Nullius in Verba

The beginning of infinity is not an easy book to read. To some level, Deutsch could not but write for other physicists. He has a certain peer group that he respects and who respect him, and he has to meet them at their level. So, he has to write for other physicists and philosophers.

Part of what I wanted to do was I wanted to understand these principles in the book; verify, confirm them for myself or not. I love the old motto from the Royal Society, which says "Nelius in Verba," which says take no one's word for it. In other words, figure it out yourself; that's the only way you know anything.

So I wanted to confirm the principles in The Beginning of Infinity or to refute them for myself. To do that, I was reading and rereading the book. I started reading some blog posts on it, and then eventually I found a guy online named Brett Hall. I started listening to his podcast, which was called "Talk Cast," but spelled "Tok Cast" for the Theory of Knowledge Cast.

And Brett, I'm going to let you introduce yourself, but I would say that listening to your podcast has helped me clarify a lot of these principles. I would love to have you talk with me so that we can both understand the depth, the clarity, the reach, the importance of these ideas. Then hopefully someone else out there can become smarter by it.

Hello Naval, and it's great to be here! You've raised so many interesting aspects of The Beginning of Infinity, which has become a real passion of mine. Like many people who enter into science, when I was at school, I thought, "Well, I want to be an astronomer." When I entered university, I wanted to go and do a physics degree, do an astronomy degree, and then become a professional astronomer.

It wasn't until one day I was in a bookstore and I found this book called The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch. I started reading it, and the first chapter described what I was trying to achieve in my life. It was putting into words what I felt my university studies and my general outlook on life was about.

Because David Deutsch says there, the ancient philosophers thought that they could get an understanding of the entire world. Then later on, as time passed, modern science made it seem as though this was an impossible project. There's no way you could understand everything about reality; there's too much to know. How could you possibly know everything?