The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

+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.

This is a book mostly about the philosophy of science. Specifically, it's about how the scientific method is the best way to increase our understanding and control of the world and our lives. I learned a great deal from the book -- have listened to it about five times. The book communicates some very important ideas, many of which I agree with and some not. While David Deutsch has unique and important things to say, he is something of a dry writer. If you want to learn more about how science works and how to build knowledge and understanding of the world, read this book. As a note, the narration is great. I found two of Deutsch's chapters not clear enough to understand--the chapter on the mathematics of infinity and the chapter on the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics. I actually know quite a bit about quantum physics; nevertheless, his explanation of Many Worlds escapes me. Possibly, if I sat down and read it rather than listening, these chapters would have been clearer to me--something that I'm actually planning to try. As a listener, I've given up on them. The other chapters are philosophy of science, and are quite understandable. While I think that Deutsch has a great grasp of many aspects of how science works--he's both a philosopher and a noted physicist--he doesn't have as much understanding of how human beings work. For example, he seems to have no awareness of the idea of right-brained knowledge/heart knowledge. He dismisses the wisdom traditions of indigenous peoples and Eastern religions without so much as a mention. To him, these are simply primitive peoples with short, brutal lives. Since they are pre-scientific, they can simply be dismissed. He speaks quite a bit about such peoples without any specifics at all. He seems to assume that we can all know about them in this stereotypical way without ever taking a closer look, as an anthropologist or a more spiritual person might. As a note, he similarly dismisses any type of spiritual experience, but with no documentation as to why we should. And he conflates spirituality with the fundamentalist religious view that the Bible is a literal history of Earth. I would not rely on Deutsch for learning about spirituality or religion. Similarly, his chapters on art and socioeconomic/political systems are weak. Deutsch wants to extend the scientific approach of explanation to these areas. I believe, however, that in these areas, we are successful if we do what works, not what should work in some logically worked out "scientific system." Deutsch would have us work out cause and effect principles, for example, for political systems. I can see this as being ideologies like "too much regulation stifles business" or "free trade hurts workers." But I think that we are seeing in the U.S. today, the downside of such ideologies. I think that our state of political knowledge at this point is such that we need, instead, to study and find out what creates the results we want rather than rely on principles and chains of reasoning that we regard as "true." In summary, I learned a lot from the "Beginning of Infinity" about how science works. Deutsch is a remarkably clear and articulate thinker. While he is limited in his worldview and not the most engaging in his writing style, he has a lot to say to us. This is an important book well worth reading.

Lo compré porque aparentemente Mark Zuckenberg lo recomendaba. Al escuchar eso me pareció una tonteria comprarlo, pero espero valga la pena (sólo llevo 60 páginas). La razón por que me animé a comprarlo es por el autor, el es físico como yo. Al leer eso, me pareció importante darle una oportunidad. Por el lado malo, me molesta un poco la postura del autor, ya que en ratos parece un poco pedante corrigiendo a figuras como Thomas Alva Edison y Richard Dawkins, argumentando que la postura de ellos es "incorrecta" respecto a lo que él cree. Aún no lo acabo de leer, así que no se si lo volvería a comprar :P

I loved this book, but this didn't surprise me, as I found the author's previous book, The Fabric of Reality, equally entertaining and thought provoking. I am not an expert in quantum mechanics or quantum computing. The little I knew about the topic always gave me an unease regarding the inherently probabilistic features of them. Deutsch provides a clear and deterministic explanation to quantum phenomena, which to me sounds quite intuitive despite the claims in several other books to the highly counterintuitive nature of quantum mechanics. However, in the book this interpretation is of secondary importance to the all encompassing theory of knowledge as the main driving force in the evolution of the universe. I completely agree with the author on the importance of good explanations and that good conjectures precede 'conclusions drawn from experiments'. Read this book even if you don't agree with the many worlds interpretation.

Capa simples, folhas simples. Nos EUA deve custar uns 5 dolls.

This book has no commonplaces. Every line is like discovering something: you can disagree with the author but not ignore what he says.

If you someone interested in questioning the famous theories or wish to look beyond the understanding and into 'what might have occurred in their minds to get here' then this book is for you. This is not just plain scientific text with a hell of facts to cover, this is more of a philosophical narration of science and its ideas.