The Beginning of Infinity - By David Deutsch Page 0,16

the beginning of the end of such static, parochial systems of ideas. It initiated the present era in human history, unique for its sustained, rapid creation of knowledge with ever-increasing reach. Many have wondered how long this can continue. Is it inherently bounded? Or is this the beginning of infinity – that is to say, do these methods have unlimited potential to create further knowledge? It may seem paradoxical to claim anything so grand (even if only potentially) on behalf of a project that has swept away all the ancient myths that used to assign human beings a special significance in the scheme of things. For if the power of the human faculties of reason and creativity, which have driven the Enlightenment, were indeed unlimited, would humans not have just such a significance?

And yet, as I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, gold can be created only by stars and by intelligent beings. If you find a nugget of gold anywhere in the universe, you can be sure that in its history there was either a supernova or an intelligent being with an explanation. And if you find an explanation anywhere in the universe, you know that there must have been an intelligent being. A supernova alone would not suffice.

But – so what? Gold is important to us, but in the cosmic scheme of things it has little significance. Explanations are important to us: we need them to survive. But is there anything significant, in the cosmic scheme of things, about explanation, that apparently puny physical process that happens inside brains? I shall address that question in Chapter 3, after some reflections about appearance and reality.

TERMINOLOGY

Explanation Statement about what is there, what it does, and how and why.

Reach The ability of some explanations to solve problems beyond those that they were created to solve.

Creativity The capacity to create new explanations.

Empiricism The misconception that we ‘derive’ all our knowledge from sensory experience.

Theory-laden There is no such thing as ‘raw’ experience. All our experience of the world comes through layers of conscious and unconscious interpretation.

Inductivism The misconception that scientific theories are obtained by generalizing or extrapolating repeated experiences, and that the more often a theory is confirmed by observation the more likely it becomes.

Induction The non-existent process of ‘obtaining’ referred to above.

Principle of induction The idea that ‘the future will resemble the past’, combined with the misconception that this asserts anything about the future.

Realism The idea that the physical world exists in reality, and that knowledge of it can exist too.

Relativism The misconception that statements cannot be objectively true or false, but can be judged only relative to some cultural or other arbitrary standard.

Instrumentalism The misconception that science cannot describe reality, only predict outcomes of observations.

Justificationism The misconception that knowledge can be genuine or reliable only if it is justified by some source or criterion.

Fallibilism The recognition that there are no authoritative sources of knowledge, nor any reliable means of justifying knowledge as true or probable.

Background knowledge Familiar and currently uncontroversial knowledge.

Rule of thumb ‘Purely predictive theory’ (theory whose explanatory content is all background knowledge).

Problem A problem exists when a conflict between ideas is experienced.

Good/bad explanation An explanation that is hard/easy to vary while still accounting for what it purports to account for.

The Enlightenment (The beginning of) a way of pursuing knowledge with a tradition of criticism and seeking good explanations instead of reliance on authority.

Mini-enlightenment A short-lived tradition of criticism.

Rational Attempting to solve problems by seeking good explanations; actively pursuing error-correction by creating criticisms of both existing ideas and new proposals.

The West The political, moral, economic and intellectual culture that has been growing around the Enlightenment values of science, reason and freedom.

MEANINGS OF ‘THE BEGINNING OF INFINITY’ ENCOUNTERED IN THIS CHAPTER

– The fact that some explanations have reach.

– The universal reach of some explanations.

– The Enlightenment.

– A tradition of criticism.

– Conjecture: the origin of all knowledge.

– The discovery of how to make progress: science, the scientific revolution, seeking good explanations, and the political principles of the West.

– Fallibilism.

SUMMARY

Appearances are deceptive. Yet we have a great deal of knowledge about the vast and unfamiliar reality that causes them, and of the elegant, universal laws that govern that reality. This knowledge consists of explanations: assertions about what is out there beyond the appearances, and how it behaves. For most of the history of our species, we had almost no success in creating such knowledge. Where does it come from? Empiricism said that we derive it from sensory experience. This is false. The