Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit Subscriptions.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

You can register for a free account to have four complimentary articles per month. We will occasionally email you a newsletter, from which you can unsubscribe at any time. We do not sell personal data or otherwise disclose personal information to other organisations.

Books

The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch

Alistair MacFarlane finds himself in the foothills of infinity.

Everyone who is interested in the relationships between science and philosophy should read this book. Its central claim is that all progress, theoretical and practical, scientific, philosophical and cultural, results from a single human activity: a quest for good explanations.

In making such a comprehensive claim, the book necessarily covers a huge range of topics. There are three main threads. First is a coherent and comprehensive exposition of Karl Popper’s philosophy, that knowledge (ie, successful explanation) arises only from a process of conjecture and refutation.

…