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1-Page Summary of The Beginning of Infinity

Overview

A good explanation can make all the puzzle pieces fall into place, but that’s not all it can do. Explanations are at the base of human knowledge and progress. They make this world!

In this book, the author takes us on a journey through science and culture to explain how knowledge is formed and improved. This process underpins potentially boundless progress—also known as the beginning of infinity.

You’ll learn why your senses can’t tell you if the sun will rise tomorrow, what a good joke has in common with a gene, and how memes decide a culture.

Big Idea #1: Knowledge is not only derived from experience, but also from theories.

No human has ever stepped on the surface of a star. Scientists, however, know a lot about what’s happening inside stars because they have experience with them.

Empiricism is a theory that claims we derive all our knowledge from sensory experience. However, this is wrong because it doesn’t take into account the fact that we’re not passive recipients of knowledge; rather, we have to create and modify our own knowledge based on individual observations. For instance, even though you’ve seen the sun rise repeatedly before, your assumption about its rising tomorrow isn’t based solely on these observations. If you did base it on those observations alone (e.g., if there was a cloudy day), then you’d assume the sun wasn’t rising because you couldn’t see it!

Appearances can be deceiving. For example, the Earth looks like it’s standing still even though it is really rotating.

Although experience is important in science, it’s not the source from which knowledge is derived. If it was, our understanding of astronomy would be limited to what we learn about the stars by looking at them.

Instead of what we see, our knowledge comes from theory and conjecture. For instance, scientists have theorized that stars are powered by energy sources equivalent to billions of power plants. We can’t see this for ourselves, but it is something we know nonetheless.

Scientific theories are developed from guesses and speculations, which can be tested by gathering observations and conducting experiments.

Big Idea #2: Genes and ideas both spread by replicating themselves.

Human brains and DNA molecules have many functions, but one of the most fundamental is storing 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? At a fundamental level, evolution is based on the idea of a replicator – meaning anything that contributes to itself being copied.

Genes are responsible for the survival of organisms. They help them stay healthy and they pass on copies to their offspring. Ideas can be replicators too, as they help us survive in a world that is constantly changing and growing more complex by the day thanks to social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc.