Have you ever thought about how we got to where we are? How do we know what we know? Why were we able to progress a lot faster in recent years than before? Why do some societies succeed while others fail?
These are some of the questions tackled in the book The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. He’s a physicist and a student of Karl Popper. Both of these are influential in the philosophy of science.
I remember Naval highly recommending this book. I added it to my TBR and forgot about it. Fast forward to February’23, a friend wanted to have a reading group for this book. So we started a reading group with 3 of us and we met every Thursday for about 6 months.
This was a challenging read compared to other non-fiction books I read. The writing is dense and sometimes technical and requires careful attention. I had to re-read some parts to make sense of them. Also, some chapters were hard to get through and understand. In spite of all of these, I had a wonderful time reading this book.
The scope of the book is immense. He delves deep into so many topics. He touches upon history, evolution, abstractions, science, mimetic theory, the evolution of societies, artificial intelligence, creativity, mathematics, beauty, decision-making, politics, morality, philosophy etc.
Despite delving into multiple complex topics, the core ideas of the book are simple, and repeated in multiple contexts to make them stick. His writing has a technical and analytical vibe where he lays out all the precise definitions before going into details.
I only heard and knew of surface-level ideas in certain topics like evolution, and mimetic theory but this book really deepened my understanding of them. I want to explore some of these topics further but I feel like I understood the main ideas.
I really enjoyed the deep dive into Enlightenment ideals. The progress that was kickstarted from this era and why it was different from previous eras and how this search for good explanations can continue til infinity. The history of science and how we got here was interesting.
He also sprinkles in a few mythological stories to explain how explanations worked in older societies. I enjoyed these glimpses into older civilisations. There’s this one chapter I really loved. He writes a fictional dialogue between Socrates and Hermes and he explores the book's themes beautifully via this dialogue. It was really cool to get a peek into the ancient Athens. Also loved the focus on the Socratic method. I had a vague idea about it before but only understood it properly after reading this chapter.
He has this habit of making huge claims in between and I found myself agreeing with most of them. But sometimes I didn’t completely follow but I also couldn’t think of a proper refutation. I think I need to read this book a few times more to fully grok the themes and complexities.
I’m glad we had a reading group for this book. I found a lot of value in having discussions on this book. This is a book that you really need to reflect on and discuss with people. Hearing multiple points of view and then clarifying things with others was helpful. There were multiple instances where I clarified my understanding via these discussions.
Overall, this book has an inspiring and optimistic message. Humans can solve any problem within the laws of physics and progress can be unbounded. I think reading the book might have turned me into an optimist. It’s not an exaggeration to say that I see the world and certain things in a different light now. This is a book that needs to be read a few times to explore its ideas fully. I hope to read this many times.
Ending the review with some of my favourite quotes.
“Problems are inevitable. Problems are soluble.”
“Every profound innovation is based on an inward-bound journey, where the inventor seeks to answer questions for himself or for herself.”
“A universal explainer is a person who can create explanations, conjecture solutions to problems. Such people are the motive force of progress and, without them, society would be static.”
“All evils are due to a lack of knowledge.”
“The quest for good explanations is the basic regulating principle not only of science, but of civilization in general.”