Title: The Beginning of Infinity
Author: Deutsch, David
Published by: Penguin
Year: 2012
First published: Allen Lane, 2011
Date reviewed: 01.14
ISBN: 978-0-140-27816-3

This is classic David Deutsch. He is a radical realist: there is a real world out there, we can know about it, and there is no limit to our ever-increasing knowledge. He has no time for doubters and in his first chapter he dismisses empiricism, inductivism, instrumentalism, justificationism and more besides, and declares his allegiance to fallibilism, testability of theories, Popper, and the power of good explanations to increase our knowledge of the world. The key to this progress is the scientific method, emerging at the time of the Enlightenment, characterised by a rejection of received authority in many fields, and laying the foundations for what he terms a tradition of criticism (noting the irony in his use of the word ‘tradition’ on this context). In giving short shrift to some major contributions to epistemology Deutsch may appear to be skating over many philosophical difficulties. I know from hearing him speak on these subjects that he is perfectly capable of arguing his position, it’s just that he doesn’t really want to waste time on what in his view are fruitless debates about discredited ways of thinking. Whether you agree with him or not it’s best just to accept his starting point, fasten your seatbelt and get ready to enjoy the ride!

The “Infinity” in the book’s title refers to Deutsch’s concept that ‘we’ are at the start of limitless growth in knowledge. His thesis is that ‘there will always be problems’ [in our knowledge] but ‘problems are soluble’. Writing, numerals, digital computing, DNA are universal in their scope (‘reach’) – they can be applied without limits. He regards people as ‘universal explainers’.

In Chapter 3 he argues his case against two influential but ultimately limiting theories, the Theory of Mediocrity and the ‘Spaceship Earth’ theory. The Theory of Mediocrity is encapsulated in Hawking’s dismissal of life on earth as ‘chemical scum’; Spaceship Earth views our planet as having finite resources which we deplete at our peril. Deutsch counters that intelligent, problem-solving life-forms have the power to change the planet, the solar system, the galaxy. We may not have the knowledge or resources yet but we can imagine how it could be done without violating the laws of physics. He argues that the Earth and its ‘scum’ is very far from typical of the universe, which is almost entirely (to many decimals of 99.99999%) cold, dark and empty. Spaceship Earth does not support human life, as anyone prepared to spend a few days and nights naked in even the relatively benign environment of the English countryside can confirm. All our life-support is human-made: we survive through knowledge not genetics.

The next targets are the non-Darwinian creation theories. Deutsch takes a scythe to creationism, Lamarckianism, and other versions of anthropocentrism. Only strict neo-Darwinism remains – the genes that spread through the population are those that are best at spreading through the population, whether or not it gives them or the organism for which they encode any survival advantage.

By Chapter 6 Deutsch is ready to discuss the “Jump to Universality”. This is how things go from the particular to the universal – writing, numerals, computing and DNA are all examples. He asserts that historically, the achievement of universality in any field has not been a specific goal and at times has been positively resisted. Almost as an aside he points out that analogue systems cannot be universal because they lack the facility for error-correction, so errors accumulate until the system breaks down.

There are still many things for which we do not (Deutsch would say “yet”) have good explantions – creativity, consciousness, qualia. He maintains there has been no real progress towards artificial creativity or intelligence despite 50 years of trying. Artificial creativity – including present-day implementations of artificial evolution – only embody human programmers’ current knowledge. Only when we understand (i.e. have strong explanations for) creativity will we be able to programme it – and it will probably be quite simple!

Next there is a diversion into a discussion of mathematical infinity based on Hilbert’s Infinity Hotel, a chapter on ‘Optimism’ and, in a device borrowed from Douglas Hofstaeder, a chapter called “A Dream of Socrates” where he argues that ethical, moral, and political questions are also susceptible to challenge and error-correction. In the next chapter, “The Multiverse” Deutsch lost me completely. I can handle his explanation of why the ‘multiverse’ theory is the best explanation we have of how quantum physics works (I first came across it in his earlier book “The Fabric of Reality”, and then in subsequent reading on cosmology), but his concept and discussion of ‘frangibility’ was beyond me.

The Deutsch rollercoaster next swoops over representative democracy and why First Past the Post is the best voting model in a developed society; a chapter in which he argues that there are objective truths in aesthetics – beauty is objective – and a discussion of the role of memes in the evolution of culture and of creativity.

The final theme is a discussion of the concept of ‘sustainability’, which in Deutsch’s definition means maintaining things as they are. He equates this with ‘static’ societies, those where the search for new solutions to new problems is discouraged or non-existent. He illustrates this by contrasting two diametrically-opposed assessments of the famous Easter Island statues. In his television series “The Ascent of Man” (1973) Jacob Bronowski wonders why the Easter Islanders’ society ultimately failed, why no-one traded with them, why they didn’t leave, and why they continued building statues until their final demise. The answer from Bronowski and echoed by Deutsch is that they didn’t know how, and their society lacked the knowledge to do things differently.

By contrast, in his programme on Easter Island in the series “The State of the Planet” (2000) David Attenborough uses Easter Island as an example-in-miniature of Spaceship Earth where a society with ‘ample resources’ ‘sustained’ the population until their resources ran out. But as Deutsch points out, ‘sustain’ in this sense also means ‘static’. The Islanders’ society prevented them adapting to their changing world unlike, for example, the inhabitants of the British Isles whose vast forest cover provided a ‘sustainable’ way of life for centuries if not millenia but who found ways to adapt to different ways of life as those resources dwindled. As a result the population of the British Isles is far wealthier, healthier, longer-lived and educated than the Easter Islanders could have dreamed of, but the British have only achieved this by ‘unsustainable’ means.

This analysis, and his general commitment to problem solving, leads Deutsch to conclude that the right response for humanity faced with climate change is to put resources into inventing ways of protecting ourselves against the threats, surviving in a warmer world, rather than trying to reduce CO2 emissions to ‘sustainable’ levels.

There the rollercoaster ride ends, leaving the reader breathless and probably somwhere between awestruck and confused. The central thesis that people are ‘universal explainers’ with no limits to the growth of knowledge and understanding is inspiring, but there are others who do not accept the unlimited capacity of the human brain (see for example McGinn “The Problem of Consciousness”). Maybe we will never understand consciousness and creativity for the same reason a cat will never play chess. And perhaps in some other part of the cosmos there are non-human people who are universal explainers even if humans are not.