David Deutsch Quotes

9 Sourced Quotes

Our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense.

David Deutsch
If you reject the infinite, you are stuck with the finite, and the finite is parochial... the best explanation of anything eventually involves universality, and therefore infinity. The reach of explanations cannot be limited by fiat.

David Deutsch
The overwhelming majority of theories are rejected because they contain bad explanations, not because they fail experimental tests.

David Deutsch
Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow.

David Deutsch
Like every other destruction of optimism, whether in a whole civilisation or in a single individual, these must have been unspeakable catastrophes for those who had dared to expect progress. But we should feel more than sympathy for those people. We should take it personally. For if any of those earlier experiments in optimism had succeeded, our species would be exploring the stars by now, and you and I would be immortal.

David Deutsch
Base metals can be transmuted into gold by stars, and by intelligent beings who understand the processes that power stars, but by nothing else in the universe.

David Deutsch
The truly privileged theories are not the ones referring to any particular scale of size or complexity, nor the ones situated at any particular level of the predictive hierarchy, but the ones that contain the deepest explanations.

David Deutsch
Discovering a new explanation is inherently an act of creativity.

David Deutsch
Anything that seems incomprehensible is regarded by science merely as evidence that there is something we have not yet understood, be it a conjuring trick, advanced technology or a new law of physics.

David Deutsch