The Beginning of Infinity summary

Human brains and DNA molecules have many functions, but one of the most fundamental is the storage of information. And what’s more, the types of information they store – ideas and genes respectively – tend to spread by replicating themselves.

What does this mean?

People like telling each other amusing stories – some of them true, some invented. Some of these stories contain ideas that are interesting enough to be retold to other people, some of whom retell them, in turn, over the course of generations. This process of creating and receiving ideas is fundamental to cultures.

In fact, cultures consist of long-lived ideas that spread from person to person. These are called memes, and they cause their holders to behave alike in certain ways. Examples of groups of memes that define behavior are the shared values of a nation, the ability to communicate in a certain language and the appreciation of a given musical style.

If you were reading these blinks instead of listening to them, think about the alphabet that permits you to derive meaning from what you see on your screen. What can this writing system teach us about the creation of knowledge?

Systems of knowledge, like writing systems, develop incrementally.

In 1951, the economist Kenneth Arrow did something radical.

He proved a theorem that appears to deny the very possibility of representative democracy. His argument was that joint decision-making, the process of multiple people agreeing on something for a group, is necessarily irrational.

In 1789, the economist Thomas Malthus argued that humanity would stop progressing once and for all in the nineteenth century.

He calculated that the exponentially growing population at the time was reaching the limit of the planet’s capacity to produce food.

The famous physicist Stephen Hawking once said that humans are “just a chemical scum on the surface of a typical planet that’s in orbit round a typical star on the outskirts of a typical galaxy.” In short, there is nothing significant about humans on a cosmic scale.

But what about the way humans transformed the Earth by means of their knowledge?

A “doppelgänger” or “double” of a person is a frequent theme in science fiction. Star Trek once featured a doppelgänger story where the starship’s teleportation device malfunctioned, creating a copy of the whole crew.

But in quantum theory – the modern physical explanation of particles on an atomic and subatomic scale – the idea of a doppelgänger is not fictitious, but real.

In 1965, the prominent physicist Richard Feynman wrote: “We are lucky to live in an age in which we are still making discoveries. It is like the discovery of America – you only discover it once.” But Feynman made a common reasoning error: He forgot that the very concept of a “law” of nature is not carved in stone.

In other words, scientific findings aren’t ultimate truths.

The key message in this book:

Human progress depends on the creation of knowledge. We derive our knowledge not only from sensory experiences, but from the quest for critical thought, conjecture and good explanations. There is no necessary limitation to human progress and the creation of knowledge. This boundlessness of the creation of knowledge is the “beginning of infinity” that makes humans significant in the cosmic scheme of things.