The next big science tome I’ve begun reading is THE BEGINNING OF INFINITY, by David Deutsch, his only other book following THE FABRIC OF REALITY in 1997, which I reviewed here. This second book was published in 2011. (There’s no clue he might be writing another; presumably these two books constitute his personal theory of reality, and he has nothing more to say without being repetitious.) He continues to be a professor at Oxford.
Let’s try writing up my notes here as I go, instead of waiting until I finish the whole book, then spending another week or more posted chapter summaries. These posts will be indicated by the abbreviated title format; a final summary post will have the book photo in the middle.
His first book, recall, concerned how the many theories of science over the centuries have been congealing down into a handful of fundamental theories, which together constitute a sort of “theory of everything.” His four basic strands are quantum physics, epistemology, computation, and evolution. These four are analogous to one another in deep ways, and understanding how this is true gives us insights into ideas about virtual reality, parallel universes, and the passage of time.
This book. I’m going to bold some key terms.
Introduction.
Progress of an unprecedented pace began with the scientific revolution, and is still underway. Some deny progress. But there is a difference between a false explanation and true one, solving a problem and not, also between wrong and right, ugly and beautiful, etc. This book argues that all progress results from the human quest for “good explanations”. Universal laws of nature are indeed good explanations. Progress is unbounded. Explaining it entails a journey through every fundamental field of science and philosophy. Progress did have necessary beginnings: each of these is the ‘beginning of infinity.’ Some of these seem unconnected.
Ch1, The Reach of Explanations, p1
Author reflects on how the universe has appeared to us, compared to what we’ve learned: how massive our galaxy is; how supernovae are the source of most of the elements in our body, etc. How do we know these things? Scientific theories that are explanations.
Deutsch reviews what an explanatory theory is, and how science actually works, compared to historical, naive notions about how science was thought to work. (He touched on this in the earlier book.) For example: we do not concoct theories from our senses; that was empiricism. Nor do we extrapolate based on past experience; that was inductivism. Both are false. Rather, ideas are guessed, based on earlier theories, or earlier ideas ultimately derived from inborn expectations and intentions. [[ This goes back to the intuitive ideas of base human nature. ]] This was not understood until Popper.
Thus it took millennia before humans guessed the dots in the sky were stars like our own sun. (No one ‘deduced’ it or observed it through their senses.) Our senses deceive us [[ as we’ve read so much about ]]. The key to science is that our explanations can be continually improved. Knowledge never relies on authority. We must accept falliblism, and understand that our explanations may always contain misconceptions. So how did the scientific revolution lead to such increases of knowledge? Author will provide his own answer [[ later in the book, presumably ]].
Context: The scientific revolution was part of the Enlightenment, essentially a rebellion against authority in regard to knowledge. Before then it was believed that everything important had already been discovered — but ancient writings were more wrong than right. Also necessary: a tradition of criticism, and a willingness to change. This entails the capability of scientific theory to be testable; theories don’t derive from experience, but they can be tested by experience.
The point of science is not to predict, but to explain. This was denied by some in the 20th century, in a movement now called instrumentalism, which in its way denied realism, the idea that the physical world actually exists. Predictions without explanatory content are just rules of thumb.
When we have conflicting ideas about an observation, this is a ‘problem.’ To solve it means creating an explanation without conflict. Every problem indicates that our knowledge is flawed or inadequate. Our theories derive from rules of thumb, our inborn assumptions, and myths. Only testable theories make progress possible.
Long example of the Greek myth of why winter comes: though a myth, it’s testable in the sense that if true, winter would happen everywhere on earth at the same time. Which it does not. And if you resort to myth, why those gods and not others? Example of Nordic myths. The core explanation of both is: the gods did it. Neither actually explains anything. They are ‘bad explanations,’ or rather, *un*scientific theories, even when they make testable predictions.
Deutsch cites the famous Feynman quote about science and not fooling ourselves: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.” Science, and the Enlightenment, is about the quest for good explanations. It’s not about prediction; and it rejects authority. There have always been people seeking good explanation, but in most ages they had no tradition of criticism, and their ideas have been forgotten. The true Enlightenment happened just once, and from it grew the culture of the ‘West’. Good explanations are often simple or elegant; despite which, Occam’s razor is not necessarily so.
Back to the question of how we think we know so much about unfamiliar aspects of reality. Consider what the Greeks knew in the 3rd century BCE. They knew little of the world; but they could predict the seasons around the globe. To suppose otherwise would mean modifying your good explanation—but that is difficult. An explanation implies consequences we may not come to know about much later.
Page 30t:
It may seem paradoxical to claim anything so grand (even if only potentially) on behalf of a project that has swept away all the ancient myths that used to assigned human beings a special significance in the scheme of things. For if the power of the human faculties of reason and creativity, which have driven the Enlightenment, were indeed unlimited, would humans not have just such a significance?
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Deutsch ends this first chapter with a half-page summary, a page and half glossary of terminology — everything from “Explanation” to “The West” and the terms I’ve bolded above — and a list of meanings of “the beginning of infinity” encountered in this chapter, seven in this case. Similar lists conclude the later chapters. This was also the format of his previous book.
