Book Review: The beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch

Human beings have been staring at the sky since time immemorable. Our ancestors felt everything went around them. So, they said the Sun rises and sets. Few centuries ago, that misconception was corrected with a better explanation. Though we can’t confirm with our bare eye experience how the Solar system looks, students in school now are taught about solar system with a better explanation than that existed many centuries ago.

 

Newton’s laws of motion and his explanation about gravity have a universal appeal. All that is fine for those dwelling on the Earth. But for those traveling in a space shuttle or studying astrophysics, they begin to lose accuracy. If someone is traveling across a Galaxy and is nearby a Blackhole, Newton’s explanation becomes hopelessly wrong. Thanks to Einstein who offered a better explanation about time-space warping.

 

Science advances with error correction and better explanations. Nature packs the evolutionary progress in the form of genes and leads to biological evolution. But human beings have a special gift – creativity. Human beings are not limited by biological evolution and that is why we are so advanced than all other living beings on the Earth. Our ability to learn new things, communicate it with others, correct misconceptions with better explanations puts us on the path of progress. We move from infinite ignorance to infinite possibilities.

 

Naval Ravikant had mentioned about this book in his podcast. This book took few weeks of intensive reading for me. I had to re-read many of the paragraphs to digest the information and close my eyes to ponder about it. Not an easy book to read but no knowledge comes without toil. Physics, Astronomy, Microbiology, Evolution and Philosophy are all merged in this book and makes the reader understand the evolution of human beings and the advancement of science are interwoven.

 

Author of this book David Deutsch was born in Israel, now lives and works at Oxford. His research in Quantum Physics has been highly influential and highly acclaimed.