Book SummaryThe Beginning of Infinity, by David Deutsch

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of The Beginning of Infinity

The Beginning of Infinity is a counterargument to the belief that there is a finite amount of knowledge in the universe. People ranging from theoretical physicists to a former Commissioner of the US Patent Office have said that, sooner or later, humanity will stop learning because we know everything there is to know. Physicist David Deutsch wrote this book as a rebuttal to his peers, to explain to them why humanity will never stop learning and why we must never stop learning.

Deutsch rejects the idea of finite knowledge as both wrong and harmful. He believes it leads to complacency at best (there’s no need to learn because we already know everything), and pessimism at worst (we can’t advance any further; this is as good as civilization gets). Deutsch argues instead that there’s no limit to knowledge.

His reasoning is that people actively create knowledge through questions, studies, and calculations, rather than merely “finding” it by experiencing the world around them. Furthermore, Deutsch believes that because there’s no limit to how much knowledge we can create, there’s no limit to how much we can improve the world.

Deutsch is a physicist who specializes in quantum mechanics. He’s also a visiting professor of physics at several prominent universities, including...

The Beginning of Infinity Summary What Is Infinity?

Before we can understand infinite knowledge, we must first comprehend the idea of infinity. Infinity is a hard concept to grasp logically—in fact, Deutsch believes that the human mind has a natural aversion to it. Many people find it easier to think of infinity as some arbitrarily large number, but that’s a poor approximation. Instead, we can illustrate the concept of infinity with a simple thought experiment:

Imagine a person standing in an endless hallway. He walks an endless distance down that hallway. Once he’s done so, there’s still an endless distance ahead of him. He repeats this process countless times, but there is still an immeasurable distance between him and the end of the hallway. This is why Deutsch says, no matter how much knowledge we create, we’ll never know everything—in other words, no matter how far we travel, we’ll never reach the end of the hallway.

It’s also why imagining infinity as a really big number doesn’t work: Infinity doesn’t obey the same rules as finite numbers do. Instead, it may help to picture infinity as an unreachable destination; no matter...

The Beginning of Infinity Summary Where Knowledge Comes From

Now that we’ve discussed the concept of infinity, we’ll move on to what Deutsch means by “creating infinite knowledge.” Specifically, we’ll discuss how people create knowledge, and why it’s crucial that they continue to do so.

Different Schools of Thought

Empiricism is the belief that all knowledge comes from observation and extrapolation. A related philosophy, Positivism, says that the only true knowledge is scientific knowledge, and all scientific knowledge can be proven or verified through experimentation. In other words, Positivism argues that knowledge doesn’t have to originate with experience, but it must be confirmed by it.

Deutsch rejects both of these philosophies. He says that it’s impossible to gain true knowledge just from observation, because we also have to interpret whatever we observe. In Deutsch’s definition, “true” knowledge is free from subjectivity, but observation is run through the filter of our past experiences, beliefs, and assumptions. Therefore, observation is not a reliable way to learn new information.

Instead, Deutsch argues that knowledge comes from conjecture and testing—in other words, we come up with new ideas based on...

The Beginning of Infinity Summary Learning Mimics Evolution

Interestingly, although people create knowledge intentionally while evolution happens naturally, Deutsch says that the two processes have a number of things in common:

• Successful ideas and successful genes both reproduce, by definition.

(Shortform note: In biology, a “successful” gene is one that helps its host organism survive and reproduce, thereby passing itself on to the next generation. Deutsch is echoing that definition in his discussion of successful ideas—they’re ideas that survive and pass from person to person through conversation, media, and imitation.)

• Successful ideas and successful genes both emerge from fierce competition, while their unsuccessful competitors die off.

(Shortform note: Both organisms and ideas have to compete for limited resources—however, in the case of ideas, the resources are people’s time and attention. Just like animals die if they don’t get enough food, ideas die if nobody talks about them.)

• Good ideas and good evolutionary adaptations...

The Beginning of Infinity Summary All Knowledge Is Significant

Just as evolution involves competition between various biological adaptations, knowledge creation involves competition between different ideas and ways of thinking. Deutsch discusses two such schools of thought—reductionism and holism—in order to point out the fatal flaws in each:

1) Reductionism means discussing a phenomenon in terms of each individual part that composes it—in other words, it focuses on the smallest and most fundamental levels possible. For example, a strict reductionist might try to understand a rainstorm by calculating the behavior of each individual water molecule (an impossible task).

(Shortform note: Deutsch is using the scientific definition of reductionism, meaning the belief that any event can be explained in terms of physics. For example, in chemistry, a reductionist approach would mean describing a chemical reaction by explaining the physics that cause the chemicals to combine in certain ways.)

2) Holism is the opposite: It’s the belief that understanding a small piece of something is useless except in terms of what it can tell you about the whole. For example, a strict holist wouldn’t be interested in...

The Beginning of Infinity Summary Conclusion: The Case for Optimism

We’ve discussed various ways in which humans create knowledge, and how we could continue creating knowledge forever. However, all of that begs the question: So what? For Deutsch, the potential to create infinite knowledge is grounds for infinite optimism about the future.

First of all, there have been—and continue to be—many pessimistic predictions about the future. For example, there have been numerous projections about how many human beings Earth can support, some of which estimated under a billion people; clearly, we’ve far surpassed those predictions. Today, many scientists predict that climate change will devastate much of the world, perhaps within our lifetimes, but there’s hope that we can overturn those predictions as well.

Such predictions were—and are—based on current knowledge. We’ve exceeded expectations many times before, and that’s because **there’s...

Shortform Exercise: What Knowledge Could You Create?

Everyone has the capacity to create new knowledge. Think about what knowledge you might have already created and what you hope to create in the future.

What’s one piece of knowledge you’ve created in your lifetime? This doesn’t have to be some great scientific discovery—a piece of hard-learned advice, a new recipe, or a good trick of your trade are equally valid.