is just a single universe slice of a much larger quantum multiverse object. Deutsch speculates on the process of human-culture development from a genetic basis through to a memetic emergence. This emergence led to the creation of static societies where innovation occurs, but most of the time at a rate too slow for individuals to notice during their lifetimes. It was only at the point where knowledge of how to purposefully create new knowledge through good explanations was acquired that the beginning of infinity took off during the Enlightenment. His explanation for human creativity is that it evolved as a way to faithfully reproduce existing memes, as this would require creative intelligence to produce a refined rule set that would more faithfully reproduce the existing memes that happened to confer benefit (and all the other memes too). From this increased creative ability, the ability to create new memes emerged and humans thus became universal constructors and technological development accelerated. Deutsch criticizes Jared Diamond's resource luck theories as to why the West came to dominate the other continents outlined in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel. For Deutsch, the sustained creation of knowledge could have arisen anywhere and led to a beginning of infinity; it just happened to arise in Europe first. Deutsch extols the philosophical concept of optimism, where although problems are inevitable, solutions will always exist provided the right knowledge is sought out and acquired. Reception David Albert, a philosophy professor at Columbia University, has described the book in a New York Times review as "brilliant and exhilarating" but presenting, instead of a "tight, grand, cumulative system of ideas," a "great, wide, learned, meandering conversation". He also states that Deutsch does not present "a live scientific hypothesis," but a "mood informed by profound and imaginative reflection on the best and most advanced science we have". Doug Johnstone writes in The Independent that Deutsch's "examination of the multiverse theory of quantum physics is great. But when he tries to apply his ideas to aesthetics, cultural creativity and moral philosophy, he seems on shakier ground and is less commanding as a result". Peter Forbes, also writing in The Independent, has a more positive take on Deutsch's ideas and mode of thinking. The Economist's review says The Beginning of Infinity is "equally bold" as Deutsch's previous book The Fabric of Reality, and "its conclusions are just as profound. Mr Deutsch argues that