The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

This is a book mostly about the philosophy of science. Specifically, it's about how the scientific method is the best way to increase our understanding and control of the world and our lives. I learned a great deal from the book -- have listened to it about five times. The book communicates some very important ideas, many of which I agree with and some not. While David Deutsch has unique and important things to say, he is something of a dry writer. If you want to learn more about how science works and how to build knowledge and understanding of the world, read this book. As a note, the narration is great. I found two of Deutsch's chapters not clear enough to understand--the chapter on the mathematics of infinity and the chapter on the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics. I actually know quite a bit about quantum physics; nevertheless, his explanation of Many Worlds escapes me. Possibly, if I sat down and read it rather than listening, these chapters would have been clearer to me--something that I'm actually planning to try. As a listener, I've given up on them. The other chapters are philosophy of science, and are quite understandable. While I think that Deutsch has a great grasp of many aspects of how science works--he's both a philosopher and a noted physicist--he doesn't have as much understanding of how human beings work. For example, he seems to have no awareness of the idea of right-brained knowledge/heart knowledge. He dismisses the wisdom traditions of indigenous peoples and Eastern religions without so much as a mention. To him, these are simply primitive peoples with short, brutal lives. Since they are pre-scientific, they can simply be dismissed. He speaks quite a bit about such peoples without any specifics at all. He seems to assume that we can all know about them in this stereotypical way without ever taking a closer look, as an anthropologist or a more spiritual person might. As a note, he similarly dismisses any type of spiritual experience, but with no documentation as to why we should. And he conflates spirituality with the fundamentalist religious view that the Bible is a literal history of Earth. I would not rely on Deutsch for learning about spirituality or religion. Similarly, his chapters on art and socioeconomic/political systems are weak. Deutsch wants to extend the scientific approach of explanation to these areas. I believe, however, that in these areas, we are successful if we do what works, not what should work in some logically worked out "scientific system." Deutsch would have us work out cause and effect principles, for example, for political systems. I can see this as being ideologies like "too much regulation stifles business" or "free trade hurts workers." But I think that we are seeing in the U.S. today, the downside of such ideologies. I think that our state of political knowledge at this point is such that we need, instead, to study and find out what creates the results we want rather than rely on principles and chains of reasoning that we regard as "true." In summary, I learned a lot from the "Beginning of Infinity" about how science works. Deutsch is a remarkably clear and articulate thinker. While he is limited in his worldview and not the most engaging in his writing style, he has a lot to say to us. This is an important book well worth reading.

I have no science background (except college biology) and my own reading, so my understanding of The Beginning of Infinity is somewhat limited (particularly the chapter on the multiverse). But even with that limitation, I found this to be one of the best books I've read in years in terms of developing and pushing my own understanding of the world. I reread two chapters just to try to get some inkling of their meaning (the multiverse and the jump to universality). I also read the infinity chapter twice and on the second reading I finally got the point of the infinite hotel (or at least one point). Even after two reads though, with those chapters I still felt lost. I really need to reread them all, but this is my review with just one reading. Despite my ignorance, I still felt it worthwhile to write a review to encourage others who might think that this book is not for them to tackle it. It is worth the effort to comprehend even for those who are not versed in the sciences. This is what I understood from the book. Deutsch argues that we are at the "beginning" of the creation of good explanations about our world (the infinity of the title is the endless knowledge that humans have the potential to create). We will always be at the beginning (such is the nature of infinity I think--at least that's what the infinite hotel suggested), and this leads to optimism about our world. Our world is filled with (overflowing with might be a better way to think of it because we don't even really know where the world ends)problems and potential solutions. Through conjecture and criticism, humans "solve" many of these problems and this leads to new problems (solutions are not truths but they are the best explanations for the problem after much testing--and stand as objective truths, I think). D systematically builds his case, looking at other science approaches like empiricism or instrumentalism and shows why these are not good explanations. This is not an attack on alternative perspectives as much as it is the building of good explanations around the topics that are discussed (which range from beauty (D argues that beauty is objective), philosophy, psychology, elections, choices, creation and physics). There seems to be rhetorical room for disagreement, meaning that D posits his position, criticizes the other positions and then argues that his position currently stands up to available criticism. Again, the criticism isn't an attack though; it's how knowledge is created. D's conjecture and refutation approach (to use Popper's terms) seems to make so much more sense then the usual way arguments are presented: here is a claim, here is why you should believe my claim, because I have lots of support for my claim you, the reader, should agree I'm right. Even if you have 500 pages of support for your claim, one piece of criticism could refute it. What I found most beneficial to me was the emphasis on optimism. Humans are great creators, testers and explainers. That's exciting. I still don't understand how to apply the theories and truths discussed here to human behavior, however. Deutsch does mention psychology and its bad theories, but I'm not really talking about that. I'm wondering if humans can achieve all possibilities that do not defy the laws of physics,and does this mean things like balancing the budget? Or agreeing on good laws? How does the human ability to develop good explanations work in these instances? Deutsch (referencing Popper, who he references a lot)states that reforming politics is more a matter of setting up laws that allow us to get rid of bad rulers and bad laws (as opposed to trying to somehow fix the system to make sure only "good" politicians got elected, or good laws passed). Is the assumption that if those laws were in place than politicians would develop/accept good explanations for fear of being got rid of (or would we just end up overturning things over and over again? Now I'm prophesying which D condemns; what could we predict about human behavior? that is really the question . . . ). Do the principles raised in this book work with human behavior just as they do with physical and technical problems? Deutsch starts with some fundamental principles (lots more than the ones I'm listing but these are what stood out to me and that I remember): 1. there is no authoritative way to knowledge 2. Humans are unique; what makes us unique is our ability to criticize our ideas and to generate new ones 3. The best knowledge for anything is a good explanation (we ask, is this the best explanation?). Good explanations are the ones that withstand heavy and sustained criticism 4. All observation is theory driven 5. evolution favors the genes that can spread through the population 6. morality, beauty, abstract concepts exist objectively (through good explanations) 7. the laws of physics determine mathematical principles 8. The universe is not random; but determined by the laws of physics. 9. prophecy is bad explanation; prediction from good explanation is better 10. Humans are creative but we have to be open to our creativity in order to feed it (the enlightenment was the first large scale example of this). We have to recognize that problems exist, that people can solve them and that this is the best plan for humans. When I finished I had lots of questions. I don't really get the concept of "fine tuning", and I don't understand the multiverse at all. I understand what the words say, but I can't get my head around the idea of these multiple planes and people all existing simultaneously and then when he starts talking about the photons hitting the plate and going off I get really lost. Not sure I get the anthropic principle. I did go do more reading on it and what I understood it to mean was that human existence (that humans are here) puts limits on the explanations for our existence. I think D disagrees with this. A final wondering. . . Deutsch doesn't really address emotions. Emotions, particularly fear, seem to power much human behavior (and certainly the stagnancy he discusses that kept us from moving forward with our creativity). In the rational world offered by this book, how do people "deal with" emotional resistance? Perhaps Deutsch would say that question isn't really relevant. There are good explanations for why emotion overpowers reason (I think they are good, but maybe they aren't--such as the part of our brains that powers emotions is much more powerful than that which powers reason), but such explanations do not help us to overcome this problem.

'The Beginning of Infinity' is a fine book with much to admire within it, four stars being proof that it is possible to recognize an author's achievement while having reservations about (if not fundamental disagreement with) portions of the content or the full implications of his premise. As of today there are 20 reviews of the book, many which accurately (and enthusiastically) describe its content. There is no need to repeat details of his clear exposition of Good Explanations, Optimism, Universality, or the Multiverse. The tone of the book is very positive (and there is nothing wrong with that) and he focuses upon the power of the human intellect that asserted itself primarily in the Enlightenment of the eighteenth-century. This book was recommended as an antidote for Kevin Kelly's What Technology Wants that posits a much different view of the importance of man's contribution to technological development (and that it is). While much of what Deutsch writes seems so perfect for the realm of science and technology, there will be those of us who will have deep reservations about applying those same prescriptions to the realm of human behavior and social issues. Anyone with a passing familiarity with Dostoevsky and 'Crime and Punishment' will appreciate the alternate view that a 'scientific' approach to human behavior can be treacherous ... never fully accommodating the complexity of the human condition. Dostoevsky's concerns were realized in Soviet Russia to an appalling extent. This shortcoming is not likely to be overcome by more powerful computers, due to the world's ambiguities and paradoxes (not to mention humanity's wholly selfish and power-seeking nature at times). In a chapter on "Optimism" Deutsch tells an amusing story of a prisoner who avoids death by promising to teach the king's horse to talk within a year, a ploy to buy one year's life and the possibility of more (pg. 214). The prisoner is characterized as an optimist and banking on possibilities that presently seem inconceivable. A good story, but the prisoner is an example of cleverness more than anything else. I don't think the horse is going to talk, does Deutsch? And on the subject of talking horses ... the chapter on "Optimism", which Deutsch defines "in its most general form" as, "All evils are caused by insufficient knowledge" seems to foresee a time when evils will be eliminated (pp. 212-13). Hitler? Stalin? Merely "parochial" evils, apparently. Yeats got it right, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." Assuming mankind can be ruled by reason, education, and goodwill alone is a dangerous concept, or as Deutsch himself warns, "ideas have consequences" (pg. 210), which also happens to be the title of a notable book by Richard M. Weaver ( Ideas Have Consequences ) where he writes, "Hysterical optimism will prevail until the world again admits the existence of tragedy, and it cannot admit the existence of tragedy until it again distinguishes between good and evil." Deutsch makes mention of the "mini-enlightenment" that was fifth century BC Athens, which he says (accurately) was "one of the first to question anthropocentric theories of the gods." And yet ... Greek Tragedy was one of the greatest achievements of the Athenian "Golden Age" and it used the mythological gods as a means of wrestling with the issue of where fate ends and human agency (and therefore responsibility) begins, and how codified law must distinguish between the two. Certainly human agency was accorded great importance, but the impersonal forces of "fate" and the real possibilities of unintended consequences were recognized as necessary ballast. Edith Hamilton wrote in The Greek Way : "We are composite creatures, made up of soul and body, mind and spirit. When man's attention is fixed upon one to the disregard of the other, human beings who result are only partially developed, their eyes blinded to half of what life offers and the great world holds." This sentiment could be valid whether you believe, as Deutsch says, "Our history and our politics, our science, art and philosophy, our aspirations and moral values - all these are tiny side effects of a supernova explosion a few billion years ago" (pg. 70) or have an alternative belief in man's unique being. Mankind may overcome the earth's constraints, occupy new planets and may find a way to extend life indefinitely (Deutsch's ultimate optimism) ... or it could be that a life without the concept of souls or spirituality, lives steeped in and controlled by "sufficient knowledge" might just seem like infinity. Read this book, it is well worth it. But read it with a grain of salt. Better yet, also read Brian Watson's Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud or Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy's Out of Revolution: Autobiography of Western Man as leavening agents. Both make clear that humanity, driven in part by man's changing self-perception, is in flux. The laws of physics may be fixed, and they are continually being described by increasingly sophisticated Good Explanations as we develop increasingly powerful tools of observation. Einstein's vision exceeded Newton's, whose vision exceeded Galileo's. The tools for understanding human nature are much the same as they were for the Ancient Greeks, however, as are the many Good Explanations they arrived at. Addendum 7/24/12: Excerpts from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's 1993 address to the International Academy of Philosophy - "Time passed, and it turned out that Progress is indeed marching on, and is even stunningly surpassing expectations, but is doing so only in the field of technological civilization ... Progress was understood to be a shining and unswerving vector, but it turned out to be a complex and twisted curve, which has brought us back to the very same eternal questions that loomed in earlier times, except that facing these questions then was easier for a less distracted, less disconnected mankind." Food for thought, perhaps.

+Covers genuine new ground in the Philosophy of Science +New ideas 'reach' and 'hard to vary' are explained clearly and completely +Existing ideas are explained clearly but superficially, with skill of a professor. +'Infinity' theme is inspiring, if you are inspired by such things. +Fungible Multiverse chapter should be required reading in Physics. - Writing is very dry, like a wikipedia article. - Author's tone, when he has any at all, is very much like Data from Star Trek, which is interesting but hard on the reader. - Spends too much time reveling in long-standing and better-explained-elsewhere ideas like Evolution and DNA encoding and Psychology (none of which are his expertise, and it shows. The philosophy of science is to understand what makes a good hypothesis. What kind of questions are good questions to ask? What does answering them even tell us? What is a scientific question, and what is an unscientific one? In this book, David tells us why asking good questions and seeking good explanations are not just central to science, but to the enlightenment way of thinking in general. His central contribution, his new ideas, is that good explanations have 'reach' and are 'hard to vary'. I think these two features of explanatory power are more precise and complete than prior ones such as 'falsifiability' or parsimony. This little bit, although it could have been conveyed on its own in a little pamphlet, is so valuable that this book is a must-read for the Science of Philosophy and a 5-star book just for having it. The other great moment in this book is the chapter on a fungible multiverse. That, too, could have made a great little book on its own. From there, David goes on to discuss the implications of good explanations, and how the 'good explanations' metaphor can describe other forms of information, such as DNA in people. He also puts forth the idea that rules of explanation, on their own, do not arrive us at progress. He talks about how a consistent earnest drive to prove oneself wrong and come up with an even better explanation is what leads us on. We should assume that progress may be infinite, and that our present explanations are therefore infinitely wrong. We should always look for improvement in every explanation, although that will become harder and harder to do. The best explanations will have been improved so much that they have near infinite reach. That is the goal. As a writer, I find David to be too clinical, humorless, and dry. It is like listening to Data from Star Trek teach you science. If you listen to the audio book read by someone who sounds like Data from Star Trek, that sensation is very strong. At the same time, we can trust Data to always tell us the best answer he knows, and be upfront about what can be known and what cannot be known and what we know now. David does this too. I learned a lot from this book, but it was hard reading. His writing is very clear and does not use excessively difficult words, but he does seem to wander far and wide and sounds too much like wikipedia. I also didn't quite catch on the spirit of his 'infinity' theme that was supposed to be inspiring. It's fun, but I am not sure I am inspired by it. I never appreciate when expert authors start trying to teach you subjects they aren't expert on, especially when they aren't really necessary to the core idea. David wanders off his own turf a lot.

In a day and age when fear appears to be a primary commodity our politicians, media and economists try to sell us, we forget the progress we have made in the last few centuries. In the sixteenth century, Galileo demonstrated that it was possible for everything on earth to be moving through space at breakneck speed while appearing to us to be at rest. In the seventeenth century Newton put forth theories of planetary motion and with Leibniz invented calculus. In the 18th century, the foundations of modern chemistry and geology were established. In the nineteenth century, the telegraph was invented marking the first time the message could outdistance the messenger; Darwin put forth his theory of evolution establishing modern biology; the world of microbes was unlocked (with all the advances in medicine that event enabled); electricity turned night into day in an unprecedented way. The twentieth century, well . . . it would take volumes to list the advances in the twentieth century most of which were not and possibly could not have been predicted at the beginning of the century because, as this book often points out, we cannot predict innovation. David Deutsch reminds us of these indisputable facts, and creates a vision of our future that is both optimistic and realistic. It is optimistic in the sense that our progress is infinite. It is realistic because he recognizes that we will always have problems, and, indeed, often (but not always) these problems will be a consequence of our solutions to older problems. There is only one way of thinking that is capable of making such progress and this is the way of seeking good explanations though creativity and criticism. The better an explanation, the more extensive is its range and the more difficult it is to construct an better, alternative explanation. Parochial theories (theories that may apply rules of thumb to local situations, but then often claim universality) always resist explanatory knowledge. Parochial knowledge seeks to be justified by one external authority or another. It has taken the form of a parent saying, "Because I said so" or a church leader saying, "Because God says so" in order to justify one belief or another. Cultural memes often provide the same sort of parochial explanations that resist knowledge that seeks good explanations. Good explanations are not limited to the sciences, and they are important because they have infinite reach. Deutsch describes this infinite reach and contrasts it with parochial theories in many ways throughout the book. One example -which he does not use- might be a brief contrast between the physics of Aristotle and Galileo. Aristotle's physics was based on rest. It was based on rest because he thought that the earth rested at the center of the cosmos. Objects fell (or were elevated) because of their weight (in Latin the word for weight is gravitas). The heavier the object was, the closer it was to the center of the cosmos. The lighter it was, the further away from the center its natural place was. There is more to Aristotle than this, but the point is that Aristotle's theory was parochial. It pertained only to the earth and it did not have infinite reach. Indeed, according to Aristotle, the celestial bodies were so light (actually they had no weight) that they were not made of the same material as that on the earth. As a consequence, celestial bodies were not subject to the same physical laws as bodies on earth. Galileo explained it differently. Following Copernicus, Galileo did not think the earth was the center. His physical theory was based on motion not rest. Accordingly, his theory applied to the planets and stars as well as the earth. Galileo was at the beginning of infinity. His speculations launched us on a path that could not have been predicted. Over the years his theory was subjected to a variety of criticisms and progress was made that exceeded even his wildest imagination. Good explanations, like Galileo's, always place us at the beginning of infinity, and The Beginning of Infinity is the title and theme of this remarkable book. Deutsch spends much valuable time discussing obstacles to knowledge based on good explanations such as bad philosophy, justifications based on authority, memes that impede good explanations, political systems that close debate, etc. In each case, he gives hope for the human enterprise so long as we have the will to stand at the beginning of infinity.

David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity is an intellectually aggressive and often exhilarating book. Few works are as effective at dissolving thought-stopping habits: appeals to authority, lazy relativism, narrative comfort, and the quiet assumption that some problems are simply “beyond us.” In that sense, the book functions superbly as an intellectual solvent. But solvents dissolve indiscriminately. And at its limits, this book begins to dissolve constraints that should not be dissolved. Deutsch’s central claim that progress arises from the relentless pursuit of good explanations works extremely well as a methodological discipline. It sharpens one’s intolerance for bad explanations and reinforces the role of criticism over justification. Where the book falters is when this method quietly hardens into an ontology. A recurring weakness is the neglect of cognitive closure. Humans do not explore the full space of possible explanations; we operate within a severely constrained, evolution-shaped, and bias-laden subset of it. Our cognition is optimized for survival and action under resource limits, not for unrestricted truth-seeking. Progress can occur, but there is no guarantee that all problems are even representable to us, let alone solvable. By assuming away these structural limits, Deutsch replaces old metaphysical optimism with a new Enlightenment faith: not in God, but in inevitable intelligibility. This faith becomes explicit in the book’s treatment of creativity. Deutsch frames creativity as something that must have evolved for the faithful replication of complex memes. This is an unnecessary and teleological move. A more parsimonious account is that creativity is a form of deviation—a noisy byproduct of flexible cognition. Most deviations are useless or harmful; a few happen to be valuable in hindsight. To retrofit creativity into a purpose-driven evolutionary function is to smuggle teleology back into a framework that otherwise claims to reject it. The same pattern appears elsewhere. The claim that universality can arise only in digital systems mistakes an implementation constraint for a metaphysical truth. Discretization reduces copying and error-correction costs; it does not define the essence of universality. Likewise, Deutsch’s dismissal of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics underestimates its role as a coherent operational framework. Here, epistemic humility is mistaken for intellectual surrender. The insistence that quantum reality must be fully intelligible to us begins to resemble belief rather than inference. The chapters on aesthetics and culture are the weakest. Beauty is declared objective because of convergent human preferences, yet convergent preferences are exactly what one expects from shared cognitive biases: mere exposure effects, processing fluency, and evolved perceptual heuristics. This is not objectivity; it is shared subjectivity. The sharp division between “rational” and “anti-rational” memes functions less as an analytical distinction than as a moral sorting mechanism—one that conveniently immunizes the author’s own explanatory framework from criticism. To Deutsch’s credit, his hostility toward supernatural explanations and comforting narratives is genuine and often clarifying. But by the end of the book, this hostility gives way to a new dogma: that there is only one viable way of thinking, one trajectory for civilization, and one correct stance toward infinity. What begins as a critique of bad explanations risks becoming one itself. The Beginning of Infinity is best read not as a worldview to adopt, but as a tool to use—and to turn against itself when necessary. Read it to strengthen your resistance to intellectual complacency. But apply the same critical pressure to Deutsch’s own optimism, especially where it collapses value conflicts, cognitive limits, and engineering constraints into a single narrative of unbounded progress. A powerful book, provocative and often brilliant—yet most valuable when read carefully, critically, and without surrender.

As a scientist and a lifelong bibliophile, I have never encountered a book quite so profound. A few books manage to be more gripping (such as Pinker's best works), but Deutsch is pursuing some of the most important and fundamental ideas in science, philosophy, and beyond. Such books tend to be dry and unconvincing. By and large Deutsch is clear and highly convincing. The central idea of the book -- that all progress arises from increasingly less bad explanations that are never complete -- is powerfully presented and argued. There are perhaps a few straw men presented (notably regarding the "Spaceship Earth" concept), but these are minor lapses in a profound work. The idea of how fungibility helps one better understand quantum mechanics is new to this Ph.D. physicist, yet it seems absolutely sound. The book would have been worth reading for that wonderful idea alone. The "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics that the author modestly admits is accepted only by a small minority of physicists does have the major virtue of simply taking the equations of quantum mechanics at face value. The central idea of the book -- the crucial role of good explanations -- is applied to a wide variety of situations. In some of these, the results are equally convincing. For example, the analysis of the problems of the Turing test for artificial intelligence is spot on, and illustrate perhaps more neatly than any other way just why this is not the right approach to evaluating AI. In a few cases, the author does drive into a ditch. His arguments for why the "first past the post" electoral system of his native Britain is far superior to the apportionment system of say Germany is essentially hand waving nonsense, and runs also into the awkward fact that the latter country has, over the last 75 years, easily outperformed the former economically (as have numerous other countries with some sort of apportionment systems). However even here, the author is at least provocative and entertaining. The world would be well served if this book were mandatory reading for graduate students in physics and philosophy alike. The general public should also gain more from this book than any other they (or I) am likely to encounter. Well done David Deutsch! Patrick T. Newell Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

If this book were as difficult to understand as some of the comments on it are, it would not be one I'd want to read! I'm no scientist but I wanted to give it a try because I'd heard David Deutsch speaking and found him very easy to follow and absolutely fascinating, and I wanted more. Having read the book three times (and the bit about the Infinity Hotel four times to figure out what happened to the puppy!) and finding that I am getting more out of it with each reading, I can understand that it may be controversial in some respects, but I don't understand why it is attracting such intense and bizarre hostility. What am I missing? For me, the writing is crystal clear, charming and riveting, like the author himself when you hear him speak -- it's a sheer delight to read. It made me laugh out loud several times -- I LOVE that the author's sense of humor comes through even in what is a very deep, important book. And it even moved me to tears. The subject matter is super wide-ranging, including stuff about physics and mathematics (no formulas, thankfully), beauty (yes, really!), voting systems (why proportional voting systems are fundamentally unfair despite the best intentions of those proposing them), environmentalism (why we have it all wrong!), intriguing stuff about culture, history, philosophy, etc., etc. David Deutsch is truly a polymath. But what I personally find so enthralling is the way reading this book is challenging me and changing the way I think. I love the way all the apparently disparate issues are united in a single, coherent worldview having implications far beyond just what David Deutsch discusses in this book. As best I can tell, the author's worldview is vibrantly positive, optimistic (not to be confused with unrealistic), and rational (in the sense of being in favor of progress, solving problems and ending misery and suffering) -- a fundamentally humane worldview -- a beautiful, life-affirming, shining-beacon-of-light sort of worldview. For me, it has the ring of truth. Evidently for others, it is the work of the devil. But for anyone who loves ideas and thinking about things, The Beginning of Infinity is worth reading whether or not you agree with the author's ideas.

Lo compré porque aparentemente Mark Zuckenberg lo recomendaba. Al escuchar eso me pareció una tonteria comprarlo, pero espero valga la pena (sólo llevo 60 páginas). La razón por que me animé a comprarlo es por el autor, el es físico como yo. Al leer eso, me pareció importante darle una oportunidad. Por el lado malo, me molesta un poco la postura del autor, ya que en ratos parece un poco pedante corrigiendo a figuras como Thomas Alva Edison y Richard Dawkins, argumentando que la postura de ellos es "incorrecta" respecto a lo que él cree. Aún no lo acabo de leer, así que no se si lo volvería a comprar :P

I loved this book, but this didn't surprise me, as I found the author's previous book, The Fabric of Reality, equally entertaining and thought provoking. I am not an expert in quantum mechanics or quantum computing. The little I knew about the topic always gave me an unease regarding the inherently probabilistic features of them. Deutsch provides a clear and deterministic explanation to quantum phenomena, which to me sounds quite intuitive despite the claims in several other books to the highly counterintuitive nature of quantum mechanics. However, in the book this interpretation is of secondary importance to the all encompassing theory of knowledge as the main driving force in the evolution of the universe. I completely agree with the author on the importance of good explanations and that good conjectures precede 'conclusions drawn from experiments'. Read this book even if you don't agree with the many worlds interpretation.

Capa simples, folhas simples. Nos EUA deve custar uns 5 dolls.

This book has no commonplaces. Every line is like discovering something: you can disagree with the author but not ignore what he says.

Book was in good shape and I am loving it