By Tom Kando
I just read David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity (2011). It is impossible to do justice to this masterpiece in a brief review.
Deutsch has written a compelling opus about humanity, our role in the Universe, our future, what is true and what is nonsense among the things we believe, and most importantly, the hope that through science we shall continue to create true knowledge and thus progress ad infinitum.
Not only is Deutsch a genius. He is also eccentric and he has enormous chutzpah, as some reviewers have noted (e.g. David Albert, New York Times, August 12, 2011). The people he dismisses with sleight of hand as being plainly wrong include Niels Bohr, Jared Diamond, Paul Ehrlich, Immanuel Kant, Gottfried Leibniz, Thomas Malthus, Karl Marx, Plato and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Some whose ideas he accepts include Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrodinger and Socrates. Others are criticized, while not rejected altogether, for example Steven Hawking. And one philosopher can do no wrong: Karl Popper - clearly Deutsch’s great mentor.
Deutsch appraises most of the philosophies of science which compete to define what true knowledge is. Again, the author boldly tells us which approaches are correct and which ones are wrong. Here is a partial list:
Errors/misconceptions include: Behaviorism, empiricism, inductivism, instrumentalism, Lamarckianism (87), Positivism (especially Logical Positivism), Post-modernism , reductionism (123) and relativism. On the other hand, correct approaches include: criticism, emergence, fallibilism, neo-Darwinianism (89), optimism, rationalism and realism.
Even though the book is quite focused and offers a very clear message, it is impossible to summarize it in a couple of paragraphs. For now, let me just share with you the main thesis. Here it is:
Deutsch’s single-minded focus is on EXPLANATIONS. Science, knowledge and LIFE progress through good explanations, that is, explanations with REACH, explanations that are UNIVERSAL rather than parochial. Problems are inevitable, and problems are soluble (64-65). Their solutions and good explanations are the product of conjecture, criticism and creative imagination. True knowledge is NOT the product of empiricism, positivism and induction, as so many people mistakenly believe.
Deutsch describes how Karl Popper used to begin his lectures in the philosophy of science by asking the students simply to “observe.” Then, “he would wait in silence for one of them to ask WHAT they were supposed to observe.” This was his way to show that scientific observation (pure empiricism) is impossible without pre-existing knowledge about what to look for, how to look, and how to interpret. “Theory has to come first, and it has to be conjectured, not derived” (403).
PEOPLE are creators of universal explanations and knowledge. Humans are people who live on earth, but there may be other “people” in the Universe. Biological evolution also creates knowledge, genetically via the DNA, but it is parochial knowledge.
We, humans, have made the Jump to Universality. In this sense, we are the center of the Universe. We have produced good explanations, i.e. explanations which can account for the same phenomenon whether it be here or on Sirius, even though we can never observe it empirically on that star, 9 light years from us (my example). We can do this, because we have discovered the universal laws of physics.
All evil is caused by insufficient knowledge (212). Along with better knowledge, we achieve moral, institutional and cultural progress. “Morally right values are connected with true factual theories, and morally wrong values with false theories.” (121). Deutsch debunks many false theories, including intelligent design and Lamarckianism.
The evolution of culture and creativity occurs through memes, i.e. ideas which are replicators and which therefore survive (105). Just as biological evolution occurs through genes, so cultural evolution occurs through memes.
Learning does NOT occur through parrot-like imitation of something we merely OBSERVE. Learning represents the replication of MEANING (402) and meme acquisition. This is a CREATIVE process. For example, scientific theories (which are a category of memes) are CREATED (412), and they guide observation.
People, including humans, are able to IMPROVE ideas through creativity (399). We are now engaged in the history of universality. The future of creativity consists of creating new knowledge.
The total amount of knowledge is infinite, and scientists will always be merely scratching the surface. In the 20th century, several scientists have said that science has just about discovered most of what there is to know - say 90%. They are very wrong. In fact, we are poised at The Beginning of Infinity, i.e. the beginning of the unlimited growth of knowledge in the future.
This trajectory only took permanent form in the 17th and 18th century Enlightenment (390). That is when true progress began, and it took place in the West (387), which was a uniquely DYNAMIC society.
There had been several mini-enlightenments before (for example Athens in the 5th century B.C.), and many scientific departures, including Euclid, Pythagoras, Archimedes and others. However, they all aborted. On the other hand, the scientific revolution which began in the 17th century continues to accelerate, three and a half centuries later.
In my next posts, I will give you more details about Deutsch’s analyses of the Enlightenment, abstractions, the human mind, artificial intelligence, computers, Quantum theory, the Multiverse, beauty, morality, politics, environmentalism, and a host of philosophical positions, including intelligent design, neo-Darwinism, empiricism, reductionism, emergentism and optimism. The man knows everything.
If this review seems biased, that’s because it is. I happen to share Deutsch’s interpretation of truth and knowledge. (See also my Science Fiction novel: Humanity's Future: The Next 25,000 Years, in which I describe the future history of humanity, and which shares Deutsch’s optimistic perspective, www.tomkando.com).
