Infinity

Without error-correction all information processing, and hence all knowledge-creation, is necessarily bounded. Error-correction is the beginning of infinity. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

The scientific revolution was part of a wider intellectual revolution, the Enlightenment, which also brought progress in other fields, especially moral and political philosophy, and in the institutions of society. Unfortunately, the term ‘the Enlightenment’ is used by historians and philosophers to denote a variety of different trends, some of them violently opposed to each other... But one thing that all conceptions of the Enlightenment agree on is that it was a rebellion, and specifically a rebellion against authority in regard to knowledge. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

The theory reaches out, as it were, from its finite origins inside one brain that has been affected only by scraps of patchy evidence from a small part of one hemisphere of one planet – to infinity. This reach of explanations is another meaning of ‘the beginning of infinity’. It is the ability of some of them to solve problems beyond those that they were created to solve. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

The last room number [in Hilbert's Infinite Hotel Paradox] is not infinity. First of all, there is no last room. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

The statues were all made alike because Easter Island was a static society. It never took that first step in the ascent of man – the beginning of infinity. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

Infinite ignorance is a necessary condition for there to be infinite potential for knowledge. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World