in the cube, how could it construct the tools it would need to gather evidence and create knowledge, when the kind of matter you'd need to build those tools cannot, by its very nature, ever exist in that cube in the absence of colonization from outside.

So, although he doesn't say so expressly, we have to believe he means that these far distant knowledge cubes get colonized by space-faring races. But this thought brings with it issues of its own. The first question is "why?" Why would any race set up a space station meant for knowledge gathering in such an inimical place, when there are vastly more places much friendlier to their endeavors? For instance, those that are anywhere reasonably close to one of the 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 estimated - and it's a low estimate - stars in the reachable universe.

You might say that there are special conditions this far away from other dense conglomerations of matter; conditions, say, of cold and vacuum that allow special experiments. But we believe we can already make cold and vacuum here on earth even more extreme than that found in the darkest areas of space. What about stray radiation? We know it's next to impossible to entirely shield any equipment anywhere in the vicinity of the solar system from cosmic rays, for example. So we go way out there to do our experiments. But even this doesn't hold water: with even the level of shielding we can manufacture here now, we can easily postulate future technology building it in a region of space remote enough from major galaxies to make it effective in blocking cosmic rays (leaving aside, for the moment, how we'd get there), but not so far away as the cold dark regions Deutsch describes. But that's beside the point, because Deutsch himself would demolish that argument with his belief that there is no knowledge we can't eventually acquire that's not forbidden by the laws of physics. So, in the vast future, we'd have such infinitely better shielding that we could do this experiment also, on earth.

Yet even if you allow that there might be some scientific reason that made building a knowledge gathering community in these cold, dark, empty cubes of space, we surely wouldn't need many of them. And there are a lot of cubes to fill.

I think Deutsch would probably argue here that he's talking about things in principle. In principle, he'd argue, that those distant cubes are knowledge-friendly, even if we wouldn't ever likely want to colonize more than an infinitesimal quantity of them in reality. But he elevates knowledge, created by people, to being a fundamental principal of the cosmos. And that leaves room for the truly enormous hole in this argument. For most of the universe to be knowledge friendly, going by Deutsch's ideas, it has to be reachable, even if only in principle, by the only one of the four required ingredients (including matter, energy and evidence) that is capable of volition: people. And, unfortunately, it's not true that people can reach all over the universe, without breaking the laws of physics.

It takes a little bit of background to state why this is not the case. Our best theory of the origin of the universe is the big-bang. But it's no longer your grandfather's big bang. In fact, it's no longer even your father's big bang. My undergraduate degree was at the University College, London, in physics and astronomy. I'm only 46 now, and yet neither dark matter nor dark energy where even on the horizon then, and they make up the vast majority of matter in the universe. Fifty percent of what I learned is now invalid. The same is true of the big-bang. The more we learn, the more complicated the theory has to become to account for our observations.

The most significant feature that's been added on to the theory is the so-called "expansion". The universe we see around us can only have arisen if there'd been a very early phase of super-massive expansion, which was then switched off somehow (we're not exactly sure how.) This all begins to sound a little like Ptolomy's Epicycles, but if we accept it, then one of the logical conclusions is that there are infinitely larger parts of the universe than what we can see.

So there are places we can never see. And not just because we don't have powerful telescopes. Those parts of the universe are receding away from us effectively faster than the speed of light. I know that sounds impossible, but what's not often made clear in the expansion of the universe is that it's the very fabric of the universe itself which is expanding, and the limitations of the speed of light hold true against our local fabric, and the distant fabric accelerated away from us when the universe was a fraction of its current site. Most of the universe will be forever out of our reach, because the laws of physics forbid us from ever seeing light from those distant places.

This initial superfast period of the expansion of the fabric of space means that the majority of places in the universe are so far distant from one another that information can never reach them, let alone people. And this is even without bringing in the now de-rigueur view that one or more multiverses exist (the subject of Brian Greene's recent bestseller, "The Hidden Reality") leaving us with yet greater regions where it's impossible to create knowledge, even in principle. (And Deutsch himself wrote "The Fabric of the Cosmos", the book I referred to near the beginning of this overlong essay, on this exact same subject.)

And there's another more practical problem: it would be, in any case, impossible to posit a sufficient number of cubes of this nature with people in them, because the laws of physics (by which Deutsch expressly binds all of his statements of the possible achievements of technology) mean that it would be completely impractical to reach enough of them. If these cubes are so remote that the universe appears dark, then it would require travel of billions and billions of light years at "sub-warp" speeds. Even if we are to suppose that to be possible, to do so on any appreciably large scale would require a vast number of starfaring civilizations with the ability to travel as fast as a reasonable fraction of the speed of light, and an amount of time that would surely exceed the time left on the clock until the heat death of the universe.

I'm not suggesting for a moment that Deutsch doesn't know the key fact about most of space being beyond the reach of information, and I think it's unlikely it didn't occur to him that this idea lays waste to his conclusion that the majority of the universe is friendly to knowledge. So you can only presume that he deliberately left this out, and hoped we wouldn't notice. He has some gall, but I can hardly blame him. After all, if he hadn't, we wouldn't have this wonderful book to inspire us to think, and commentate upon.

The joy of reading something like this is not just that it sets you thinking, constantly, but that it allows you to speculate what might be, if things were different. I read it in the same spirit as I did Julian Jaynes' infamous "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind." The late Jaynes put up a convincing case that consciousness, as we know it, didn't arise until the more complex civilizations came together, say, around 4,000 BC. The detailed anthropological argument is fascinating in itself, and can be used to explain modern-day features of religion such as praying at grave stones. What's even more intriguing is how he uses the physiological underpinnings of his theory to explain phenomena as varied as hypnotism and schizophrenia. Ideas from that book still stay with me now, even though I don't believe the central idea for a second.

Deutsch's book is by no means as way out as Jaynes', and the vast majority is made up of solid, inspiring, insightful, creative thinking. But, in a way, reading books like Jaynes', and - less so - like Deutsch's, is similar to watching a great science fiction movie: you can't truly enjoy it unless you either willingly suspend a little bit of your belief, or you use the gaps to dream up your own stories. With Deutsch, I go the latter way, and enjoy the heck out of it.

David Deutsch's explanation of the transforming power of knowledge to change not only ourselves, but everything around us, has the potential to challenge and eliminate multiple parochial beliefs that hinder humanity's pursuit of its highest moral purposes.

Our current understanding of the laws of physics is that they describe a world, the structure of which can be modeled by general purpose (universal) computers as long as they have sufficient memory and processing speed. This was explained in David Deutsch's first book, The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications, and in this new masterpiece, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World.

What logically follows is that with the aid of computers that increase our own effective memory capacity and speed, human beings can become increasingly powerful universal computers, thereby gaining the ability to model and understand, with ever increasing accuracy, all aspects of reality.

But current laptops are also universal computers and their speed and memory capacity can be increased, as well. So what is the difference between us and them?

According to David Deutsch, it is our ability to explain things. We do not yet understand how to design this ability to explain things, otherwise we would be able to create computers that are intelligent, though David Deutsch has no doubt that one day we will.

Our ability to explain is a precious evolutionary advance with far-reaching consequences. This is so because the ability to explain one aspect of reality can have universal reach (apply not just to the circumstances that the explanation was designed for, but to the rest of the universe, as well, if the explanation correctly incorporates aspects of the universal laws of physics).

For example, understanding that the seasons are caused by the tilt of the earth relative to the sun allows us not only to understand the change of seasons on the planet earth, but also the universal idea that planets orbiting distant stars throughout the universe have changing seasons, even if we never experience any of their different seasons. David Deutsch points out that physicists in a laboratory have created temperatures so low that there is no natural state of the universe in which these temperatures are found. Though we may have initially wanted to learn about refrigeration and heating to be able to protect our food, regulate climate in our homes, and other reasons specific to survival: As far as we know it is possible that these extremely cold temperatures have never existed before in the history of the universe.

So the extent of our past experience or the details of our evolutionary history do not limit what we can know or do, because our ideas can correctly incorporate aspects of the universal laws of physics, which then give these same ideas unlimited reach to apply whenever and wherever a particular law of physics is relevant, throughout the universe. And this idea has immense consequences.

For example, we can explain phenomena well beyond the evolutionary environment that led to the design of our brain. Although our genes influence us, we are not ultimately limited by them because, for example, we can learn about the universal properties of self-reproducing objects (like DNA) and so learn to understand the mechanisms of genes, increasingly giving us the ability to change them if we do not like their effect. Evolution therefore puts no arbitrary restriction on what we can know or do, because human explanations can include truth-content about Nature itself, and so can reach beyond the parochial experiences that motivated us to create an understanding of them.

I am reminded of an art historian who told me that no brilliant artist fully understands his own work of art. Good knowledge, like good art, reaches beyond its creator or its appearance. As David Deutsch indirectly points out, my teacher was quite right because works of art contain knowledge, not only about the physical world but about beauty itself, which he argues is as real as prime numbers and many other abstractions. Hence they can influence us well-beyond the intention of the artist, just as the explanation of the seasons applies universally to planets throughout the universe, though we developed it to understand only our own.

To the extent that our explanations correctly utilize aspects of the laws of physics, they contain the truth that makes them apply always and everywhere in relevant circumstances. This is so because truth is invariant with respect to time and space -- it never changes. Therefore, explanations with truth-content also have aspects that are invariant. They are impossible to change without making them less true; that is, ruining their explanatory content. So, for example, good explanations are well-adapted to surviving criticism in minds that think about them, regardless of the person who does the thinking.

Because of this timeless, unvarying quality, good explanations become an essential accumulating part of the reality that they also explain, as bad ideas are eliminated and good ideas survive the criticism that they are subjected to within minds. This implies that there can be evolutionary advances in ideas and subsequent problems that we can consider and solve.

But where do new ideas come from? David Deutsch explains that they come from previous knowledge subjected to random variation (essentially evolutionary mutations in ideas) and recombination, so there is really no limit on our ability to come up with new possible explanations for things -- no limit on our ability to guess an explanation for something -- ultimately because random variations are also limitless.

This is so even though most guesses are not improvements. The crucial part in this rational process is "error-correction". After trying (and letting others try) to refute a new theory -- that is, criticize it by finding a logical or experimental contradiction in it -- if it survives criticism then it becomes the best explanation that we can think of -- the one we use, once other rival explanations are refuted. David Deutsch argues that new knowledge comes from random variations applied to previous knowledge -- what the philosopher of science Karl Popper (and David Deutsch borrowing from him) call "conjectures".

David Deutsch points out some profound consequences of the above worldview. If our ability to explain things with ever-increasing accuracy is true, then our ability to use that knowledge to make things better is limitless as well. Not only are we universal computers (that can potentially explain any phenomena in the universe), we are then also universal constructors of material objects. We can make use of our explanations to create anything that is not forbidden by the laws of physics. That includes societies with more physical resources, subject only to the limitations imposed by the fixed laws of physics, not biological or ecological limitations or other seeming barriers to improvement.

So "spaceship earth" (the idea that the earth has precious resources specifically needed by human beings) is a myth. David Deutsch points out that it would be entirely feasible to survive in the darkest places in the universe once we have developed the correct knowledge. And we currently survive where we do now not because of a particular accident of available resources but rather because of our ability to transform poor resources to make an environment that is hospitable to humans. We survive because of what our knowledge has done, when before us our evolutionary ancestors lived a horrid, meager, Malthusian existence, where any improvement in resource availability was soon taken away by a consequent population increase.

There are nonetheless multiple threats to us. But if David Deutsch is correct, then all of these threats, moral or otherwise, come from a lack of knowledge, not from any foundational evil that must ultimately cause us to fail. He points out that the great leap forward of the West occurred during the Western Enlightenment, not because of resource availability in Europe, as some have claimed, but rather because of a change in mind-set in which people stopped seeking truth from authority (or other supposedly justified sources), but instead adopted an attitude of correcting errors in ideas, regardless of their source.

David Deutsch points out that a good political system has certain similar characteristics to a scientific research program, ultimately because both derive from Enlightenment ideas. Using our democracies, if a politician makes decisions that are not good (just like if a scientist comes up with an explanation that does not work) the important thing is that we can non-violently vote the politician out of office (or in the case of the scientist, non-violently challenge a scientifically bad idea.) Non-violent error correction (not justification of ideas by some other authoritative idea or by some authority, David Deutsch explains) is the key part of any moral, political, or scientific process that can grow knowledge.

David Deutsch's brilliant book, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World, is a tour de force and is essential reading for those who recognize the ennobling aspects of rational thinking and for those who are tired of hearing ultimately irrational explanations of inherent limitations on what we can imagine or do. David Deutsch reminds us that the cause of suffering is actually stagnation and ignorance rather than progress and knowledge growth. If we reach beyond the mistaken parochial thinking that threatens the growth of knowledge, we humans can have a bright and exciting future as intelligent moral beings in the world -- and in the universe.

As anyone who has seen Professor Deutsch speak will have noticed (see, for example, his TED talk on "Our place in the cosmos"), David Deutsch has an awe-inspiringly brilliant mind. The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World is not one of those quick, cute books you enjoy then forget; it's the kind of book you read and re-read, one that stays with you, informing your thinking long into the future. I myself have been profoundly influenced by David Deutsch's ideas, and I suspect that if you read this book, you will be too. Indeed, I'd go so far as to predict that this book will still be being read generations from now. It's that good.

Books cited in this review: The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications;Fabric of Reality (Penguin Science);Beginning of Infinity (Allen Lane Science);The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

I enjoyed reading this book. Although I didn't find myself agreeing with all the details, I found the vast majority of the philosophy put forward by the author to be quite realistic. The writing style is easy to read and technical subjects are introduced in a way that would be easy to follow for anyone with a university education in a technical area, and probably could be followed rather well by high school graduates.

Deutsch is probably my favorite science writer. Not only does he have insatiable curiosity, but he has the ability to pursue his insights outside of the bounds of conventional thinking, in a way that makes Brian Greene (probably the most successful writer in the fields of high-energy physics and cosmology) seem almost parochial. But what truly distinguishes him in a field of great writers is his uncanny and consistent ability to write about the most difficult concepts in a way that neither insults your intelligence nor prevents understanding. As a contrast, I'm frequently completely lost in Brian Greene's fascinating slabs of cosmological explication.

Although Deutsch is very discursive, his core arguments have such an inevitability about them, that when you reach the destination it's with the same feeling of having completed a Henry James novel where the outcome is entirely and unavoidably dictated by the characteristics of the people he constructs in the theater of the mind, not by a story imposed upon characters.

His book "The Fabric of Reality" is one of the few popular books I've seen that deviates convincingly from the most common interpretations of quantum physics, and does so in a way that leaves you, if not a complete believer, unable to see the flaws in his arguments.

The way he writes, in "Fabric", is to start from some very simple, well-known experiments that expose the wave-particle duality of light (and other forms of electromagnetic radiation), and, ultimately, the quantum probabilistic nature of matter. Every step of logic that he develops from those simple experiments is easy to follow, and seem so obvious - because of the clarity of his writing - that you almost wonder why you'd never figured it out by yourself. But almost without knowing it, simply by following his seemingly flawless construction of idea upon idea, you find yourself a stranger in a very strange land, where famous thought experiments like Schroedinger's Cat are explicable not by probabilistic collapse of wave functions, when observed, but by the faintest possible interference of "shadow" particles from an infinity of parallel universes, occupying locations in other dimensions, but right next to our own.

And you want to believe, if only because the alternative, accepted explanations are so unsatisfactory, and don't bear the whiff of truth.
I recently started reading Deutsch's new book, The End of Infinity, in which he starts off again with relatively simple arguments about what constitutes a good explanation of a phenomenon, how you define something as being a problem, and what conditions are necessary for the creation of new knowledge, and builds towards the idea that knowledge creation by people (human or not) is one of the basic physical processes of the universe, and will ultimately play as great a role in fashioning the large-scale fabric of the universe as supernovae and dark matter.

It's all fascinating, thought-provoking stuff, and you should not be surprised if reading it gives you some ideas of your own. But I'm finding myself wondering about what motivates him to write these books, and my tentative conclusion is that he writes primarily out of the joy of satisfying his own curiosity in a forum which exposes his ideas and thought process, and only secondarily out of the opportunity to impart his ideas to excite others into following the same trends of thought.

In my way of thinking, he's the sort of person whose mind is constantly generating new explanations for everything around him, and then he happily devotes his time to unraveling and extending these germs of ideas to see where they lead. But I think that this tension within him - to come up with narrations that help explain the universe - sometimes blinds him to leaps of logic that aren't necessarily strong enough to support the additional explanations he remorselessly piles on top of the original ideas. This doesn't make him a less fascinating writer. In fact, almost the opposite is true, for it's in these gaps that the reader can build his or her own narration.
Deutsch argues early in the book about what conditions are needed for knowledge creation. He states that you need nothing more than matter, energy (or the ability to convert one from the other), and what he calls "evidence: the information needed to test scientific theories." As an example of my own, consider a free-floating mind in extragalactic space so remote from all visible matter that the sky was not only unrelievedly black but that the laws of physics made observation of large-scale structures impossible, since they'd all red-shifted beyond the perimeter available to an observer, taking into account the age of the universe. How could such a person construct a theory of gravity? There'd be no "evidence" to even suggest gravity might exist.

Implicit in Deutsch's argument at this stage (although it's been stated explicitly earlier) is that there is a fourth requirement: the existence of people. We - and beings like us - alone, in all creation, can create advanced knowledge (as opposed to information, or anthropological/animal culture.) His later conclusions - that the environments in which knowledge can be created overwhelmingly outnumber those where it cannot - depend upon the requirements he earlier established as being necessary for knowledge creation. But the route he takes from those requirements to the conclusion about the universality of knowledge creation environments requires a suspension of belief.

To build his argument, he postulates a cube of intergalactic "vacuum" in which the solar system could comfortably fit. Since space is overwhelmingly empty - matter structures as we know them are extreme outliers - , if he can prove that knowledge creation in that solar-system sized cube is possible, and even probable, given sufficient cosmological time, then he can validate his conclusion about the ubiquity of places where knowledge can be created.

As Deutsch says, although this cube of space is empty, cold and entirely black, there is actually no such place as a perfect vacuum in intergalactic space. Even a cube as remote as this one will contain over a billion tons of matter, mostly in the form of ionized hydrogen, and "this is more than enough mass to build, say, a space station and a colony of scientists creating an open-ended stream of knowledge - if (his italics) anyone were present who knew how to do that."

Fine, so he seems to be saying that, given unlimited technology (and, by this time, I've already accepted his conclusion that even the most outlandish forms of technical know-how must surely exist in cosmological time scales), humans could prosper in this infinitely inhospitable place, and create new knowledge. I can more or less buy that. And he argues from this that "a typical location in the universe is amenable to the open-ended creation of knowledge. And therefore so are almost all other kinds of environment..." And here's where starts to use some sleight of hand. He says "in the universe at large, knowledge-friendliness is the rule, not the exception."

His argument depends on showing that the conditions of matter, light and evidence can exist even in this remote location. I won't go into his proof, because it's not really relevant, but I can accept the truths of this argument. But what he completely side-steps is how those people - without whom knowledge creation is, as he earlier showed, impossible - got to that remote cube of space to create knowledge out of matter, light and evidence; and, moreover, why they did so. He never even explicitly states that people traveled to this far away cube, set up shop, and started creating knowledge (once they'd built their space station.) He just talks about how these people, however they originated, could use whatever evidence was available, to construct and test our present-day theories of cosmology. To paraphrase him: using super powerful telescopes beyond our imagination, they could see far enough away, and in great enough detail, to observe planets with tilted axes, and therefore conclude, without ever having seen a tulip, that those planets have seasons. All of that would be based entirely on an understanding of planetary motion, etc.

The fact that he never brings up in this argument how people would get there, or why they'd go there in the first place, seems to imply that he means that these people originated within the cube. But that's clearly impossible. In intergalactic space, all you've got, for the most part, is ionized hydrogen. Complex molecules cannot exist (since supernovae would be too distant), or self-construct themselves; and so replicating units such as RNA can never develop. This, in turn means, large scale structure is impossible. Even if you could conceive the idea of a formless intelligence in the cube, how could it construct the tools it would need to gather evidence and create knowledge, when the kind of matter you'd need to build those tools cannot, by its very nature, ever exist in that cube in the absence of colonization from outside.

So, although he doesn't say so expressly, we have to believe he means that these far distant knowledge cubes get colonized by space-faring races. But this thought brings with it issues of its own. The first question is "why?" Why would any race set up a space station meant for knowledge gathering in such an inimical place, when there are vastly more places much friendlier to their endeavors? For instance, those that are anywhere reasonably close to one of the 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 estimated - and it's a low estimate - stars in the reachable universe.

You might say that there are special conditions this far away from other dense conglomerations of matter; conditions, say, of cold and vacuum that allow special experiments. But we believe we can already make cold and vacuum here on earth even more extreme than that found in the darkest areas of space. What about stray radiation? We know it's next to impossible to entirely shield any equipment anywhere in the vicinity of the solar system from cosmic rays, for example. So we go way out there to do our experiments. But even this doesn't hold water: with even the level of shielding we can manufacture here now, we can easily postulate future technology building it in a region of space remote enough from major galaxies to make it effective in blocking cosmic rays (leaving aside, for the moment, how we'd get there), but not so far away as the cold dark regions Deutsch describes. But that's beside the point, because Deutsch himself would demolish that argument with his belief that there is no knowledge we can't eventually acquire that's not forbidden by the laws of physics. So, in the vast future, we'd have such infinitely better shielding that we could do this experiment also, on earth.

Yet even if you allow that there might be some scientific reason that made building a knowledge gathering community in these cold, dark, empty cubes of space, we surely wouldn't need many of them. And there are a lot of cubes to fill.

I think Deutsch would probably argue here that he's talking about things in principle. In principle, he'd argue, that those distant cubes are knowledge-friendly, even if we wouldn't ever likely want to colonize more than an infinitesimal quantity of them in reality. But he elevates knowledge, created by people, to being a fundamental principal of the cosmos. And that leaves room for the truly enormous hole in this argument. For most of the universe to be knowledge friendly, going by Deutsch's ideas, it has to be reachable, even if only in principle, by the only one of the four required ingredients (including matter, energy and evidence) that is capable of volition: people. And, unfortunately, it's not true that people can reach all over the universe, without breaking the laws of physics.

It takes a little bit of background to state why this is not the case. Our best theory of the origin of the universe is the big-bang. But it's no longer your grandfather's big bang. In fact, it's no longer even your father's big bang. My undergraduate degree was at the University College, London, in physics and astronomy. I'm only 46 now, and yet neither dark matter nor dark energy where even on the horizon then, and they make up the vast majority of matter in the universe. Fifty percent of what I learned is now invalid. The same is true of the big-bang. The more we learn, the more complicated the theory has to become to account for our observations.

The most significant feature that's been added on to the theory is the so-called "expansion". The universe we see around us can only have arisen if there'd been a very early phase of super-massive expansion, which was then switched off somehow (we're not exactly sure how.) This all begins to sound a little like Ptolomy's Epicycles, but if we accept it, then one of the logical conclusions is that there are infinitely larger parts of the universe than what we can see.

So there are places we can never see. And not just because we don't have powerful telescopes. Those parts of the universe are receding away from us effectively faster than the speed of light. I know that sounds impossible, but what's not often made clear in the expansion of the universe is that it's the very fabric of the universe itself which is expanding, and the limitations of the speed of light hold true against our local fabric, and the distant fabric accelerated away from us when the universe was a fraction of its current site. Most of the universe will be forever out of our reach, because the laws of physics forbid us from ever seeing light from those distant places.

This initial superfast period of the expansion of the fabric of space means that the majority of places in the universe are so far distant from one another that information can never reach them, let alone people. And this is even without bringing in the now de-rigueur view that one or more multiverses exist (the subject of Brian Greene's recent bestseller, "The Hidden Reality") leaving us with yet greater regions where it's impossible to create knowledge, even in principle. (And Deutsch himself wrote "The Fabric of the Cosmos", the book I referred to near the beginning of this overlong essay, on this exact same subject.)

And there's another more practical problem: it would be, in any case, impossible to posit a sufficient number of cubes of this nature with people in them, because the laws of physics (by which Deutsch expressly binds all of his statements of the possible achievements of technology) mean that it would be completely impractical to reach enough of them. If these cubes are so remote that the universe appears dark, then it would require travel of billions and billions of light years at "sub-warp" speeds. Even if we are to suppose that to be possible, to do so on any appreciably large scale would require a vast number of starfaring civilizations with the ability to travel as fast as a reasonable fraction of the speed of light, and an amount of time that would surely exceed the time left on the clock until the heat death of the universe.

I'm not suggesting for a moment that Deutsch doesn't know the key fact about most of space being beyond the reach of information, and I think it's unlikely it didn't occur to him that this idea lays waste to his conclusion that the majority of the universe is friendly to knowledge. So you can only presume that he deliberately left this out, and hoped we wouldn't notice. He has some gall, but I can hardly blame him. After all, if he hadn't, we wouldn't have this wonderful book to inspire us to think, and commentate upon.

The joy of reading something like this is not just that it sets you thinking, constantly, but that it allows you to speculate what might be, if things were different. I read it in the same spirit as I did Julian Jaynes' infamous "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind." The late Jaynes put up a convincing case that consciousness, as we know it, didn't arise until the more complex civilizations came together, say, around 4,000 BC. The detailed anthropological argument is fascinating in itself, and can be used to explain modern-day features of religion such as praying at grave stones. What's even more intriguing is how he uses the physiological underpinnings of his theory to explain phenomena as varied as hypnotism and schizophrenia. Ideas from that book still stay with me now, even though I don't believe the central idea for a second.

Deutsch's book is by no means as way out as Jaynes', and the vast majority is made up of solid, inspiring, insightful, creative thinking. But, in a way, reading books like Jaynes', and - less so - like Deutsch's, is similar to watching a great science fiction movie: you can't truly enjoy it unless you either willingly suspend a little bit of your belief, or you use the gaps to dream up your own stories. With Deutsch, I go the latter way, and enjoy the heck out of it.

David Deutsch's explanation of the transforming power of knowledge to change not only ourselves, but everything around us, has the potential to challenge and eliminate multiple parochial beliefs that hinder humanity's pursuit of its highest moral purposes.

Our current understanding of the laws of physics is that they describe a world, the structure of which can be modeled by general purpose (universal) computers as long as they have sufficient memory and processing speed. This was explained in David Deutsch's first book, The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications, and in this new masterpiece, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World.

What logically follows is that with the aid of computers that increase our own effective memory capacity and speed, human beings can become increasingly powerful universal computers, thereby gaining the ability to model and understand, with ever increasing accuracy, all aspects of reality.

But current laptops are also universal computers and their speed and memory capacity can be increased, as well. So what is the difference between us and them?

According to David Deutsch, it is our ability to explain things. We do not yet understand how to design this ability to explain things, otherwise we would be able to create computers that are intelligent, though David Deutsch has no doubt that one day we will.

Our ability to explain is a precious evolutionary advance with far-reaching consequences. This is so because the ability to explain one aspect of reality can have universal reach (apply not just to the circumstances that the explanation was designed for, but to the rest of the universe, as well, if the explanation correctly incorporates aspects of the universal laws of physics).

For example, understanding that the seasons are caused by the tilt of the earth relative to the sun allows us not only to understand the change of seasons on the planet earth, but also the universal idea that planets orbiting distant stars throughout the universe have changing seasons, even if we never experience any of their different seasons. David Deutsch points out that physicists in a laboratory have created temperatures so low that there is no natural state of the universe in which these temperatures are found. Though we may have initially wanted to learn about refrigeration and heating to be able to protect our food, regulate climate in our homes, and other reasons specific to survival: As far as we know it is possible that these extremely cold temperatures have never existed before in the history of the universe.

So the extent of our past experience or the details of our evolutionary history do not limit what we can know or do, because our ideas can correctly incorporate aspects of the universal laws of physics, which then give these same ideas unlimited reach to apply whenever and wherever a particular law of physics is relevant, throughout the universe. And this idea has immense consequences.

For example, we can explain phenomena well beyond the evolutionary environment that led to the design of our brain. Although our genes influence us, we are not ultimately limited by them because, for example, we can learn about the universal properties of self-reproducing objects (like DNA) and so learn to understand the mechanisms of genes, increasingly giving us the ability to change them if we do not like their effect. Evolution therefore puts no arbitrary restriction on what we can know or do, because human explanations can include truth-content about Nature itself, and so can reach beyond the parochial experiences that motivated us to create an understanding of them.

I am reminded of an art historian who told me that no brilliant artist fully understands his own work of art. Good knowledge, like good art, reaches beyond its creator or its appearance. As David Deutsch indirectly points out, my teacher was quite right because works of art contain knowledge, not only about the physical world but about beauty itself, which he argues is as real as prime numbers and many other abstractions. Hence they can influence us well-beyond the intention of the artist, just as the explanation of the seasons applies universally to planets throughout the universe, though we developed it to understand only our own.

To the extent that our explanations correctly utilize aspects of the laws of physics, they contain the truth that makes them apply always and everywhere in relevant circumstances. This is so because truth is invariant with respect to time and space -- it never changes. Therefore, explanations with truth-content also have aspects that are invariant. They are impossible to change without making them less true; that is, ruining their explanatory content. So, for example, good explanations are well-adapted to surviving criticism in minds that think about them, regardless of the person who does the thinking.

Because of this timeless, unvarying quality, good explanations become an essential accumulating part of the reality that they also explain, as bad ideas are eliminated and good ideas survive the criticism that they are subjected to within minds. This implies that there can be evolutionary advances in ideas and subsequent problems that we can consider and solve.

But where do new ideas come from? David Deutsch explains that they come from previous knowledge subjected to random variation (essentially evolutionary mutations in ideas) and recombination, so there is really no limit on our ability to come up with new possible explanations for things -- no limit on our ability to guess an explanation for something -- ultimately because random variations are also limitless.

This is so even though most guesses are not improvements. The crucial part in this rational process is "error-correction". After trying (and letting others try) to refute a new theory -- that is, criticize it by finding a logical or experimental contradiction in it -- if it survives criticism then it becomes the best explanation that we can think of -- the one we use, once other rival explanations are refuted. David Deutsch argues that new knowledge comes from random variations applied to previous knowledge -- what the philosopher of science Karl Popper (and David Deutsch borrowing from him) call "conjectures".

David Deutsch points out some profound consequences of the above worldview. If our ability to explain things with ever-increasing accuracy is true, then our ability to use that knowledge to make things better is limitless as well. Not only are we universal computers (that can potentially explain any phenomena in the universe), we are then also universal constructors of material objects. We can make use of our explanations to create anything that is not forbidden by the laws of physics. That includes societies with more physical resources, subject only to the limitations imposed by the fixed laws of physics, not biological or ecological limitations or other seeming barriers to improvement.

So "spaceship earth" (the idea that the earth has precious resources specifically needed by human beings) is a myth. David Deutsch points out that it would be entirely feasible to survive in the darkest places in the universe once we have developed the correct knowledge. And we currently survive where we do now not because of a particular accident of available resources but rather because of our ability to transform poor resources to make an environment that is hospitable to humans. We survive because of what our knowledge has done, when before us our evolutionary ancestors lived a horrid, meager, Malthusian existence, where any improvement in resource availability was soon taken away by a consequent population increase.

There are nonetheless multiple threats to us. But if David Deutsch is correct, then all of these threats, moral or otherwise, come from a lack of knowledge, not from any foundational evil that must ultimately cause us to fail. He points out that the great leap forward of the West occurred during the Western Enlightenment, not because of resource availability in Europe, as some have claimed, but rather because of a change in mind-set in which people stopped seeking truth from authority (or other supposedly justified sources), but instead adopted an attitude of correcting errors in ideas, regardless of their source.

David Deutsch points out that a good political system has certain similar characteristics to a scientific research program, ultimately because both derive from Enlightenment ideas. Using our democracies, if a politician makes decisions that are not good (just like if a scientist comes up with an explanation that does not work) the important thing is that we can non-violently vote the politician out of office (or in the case of the scientist, non-violently challenge a scientifically bad idea.) Non-violent error correction (not justification of ideas by some other authoritative idea or by some authority, David Deutsch explains) is the key part of any moral, political, or scientific process that can grow knowledge.

David Deutsch's brilliant book, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World, is a tour de force and is essential reading for those who recognize the ennobling aspects of rational thinking and for those who are tired of hearing ultimately irrational explanations of inherent limitations on what we can imagine or do. David Deutsch reminds us that the cause of suffering is actually stagnation and ignorance rather than progress and knowledge growth. If we reach beyond the mistaken parochial thinking that threatens the growth of knowledge, we humans can have a bright and exciting future as intelligent moral beings in the world -- and in the universe.

As anyone who has seen Professor Deutsch speak will have noticed (see, for example, his TED talk on "Our place in the cosmos"), David Deutsch has an awe-inspiringly brilliant mind. The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World is not one of those quick, cute books you enjoy then forget; it's the kind of book you read and re-read, one that stays with you, informing your thinking long into the future. I myself have been profoundly influenced by David Deutsch's ideas, and I suspect that if you read this book, you will be too. Indeed, I'd go so far as to predict that this book will still be being read generations from now. It's that good.

Books cited in this review: The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications;Fabric of Reality (Penguin Science);Beginning of Infinity (Allen Lane Science);The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

I found many of Deutsch's ideas unique -- his philosophy does not fit neatly in box, but seems to be a genuine search for truth in all matters. However, he comes off very critical of others' philosophies and somewhat dogmatic in his own views. The book requires determined attention and is a bit long.

I love books about science and philosophy so had high hopes for this one. Alas, rather than being thoughtful this was a narrow-minded and long-winded rant. The shortcomings of the book are well catalogued in the 1 and 2 star reviews. If you are interested in this sort of thing there are many better reads: certainly all of Douglas Hofstadter, "Not even wrong" by Peter Woit, and for people willing to tackle something challenging "The Secular Age" by Charles Taylor is amazing. Reviewing the work of Taylor and Deutsch side by side is a good way to see the difference between someone deeply wise and someone shallowly clever.

If infinities are ways of beginning again, and again, in a multiverse of endless beginnings, then we - as authors of a (re)newing Infinity, are like ATLAS, a Greek God, having thrown the dice, having to support the consequences of HIS "world" to shoulder.

The more things change, the more they seem to remind us of what has come before...

why is that ?

Does our "world" lack Creativity ?
What's new then in what David is selling other than a repackaging of the old said differently ???

Imagine yourself ... beginning an Infinity... ATLAS... carrying your creation ...

Full disclosure: I did not read this book, I just skimmed the chapters on (the philosophy of) quantum mechanics at a local bookstore, and I'm obviously in no position to write a review of the book as a whole. Think of it more as an attempt at self-therapy (trying to calm down).

I got especially annoyed by the chapter on "bad philosophy." Said bad philosophy includes, according to Deutsch, the mainstream interpretation of quantum mechanics, the Copenhagen interpretation (Deutsch feels compelled to use insulting quotation marks here, so it becomes an "interpretation") going back to Bohr. Deutsch never bothers to tell the reader what the Copenhagen interpretation actually says and instead dismisses it in one short paragraph with cheap, unsubstantiated attacks ("learned ambiguities"). I remain unconvinced that he has any idea what he is talking about.

For the record: The Copenhagen interpretation views the state of a quantum system (its wavefunction) as knowledge about the system, more specifically about possible outcomes of measurements, if the observer chooses to perform such a measurement. The wavefunction does NOT give access to nature in and of herself, only to how the system is perceived through measurements.

This is a coherent interpretation; Einstein, who disliked the statistical component of it, had to admit as much after an intellectual battle of giants with Bohr through a series of famous thought experiments. The Copenhagen interpretation is in fact wonderfully elegant and in line with a great philosophical tradition, going back to at least Kant. The thought experiment called "Wigner's friend" does most decidedly not refute it, contrary to what Deutsch seems to think (since he just makes the claim, it is hard to figure out what exactly he is confusing here, or if he cares about the details at all).

Admittedly, such a rather more sober view of quantum mechanics will not produce mass market bestsellers as easily as ramblings about the multiverse.

To return to Deutsch's book: on those topics where I feel competent, the book delivers a sensationalist, quite substance free and disrespectful rant, probably specifically designed to sell well to a lay audience. One perhaps has to admire Deutsch's chutzpah in taking on intellectual giants from various fields, when he seems ill-equipped and simply too dwarfish for such encounters. For enlightenment about science, however, the book is about as useful as a trip to Roswell, NM.

In Chapter I, pp 3-4, it is stated that "For most of the history of science, it was mistakenly believed that we 'derive' them (scientific theories) from the evidence of our senses - a philosophical doctrine known as *empiricism*." A diagram follows. Here is a representation of that diagram.

Sensory experiences
lead to
"Derivation" (such as "Extrapolation","Generalization" or "Induction")
which lead to
Theories / knowledge of reality

If we are dealing with scientific theories specifically, then I would strike "Extrapolation" and "Generalization" from the list of names for logical processes and leave "Induction" only. I don't see "Extrapolation" and "Generalization" as synonyms for "Induction". I would also strike "knowledge of reality", for which the meaning depends on a definition of "reality". (The author provides his definition on p 23: "a particular thing is real if and only if it figures in our best explanation of something," where "explanation" appears to mean "theory".)

Going on, p 5, the author describes a repeated observation, the rising of the sun, and its generalization, "the sun rises every day," which he calls a "theory". In traditional scientific terminology, it would be a "law," a generalization about observations, but the author assiduously develops his own private terminology, claiming that the traditional views are wrong, but reaching the same end point. (I think he understands science, but I also think that he wants to be different. Having a personal terminology provides him with a difference.)

p 5: "Thus, one supposedly obtains ever more reliable knowledge of the future from the past, and of the general from the particular. That alleged process was called 'inductive inference' or 'induction', and the doctrine that scientific theories are obtained in that way is called *inductivism*." What he really describes here is the development of a generalization from observations. Examples include the Law of Definite Proportions, the Law of Combining Volumes, the Law of Multiple Proportions, Ohm's Law, the Law of Conservation of Mass, the Law of Conservation of Energy, etc. Each of these is a general statement summarizing observations. Laws are provisional. Reflecting this, the Laws of Conservation of Mass and Energy are no longer considered to hold separately.

The definition of "induction" that the author uses is only part of that used by others. Here are modern definitions of "deductive" and "inductive" logic from [...]

"A deductive argument is an argument in which it is thought that the premises provide a guarantee of the truth of the conclusion. In a deductive argument, the premises are intended to provide support for the conclusion that is so strong that, if the premises are true, it would be impossible for the conclusion to be false.

"An inductive argument is an argument in which it is thought that the premises provide reasons supporting the probable truth of the conclusion. In an inductive argument, the premises are intended only to be so strong that, if they are true, then it is unlikely that the conclusion is false."

In science, inductive reasoning leads from observations to theories. In the process, the reasoner conjectures as many scientific "hypotheses," explanations of the observations in terms of conjectured non-observables, as he or she can. Those hypotheses that do not form a basis for predictions of observations are discarded. Those that do form such a basis are tested by comparing their predictions with observations. A hypothesis that has survived extensive testing against observations can be called a "theory". Hypotheses and theories are always tentative and are discarded or revised as is required by observations.

Deutsch comes to the same place using different words.

On pp 301-02, there are some statements that are simply wrong. "For example, there are certain molecules that exist in two or more structures at once (a 'structure' being an arrangement of atoms, held together by chemical bonds). Chemists call this phenomenon 'resonance' between the two structures, but the molecule is not alternating between them: it has them simultaneously." The author goes on to link this with "quantum interference". There is no such link.

For a diatomic (two-atom) molecule, what holds the atoms together can be called a "chemical bond." For a polyatomic molecule, quantum mechanics does not support the nineteenth-century idea of chemical bonds that are localized between particular atoms. We continue to use symbols for localized bonds in molecular structures only because, for many purposes, they are acceptable and convenient approximations.

For the benzene molecule, localized bonds fail to provide an acceptable approximation. It is common for the benzene molecule to be represented by two bond structures, each of which implies the same molecular energy and each of which has all its atoms in the same place. The benzene molecule is not described by either of these "resonance structures." It is a "resonance hybrid," the electronic structure of which differs from that represented by either resonance structure. (This ignores that fact that more than two resonance structures can be written for the benzene molecule.) What Deutsch states is not correct: the molecule does not have the two resonance structures simultaneously. It doesn't have either of the resonance structures. It has its own structure that is different from either of the resonance structures.

A rhinoceros can be described as being something like a unicorn and something like a dragon. A benzene molecule can be described as something like each of its resonance structures. Like individual resonance structures, unicorns and dragons are imaginary. Like the benzene molecule, a rhino is considered to be real. The rhino is not sometimes a unicorn and sometimes a dragon - it is always a rhino. A benzene molecule does not sometimes have one resonance structure and sometimes the other - it always has its own structure. Unicorns and dragons are useful in describing rhinos. Resonance structures are useful in describing the benzene molecule.

The chemist's "resonance" is *not* a "phenomenon," as Deutsch calls it. It is a way to improve, somewhat, on an approximate description of the benzene molecule in terms of localized bonds.

The description of the benzene molecule as a resonance hybrid is an approximation to its description by a wave function that is a correct and complete solution to the relevant quantum mechanical problem. As far as we know, that wave function is our best "reality" for the benzene molecule.

« I don't know what is new here. Trying to find good explanations to understand the laws of nature is as old as humanity itself. The process of discerning good explanations from bad explanations, trail & error, has been the bases for all scientific enquiry & innovation. So this book is a primer about how to find empirically based knowledge and how people can go about doing it themselves. It is essentially the first few classes of high school science. Thus I do not see anything new in this book except that some of the cases cited use more current examples to illustrate the points being made, such as including the subject of astrophysics to explain different methods of obtaining data. However, my main issue with the book is its interpretation of the Enlightenment. It is this philosophical revolution that gave rise to the idea of Modernism, that more knowledge leads to better society in all its aspects. Yet this optimistic idea has repeatedly been proven wrong. People turn out to be messy creatures with conflicting aspirations. Emotional factors & manipulation for economic gain often easily override scientific proof & truths (e.g., dismissing global warming or evolution, allowing famines to occur when foodstuff is available, bigotry & nationalism). WWI, the War to End All Wars, exposed the nasty truth that even with Enlightenment thinking & modern science & technology, people can still be irrational & do horrible things. Thus, Postmodernism emerged. Computers can become bigger & better but they are not emotional. Humans still need to grapple with their egocentric motivations before they can utilize empirical truth, which does enable progress & the improvement of society. This book promotes a view that may ease people's real anxieties about society & provide assurances that everything will eventually be alright when humanity follows the pathway of empirical truth. But it is a much more complex & complicated matter to improve society. The idea that further knowledge is the principle way to improve society has been tried & found to be an error.

Full disclosure: I only scanned a copy of this book in our public library.

But I am very uncomfortable when scientists veer into metaphysics and say things like: "We are capable of infinite progress without limits." Sounds like another version of the Thousand Year Reich. Hubris Maximus.

I wrote the following to the author, to which he has not yet replied:

Dear Prof. Deutsch,

Following are two emails I sent to Prof. Lightman of MIT to which he has not responded, regarding his recent article in Harpers about the "deception" [sic] of the apparent fine tuning in our universe.

If you can offer some constructive responses to my questions, I would be most grateful.

Sincerely,
Menachem Mevashir

----- Forwarded Message -----

Dear Professor Lightman,

I read your article in Harpers (Dec 2011): The Accidental Universe [sic]

I have some questions for you, if you would be so kind to answer.

First you state that few scientists believe in Intelligent Design as a way to explain the fine tuning of our universe. I thought that an impressive number of scientists from many branches of science believe in a Creator God:

Famous Scientists Who Believed in God
Scientists' Belief in God Varies Starkly by Discipline
Dissent From Darwinism

Also I did not know that truth is subject to "majority rule". How many accepted Einstein's Relativity or Quantum theory when they were first propounded?

Second, your nearly concluding words really baffle me: "Thus, to explain what we see in the world and in our mental deductions, we must believe in what we cannot prove."

If you cannot prove multiverse, then what is the intellectual advantage of it over a designed universe?

Thanks for your gracious assistance.

Sincerely,
Michael Korn

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Dear Professors Weinberg, Guth, and Lightman,

Concerning your claim that the universe is an "accidental part of an infinite multiverse", it seems to me particularly ironic and tragic that your deep understanding of the mysteries of the cosmos leads you to reject its Creator.

I can think of a number of analogies.

Imagine a pile of bricks assembled for the purpose of building a house. A troubled youth comes along and takes those bricks and starts throwing them at people and buildings, breaking bones and windows. What is meant for good has been turned into an evil weapon of destruction.

Similarly, a computer graphic designer analyzes a beautiful photograph and sees that it consists of tiny pixels. And he asserts that the picture is worthless and meaningless.

This seems a perfect analogy for what you are doing. You use sophisticated scientific technologies to analyze the tiny subatomic particles that fill the universe, and then you conclude that this amazingly awesome universe is "an accident", without design or Designer.

What a betrayal of your intellects!

For this you need to spend multi-millions of dollars of grant money?

To deride and ridicule the unique beauty of our Creator's world?

You use your great minds, like the nasty little boy in the analogy above, to destroy rather than to enhance life.

And God surely will intervene at some point to put an end to your destructive nihilistic ravings.

I pray you will see the light before God issues you a factory recall.

Sincerely,
Michael Korn