The Meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything Isn’t 42
Review of The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch (2012)
Starting by explaining the nature of “explanation” itself, Deutsch, in his book The Beginning of Infinity, provocatively describes the development of analytical thought from early man to the present-day. He applies the same approach to science, philosophy, art, political science, and civilization, with brilliant use of the concept of “memes.” Along the way, he explains the evolution of culture and the importance of democracy, creativity, and beauty, and points out the dangers of static societies and pessimistic world views. He also provides a logical explanation of quantum physics and “proves” a multiverse version of reality. If you are interested in how we think and what we believe and why, this seminal book is a must.
I particularly like the way he restates Heraclitus: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.” p. 7
Since the Enlightenment, technological progress has depended specifically on the creation of explanatory knowledge… This increasingly intimate connection between explaining the world and controlling it is no accident but is part of the deep structure of the world.” p. 55
“The existence of an unsolved problem in physics is no more evidence for a supernatural explanation than the existence of an unsolved crime is evidence that a ghost committed it.” p. 97
“So there is something special — infinitely special, it seems — about the laws of physics as we actually find them, something exceptionally computation-friendly, prediction-friendly and explanation-friendly.” p. 189
“Positivism degenerated into logical positivism, which held that statements not verifiable by observation are not only worthless but meaningless. This doctrine threatened to sweep away not only explanatory scientific knowledge but the whole of philosophy.” p. 313
“Rather than imitating behaviour, a human being tries to explain it — to understand the ideas that caused it — which is a special case of the general human objective of explaining the world.” p. 410
“The world’s major cultures — including nations, languages, philosophical and artistic movements, social traditions and religions — have been created incrementally over hundreds or even thousands of years. Most of the ideas that define them, including the inexplicit ones, have a long history of being passed from one person to another. That makes these ideas memes — ideas that are replicators.” p. 369
“…what replicates human memes is creativity; and creativity was used, while it was evolving, to replicate memes. In other words, it was used to acuire eisting knowledge, not to create new knowledge. But the mechanism to do both things is identical, and so in acquiring the ability to do the former, we automatically became able to do the latter. It was a momentous example of reach, which made possible everything that is uniquely human. p. 411
“… the Soviet system lost because its ideology wasn’t true, and all the biogeography in the world cannot explain what was false about it.” p. 428
“The primeval landscape, though packed with evidence and therefore opportunity, contained not a single idea. It is knowledge alone that converts landscapes into resources, and humans alone who are the authors of explanatory knowledge and hence of the uniquely human behaviour called ‘history’.” p. 429
“… since the beginning of civilization and before, both the principal opportunities for progress and the principal obstacles to progress have consisted of ideas alone.” p. 429
“Profound abstractions in mathematics, morality and aesthetics are accessible to us. Ideas of tremendous reach are possible. But there is also plenty in the world that does not and will not make sense until we ourselves work out how to rectify it. Death does not make sense. Stagnation does not make sense. A bubble of sense within endless senselessness does not make sense. whether the world ultimately does make sense will depend on how people — the likes of us — choose to think and to act.” p. 459
