User:Sprawled/The Beginning of Infinity

The Beginning of Infinity is a book by physicist and philosopher David Deutsch published March 2011. It continues themes from his first book The Fabric of Reality which held that the purpose of scientific theories lies in their explanatory depth (or reach). Deutsch argues that while new explanations create new problems ("problems are inevitable"), everything that is not forbidden by physics is achievable, given the right knowledge ("problems are soluble"). Thus science, specifically The Enlightenment marked the start of an unbounded growth of explanatory knowledge. A Beginning of Infinity.

Other Beginnings of Infinity considered include:


 * 1) The evolution of life (non-explanatory knowledge)
 * 2) The evolution of culture and the unbounded growth of memes
 * 3) Universality in computation and other field
 * 4) People (defined as universal explainers) as universal constructors
 * 5) Optimism

Good Explanations
Deutsch argues that good explanations are hard to vary. If an explanation can be easily altered to fit with new facts, then improvements can continue indefinitely without any real progress. He rejects inductivist arguments that scientific knowledge is derived from experience. He points out that the world, according to our best scientific theories, is thoroughly unlike everyday experience. Moreover, all experience of the physical world is indirect, as Karl Popper noted, "all observation is theory laden".

Thus Deutsch endorses Popper's fallibilist approach to scientific discovery. Science is a creative process, attempting to explain observation through things unseen. The only way for progress is for criticism (or error-correction).