Parochialism

The ability to create and use explanatory knowledge gives people a power to transform nature which is ultimately not limited by parochial factors, as all other adaptations are, but only by universal laws. This is the cosmic significance of explanatory knowledge – and hence of people, whom I shall henceforward define as entities that can create explanatory knowledge. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

Again we were too parochial, and were led to the false conclusion that knowledge-bearing entities can be physically identical to non-knowledge-bearing ones; and this in turn cast doubt on the fundamental status of knowledge. But now we have come almost full circle. We can see that the ancient idea that living matter has special physical properties was almost true: it is not living matter but knowledge-bearing matter that is physically special. Within one universe it looks irregular; across universes it has a regular structure, like a crystal in the multiverse. — David Deutsch, The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes — and Its Implications

From the least parochial perspectives available to us, people are the most significant entities in the cosmic scheme of things. They are not ‘supported’ by their environments, but support themselves by creating knowledge. Once they have suitable knowledge (essentially, the knowledge of the Enlightenment), they are capable of sparking unlimited further progress. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

Observations are theory-laden. Given an experimental oddity, we have no way of predicting whether it will eventually be explained merely by correcting a minor parochial assumption or by revolutionizing entire sciences. We can know that only after we have seen it in the light of a new explanation. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

Parochialism: Mistaking appearance for reality, or local regularities for universal laws. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

Person: An entity that can create explanatory knowledge. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

Both the Principle of Mediocrity and the Spaceship Earth idea are, contrary to their motivations, irreparably parochial and mistaken. From the least parochial perspectives available to us, people are the most significant entities in the cosmic scheme of things. They are not ‘supported’ by their environments, but support themselves by creating knowledge. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

More generally, what they lacked was a certain combination of abstract knowledge and knowledge embodied in technological artefacts, namely sufficient wealth. Let me define that in a non-parochial way as the repertoire of physical transformations that they would be capable of causing. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

In early prehistory, populations were tiny, knowledge was parochial, and history-making ideas were millennia apart. In those days, a meme spread only when one person observed another enacting it nearby, and (because of the staticity of cultures) rarely even then. So at that time human behaviour resembled that of other animals, and much of what happened was indeed explained by biogeography. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

But developments such as abstract language, explanation, wealth above the level of subsistence, and long-range trade all had the potential to erode parochialism and hence to give causal power to ideas. — David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World