'The Beginning of Infinity' (David Deutsch) or just wasted time?

I just can’t remember what convinced me or whose recommendation served such a good reason to provide a deserved place on my modest books to read list for a work of a scientist and a physicist, and a philosopher—except not an athlete and hardly a Komsomol member (lives in England… you know), but it, the book, managed to get on the list. I’ve read it. Disappointed.

Disappointed? Well, I’m afraid, yes. Though a few sound ideas could be drawn from the author.

(1) The whole point and the core idea of the book comes down to the following quote: ‘Never before in the history of human thought has it been so obvious that our knowledge is tiny and our ignorance vast.’

Actually, I was expecting the disclosure of the broad and inclusive topic—‘The Beginning of infinity’ in the context of the intellectual potential of mankind—a serious challenge! What have I got in the result? An endless—literally—rehash on anything one may think of. It might be just common to all philosophers, and me a humble mortal must not pry into it. Am big enough boy to be invited? But I am invited! The book is offered for a wide audience, which means the main idea has to be well developed, it has to make one interested, and there should be less ‘water’ in it. But there might have been publishing standards involved—you can't sell something thin. So one needs to get over it. So the man tried. Or maybe it's just a translation. After all, some thoughts are complex, capacious, and the terminology is not a commonplace one at all.

You think you are reading Shakespeare when you read in Russian? I would have thought of Marshak rather.

(2) The work of course could be studied, for example, for the following reason: having read it, or even, rather, while reading it, one realizes how limited one’s intellectual capabilities and potential are. Endless semantic recaps, logical pyramids and interconnections, the author's horizons, reflected in thousands of thousands characters laid out on paper...—you realize that you are not getting most of the thoughts that he is so daring to juggle with.

The chapter about the multiverse with the thesis of quantum theory—my mother used to tell me: ‘You sonny, better learn physics—everything will come in handy in life…' But I didn’t listen.
In an attempt to comprehensively describe my understanding of what the author said, I would note: an emodji with the eyes rolled up; no, three of these, first of all; second—a muzzle with a tongue stuck out and slightly puffing—making the sound «pr-pr-pr-pr…"

(3) At least the benefit is that I’ve learned three new words—‘parochiality,’ ‘emergent’, and (I remembered anyway, I didn't learn) ‘truism’. It seems these are the author's favorite words.

(4) Some quotes.

‘Our history and politics, our science, art and philosophy, our aspirations and moral values – all these are tiny side effects of a supernova ex- plosion a few billion years ago, which could be extinguished tomorrow by another such explosion. Supernovae, too, are moderately significant in the cosmic scheme of things. But it seems that one can explain everything about supernovae, and almost everything else, without ever mentioning people or knowledge at all.’

‘Therefore the existence of an unsolved problem in physics is no more evidence for a supernatural explanation than the existence of an unsolved crime is evidence that a ghost committed it.’

‘…the problem has been not that the world is so complex that we cannot understand why it looks as it does, but it is that it is so simple that we cannot yet understand it. But this will be noticeable only with hindsight.’

‘…errors are inevitable, and only error- correcting processes can succeed or continue for long.’

(5) Summing-up.

Of course, our little neural network can be drilled somehow with this ‘exercise’, but one can probably find something ‘more fun’.

Efficiency above all!

2025-08-22 15:23 EP Impressions