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The New York Times bestseller: A provocative, imaginative exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge
In this groundbreaking book, award-winning physicist David Deutsch argues that explanations have a fundamental place in the universe—and that improving them is the basic regulating principle of all successful human endeavor. Taking us on a journey through every fundamental field of science, as well as the history of civilization, art, moral values, and the theory of political institutions, Deutsch tracks how we form new explanations and drop bad ones, explaining the conditions under which progress—which he argues is potentially boundless—can and cannot happen. Hugely ambitious and highly original, The Beginning of Infinity explores and establishes deep connections between the laws of nature, the human condition, knowledge, and the possibility for progress.
- Sales Rank: #28213 in Books
- Brand: Penguin Books
- Published on: 2012-05-29
- Released on: 2012-05-29
- Ingredients: Example Ingredients
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.39" h x 1.09" w x 5.45" l, .90 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 496 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
Review
"Brilliant and exhilarating . . . Deutsch is so smart, and so strange, and so creative, and so inexhaustibly curious, and so vividly intellectually alive, that it is a distinct privilege to spend time in his head."
--The New York Times Book Review
"[Deutsch] makes the case for infinite progress and such passion, imagination, and quirky brilliance that I couldn't help enjoying his argument. . . . [He] mounts a compelling challenge to scientific reductionism."
--The Wall Street Journal
"Provocative and persuasive . . . Address[es] subjects from artificial intelligence to the evolution of culture and creativity."
--The Economist
“[Deutsch’s books] are among the most ambitious works of nonfiction I have read, in that their aim is no less than an explanation of all reality. . . . They are treatises that weave together not just physics and astronomy but biology, mathematics, computer science, political science, psychology, philosophy, aesthetics, and—most important for Deutsch—epistemology, among other fields, in fashioning a profound new view of the world and the universe.”
--The New Yorker’s Book Bench
“Deutsch has an important message . . . that our destiny is to be explainers of the world around us, and explaining is the key to our mastery. . . . He writes clearly and thinks wisely. His book could help the world toward better ways of dealing with its problems.”
--Freeman Dyson, The New York Review of Books
About the Author
Born in Haifa, Israel, David Deutsch was educated at Cambridge and Oxford Universities. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a professor of physics at the University of Oxford, where he is a member of the Centre for Quantum Computation. His papers on quantum computation laid the foundations for that field, and he is an authority on the theory of parallel universes. His honors include the Institute of Physics' Paul Dirac Prize and Medal. The author of The Fabric of Reality, he lives in England.
Most helpful customer reviews
89 of 92 people found the following review helpful.
The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch - a book review
By Sapphire
If this book were as difficult to understand as some of the comments on it are, it would not be one I'd want to read! I'm no scientist but I wanted to give it a try because I'd heard David Deutsch speaking and found him very easy to follow and absolutely fascinating, and I wanted more.
Having read the book three times (and the bit about the Infinity Hotel four times to figure out what happened to the puppy!) and finding that I am getting more out of it with each reading, I can understand that it may be controversial in some respects, but I don't understand why it is attracting such intense and bizarre hostility. What am I missing? For me, the writing is crystal clear, charming and riveting, like the author himself when you hear him speak -- it's a sheer delight to read. It made me laugh out loud several times -- I LOVE that the author's sense of humor comes through even in what is a very deep, important book. And it even moved me to tears.
The subject matter is super wide-ranging, including stuff about physics and mathematics (no formulas, thankfully), beauty (yes, really!), voting systems (why proportional voting systems are fundamentally unfair despite the best intentions of those proposing them), environmentalism (why we have it all wrong!), intriguing stuff about culture, history, philosophy, etc., etc. David Deutsch is truly a polymath.
But what I personally find so enthralling is the way reading this book is challenging me and changing the way I think. I love the way all the apparently disparate issues are united in a single, coherent worldview having implications far beyond just what David Deutsch discusses in this book. As best I can tell, the author's worldview is vibrantly positive, optimistic (not to be confused with unrealistic), and rational (in the sense of being in favor of progress, solving problems and ending misery and suffering) -- a fundamentally humane worldview -- a beautiful, life-affirming, shining-beacon-of-light sort of worldview. For me, it has the ring of truth. Evidently for others, it is the work of the devil. But for anyone who loves ideas and thinking about things, The Beginning of Infinity is worth reading whether or not you agree with the author's ideas.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
The wildest ride at the Intellectual Amusement Park: buckle up, stay alert, and keep your hesitations safely inside the cranium.
By Brian J Boyle
A compelling "sequel" to his earlier "The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes--and Its Implications," I feel this is as close as we will ever get to Monty Python's or Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker quests for "the meaning of life, the universe and everything." Not a lightweight read (the answer "42" IS substantially shorter but somewhat less accessible.) The famed mathematical physicist tackles The Hard Question of "How Do We Think" -- and how do we, as humans, communicate that thinking so other humans can comprehend, internalize and build upon our knowledge. Like Thomas Kuhn nearly fifty years earlier, Deutsch shines his powerful intellectual spotlight on the compelling *explanations* that are the "shoulders of giants" upon which Newton claimed to stand. Many other species communicate, but only The Naked Ape tells stories, to "experience" the experiences of others -- essentially a seventh sense that allows us to acquire knowledge of "action at a distance" (in space OR time) potential essential to our success or survival.
Possibly disturbing to readers with epistemologically 'thin skin,' Deutsch not only "does not suffer fools gladly," he barely suffers (and directly disparages) numerous popular points of view as to 'what constitutes a good explanation,' classifying them as a theme and variation of modern mythology. But I believe it wise to listen and take seriously his analyses and to read twice or three times before evaluating, as he clearly IS one of the deep thinkers of our day. This relatively recent work is directly relevant to the very-in-vogue Vinge/Kurzweil notion of a rapidly approaching Technological Singularity, the exponential explosion of combined human knowledge that, in a kind of sociopolitical Dirac delta function, heads off towards the Infinity that is the eponymous theme of his book. So buckle up, stay alert, and keep your hesitations safely inside the car on the near-vertical ascent of the impending E-ticket ride that you and I and seven billion close relatives are about to embark upon, genuinely The Beginning of Infinity
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
There are no bounds to what is knowable
By Gary Schroeder
Feeling starved of intellectual engagement? Is PBS failing to meet your craving for mental stimulation? Is your spouse tired of listening to your pontifications on the origins of the universe? Well, good news then: David Deutsch is here to provide relief. “The Beginning of Infinity” is a wide-ranging book of ideas. Hard to pin down precisely, It offers a sampling of what I’d call “1 o’clock discussions.” You know the ones; they happen after the party guests have departed and only you and your best friend remain behind, staring at the ceiling, chatting as you finish the last drinks of the night.
Deutsch, equal parts physicist (his actual day job) and philosopher, creates a carefully constructed argument designed to prove that there are no theoretical limits on human knowledge. Can we stop the aging process? Given enough knowledge, sure. After all, the complexity of the problem is finite, and the biological processes underlying the aging process are relatively well understood. Given enough time and resources for the necessary research, there’s no reason that humans can’t prevent aging from occurring. (The practical implications of such an outcome would be fascinating, but that’s not the focus of the book.) Basically, Deutsch argues that any physical process that is not precluded by laws of nature (like traveling faster than the speed of light, for example) is achievable given sufficient knowledge and that if we don’t have that knowledge right now, we can obtain it.
The foundation of his proof rests on two basic truisms: that in any endeavor problems are inevitable, and that all problems are soluble given sufficient knowledge.
One of the many meanings of “infinity” (which he carefully lays out at the end of each chapter’s summary) is that there are no limits on what can be known. He says that suggesting that there are “bounds on the domains in which reason is the proper arbiter of ideas is a belief in unreason or the supernatural.” He buttresses his argument by offering a brief tour of history and The Enlightenment. Western civilization of the Pre-enlightenment remained stagnant during the Dark Ages specifically because organized authority squelched free inquiry and the creation of original conjectures which could be tested to conclusively rule out false ideas. Deutsch says that it is only through the creation of original conjectures that knowledge can be expanded. All assertions must be tested, and proof sought. Whatever is true withstands any degree of testing that one can muster, while that which is false crumbles. With the Enlightenment, explanatory knowledge became the most important determinant of physical events, not superstition or human authority. Once that occurred, the curve of charted knowledge growth became steep indeed with no end in sight.
Accepting that humans have the theoretical power to become infinitely knowledgable, doesn’t mean that getting there is easy. Here, Deutsch delves into his theories of “optimism.” Continuing to pursue knowledge through the solution of problems is fundamentally an exercise in optimism. We believe that a solutions exist, even if we haven’t yet found them. If we try to improve things and fail it's because we did not know enough in time. Civilizations that have collapsed did so because they had insufficient knowledge of how to save themselves or they ran out of time before a solution could be found. The inhabitants of Easter Island are highlighted as an example as well as (somewhat controversially) our own current predicament as a civilization faced with the challenge of dramatic climate change. Deutsch suggests that climate change is simply another example of a problem that needs sufficient knowledge with which to devise a solution.
Arguments like this can cause Deutsch to come across as cold and rational to a fault. While it’s hard to argue with the logic of his carefully constructed propositions, it can leave one searching for a little humanity behind the words. In this regard, “The Beginning of Infinity” can sometimes feel less like a late night conversation with a buddy and more like a lecture from Mr. Spock.
But, just as that begins to happen, he manages to branch off into another fascinating exploration of Ideas writ large, covering topics such as quantum mechanics, the Multiverse, the mathematical impossibility of truly representational government, memes, beauty, creativity, sustainability, artificial intelligence, and the concept of mathematical infinity. Each one of these explorations is tied to the basic premise of the infinite expansion of knowledge, though some less successfully than others. For example, his exploration of beauty is completely devoid of the ineffable emotions that most of us associate with that quality. This is perhaps one of the only realms where logic has less to offer than unjustifiable irrationality.
While not all of these topics hold together as a completely coherent whole, each is utterly fascinating in its own way (particularly his exploration of the multiverse, a concept so foreign to human experience, that the chapter calls for repeated readings to promote comprehension). Everything is so carefully laid out that you’re likely to be persuaded of Deutsch’s position that given enough time, there’s nothing that we can’t learn and that there are no problems which are insoluble. Overall, this book is a great source of brain food for anyone looking to sharpen their mental acuity, step out of the ordinary, and go for a walk with a brilliant mind.
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