The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars | 1,878 ratings

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Last update: 02-16-2025


About this item

A bold and all-embracing exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge from one of today's great thinkers. Throughout history, mankind has struggled to understand life's mysteries, from the mundane to the seemingly miraculous. In this important new book, David Deutsch, an award-winning pioneer in the field of quantum computation, argues that explanations have a fundamental place in the universe. They have unlimited scope and power to cause change, and the quest to improve them is the basic regulating principle not only of science but of all successful human endeavor. This stream of ever improving explanations has infinite reach, according to Deutsch: we are subject only to the laws of physics, and they impose no upper boundary to what we can eventually understand, control, and achieve. In his previous book, The Fabric of Reality, Deutsch describe the four deepest strands of existing knowledge-the theories of evolution, quantum physics, knowledge, and computation-arguing jointly they reveal a unified fabric of reality. In this new book, he applies that worldview to a wide range of issues and unsolved problems, from creativity and free will to the origin and future of the human species.

Filled with startling new conclusions about human choice, optimism, scientific explanation, and the evolution of culture, The Beginning of Infinity is a groundbreaking audio book that will become a classic of its kind.


Top reviews from the United States

  • MV
    5.0 out of 5 stars power of good explanations
    Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 2011
    I have no science background (except college biology) and my own reading, so my understanding of The Beginning of Infinity is somewhat limited (particularly the chapter on the multiverse). But even with that limitation, I found this to be one of the best books I've read in years in terms of developing and pushing my own understanding of the world. I reread two chapters just to try to get some inkling of their meaning (the multiverse and the jump to universality). I also read the infinity chapter twice and on the second reading I finally got the point of the infinite hotel (or at least one point). Even after two reads though, with those chapters I still felt lost. I really need to reread them all, but this is my review with just one reading.

    Despite my ignorance, I still felt it worthwhile to write a review to encourage others who might think that this book is not for them to tackle it. It is worth the effort to comprehend even for those who are not versed in the sciences.

    This is what I understood from the book. Deutsch argues that we are at the "beginning" of the creation of good explanations about our world (the infinity of the title is the endless knowledge that humans have the potential to create). We will always be at the beginning (such is the nature of infinity I think--at least that's what the infinite hotel suggested), and this leads to optimism about our world. Our world is filled with (overflowing with might be a better way to think of it because we don't even really know where the world ends)problems and potential solutions. Through conjecture and criticism, humans "solve" many of these problems and this leads to new problems (solutions are not truths but they are the best explanations for the problem after much testing--and stand as objective truths, I think).

    D systematically builds his case, looking at other science approaches like empiricism or instrumentalism and shows why these are not good explanations. This is not an attack on alternative perspectives as much as it is the building of good explanations around the topics that are discussed (which range from beauty (D argues that beauty is objective), philosophy, psychology, elections, choices, creation and physics). There seems to be rhetorical room for disagreement, meaning that D posits his position, criticizes the other positions and then argues that his position currently stands up to available criticism. Again, the criticism isn't an attack though; it's how knowledge is created. D's conjecture and refutation approach (to use Popper's terms) seems to make so much more sense then the usual way arguments are presented: here is a claim, here is why you should believe my claim, because I have lots of support for my claim you, the reader, should agree I'm right. Even if you have 500 pages of support for your claim, one piece of criticism could refute it.

    What I found most beneficial to me was the emphasis on optimism. Humans are great creators, testers and explainers. That's exciting. I still don't understand how to apply the theories and truths discussed here to human behavior, however. Deutsch does mention psychology and its bad theories, but I'm not really talking about that. I'm wondering if humans can achieve all possibilities that do not defy the laws of physics,and does this mean things like balancing the budget? Or agreeing on good laws? How does the human ability to develop good explanations work in these instances? Deutsch (referencing Popper, who he references a lot)states that reforming politics is more a matter of setting up laws that allow us to get rid of bad rulers and bad laws (as opposed to trying to somehow fix the system to make sure only "good" politicians got elected, or good laws passed). Is the assumption that if those laws were in place than politicians would develop/accept good explanations for fear of being got rid of (or would we just end up overturning things over and over again? Now I'm prophesying which D condemns; what could we predict about human behavior? that is really the question . . . ). Do the principles raised in this book work with human behavior just as they do with physical and technical problems?

    Deutsch starts with some fundamental principles (lots more than the ones I'm listing but these are what stood out to me and that I remember):
    1. there is no authoritative way to knowledge
    2. Humans are unique; what makes us unique is our ability to criticize our ideas and to generate new ones
    3. The best knowledge for anything is a good explanation (we ask, is this the best explanation?). Good explanations are the ones that withstand heavy and sustained criticism
    4. All observation is theory driven
    5. evolution favors the genes that can spread through the population
    6. morality, beauty, abstract concepts exist objectively (through good explanations)
    7. the laws of physics determine mathematical principles
    8. The universe is not random; but determined by the laws of physics.
    9. prophecy is bad explanation; prediction from good explanation is better
    10. Humans are creative but we have to be open to our creativity in order to feed it (the enlightenment was the first large scale example of this). We have to recognize that problems exist, that people can solve them and that this is the best plan for humans.

    When I finished I had lots of questions. I don't really get the concept of "fine tuning", and I don't understand the multiverse at all. I understand what the words say, but I can't get my head around the idea of these multiple planes and people all existing simultaneously and then when he starts talking about the photons hitting the plate and going off I get really lost.

    Not sure I get the anthropic principle. I did go do more reading on it and what I understood it to mean was that human existence (that humans are here) puts limits on the explanations for our existence. I think D disagrees with this.

    A final wondering. . . Deutsch doesn't really address emotions. Emotions, particularly fear, seem to power much human behavior (and certainly the stagnancy he discusses that kept us from moving forward with our creativity). In the rational world offered by this book, how do people "deal with" emotional resistance? Perhaps Deutsch would say that question isn't really relevant. There are good explanations for why emotion overpowers reason (I think they are good, but maybe they aren't--such as the part of our brains that powers emotions is much more powerful than that which powers reason), but such explanations do not help us to overcome this problem.
  • TheMogget
    5.0 out of 5 stars A genuinely new and valuable contribution to the Philosphy of Science.
    Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2020
    +Covers genuine new ground in the Philosophy of Science
    +New ideas 'reach' and 'hard to vary' are explained clearly and completely
    +Existing ideas are explained clearly but superficially, with skill of a professor.
    +'Infinity' theme is inspiring, if you are inspired by such things.
    +Fungible Multiverse chapter should be required reading in Physics.

    - Writing is very dry, like a wikipedia article.
    - Author's tone, when he has any at all, is very much like Data from Star Trek, which is interesting but hard on the reader.
    - Spends too much time reveling in long-standing and better-explained-elsewhere ideas like Evolution and DNA encoding and Psychology (none of which are his expertise, and it shows.

    The philosophy of science is to understand what makes a good hypothesis. What kind of questions are good questions to ask? What does answering them even tell us? What is a scientific question, and what is an unscientific one?

    In this book, David tells us why asking good questions and seeking good explanations are not just central to science, but to the enlightenment way of thinking in general. His central contribution, his new ideas, is that good explanations have 'reach' and are 'hard to vary'. I think these two features of explanatory power are more precise and complete than prior ones such as 'falsifiability' or parsimony. This little bit, although it could have been conveyed on its own in a little pamphlet, is so valuable that this book is a must-read for the Science of Philosophy and a 5-star book just for having it.

    The other great moment in this book is the chapter on a fungible multiverse. That, too, could have made a great little book on its own.

    From there, David goes on to discuss the implications of good explanations, and how the 'good explanations' metaphor can describe other forms of information, such as DNA in people. He also puts forth the idea that rules of explanation, on their own, do not arrive us at progress. He talks about how a consistent earnest drive to prove oneself wrong and come up with an even better explanation is what leads us on. We should assume that progress may be infinite, and that our present explanations are therefore infinitely wrong. We should always look for improvement in every explanation, although that will become harder and harder to do. The best explanations will have been improved so much that they have near infinite reach. That is the goal.

    As a writer, I find David to be too clinical, humorless, and dry. It is like listening to Data from Star Trek teach you science. If you listen to the audio book read by someone who sounds like Data from Star Trek, that sensation is very strong. At the same time, we can trust Data to always tell us the best answer he knows, and be upfront about what can be known and what cannot be known and what we know now. David does this too. I learned a lot from this book, but it was hard reading. His writing is very clear and does not use excessively difficult words, but he does seem to wander far and wide and sounds too much like wikipedia. I also didn't quite catch on the spirit of his 'infinity' theme that was supposed to be inspiring. It's fun, but I am not sure I am inspired by it. I never appreciate when expert authors start trying to teach you subjects they aren't expert on, especially when they aren't really necessary to the core idea. David wanders off his own turf a lot.

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