David Deutsch

Information about David Deutsch

David Deutsch (born 1953 in Haifa, Israel) is a physicist at the University of Oxford. He is a non-stipendiary Visiting Professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation, Clarendon Laboratory. He pioneered the field of quantum computers, and is a proponent of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

The Fabric of Reality

Main article: The Fabric of Reality

In his 1997 book The Fabric of Reality, this interpretation, or what he calls the multiverse hypothesis, is one strand of a four-strand theory of everything. The four strands are:

Hugh Everett's many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, "the first and most important of the four strands".
Karl Popper's epistemology, especially its anti-inductivism and its requiring a realist (non-instrumental) interpretation of scientific theories, and its emphasis on taking seriously those bold conjectures that resist falsification.
Alan Turing's theory of computation especially as developed in Deutsch's "Turing principle", Turing's universal Turing machine being replaced by Deutsch's universal quantum computer. ("The theory of computation is now the quantum theory of computation.")
Richard Dawkins's refinement of Darwinian evolutionary theory and the modern evolutionary synthesis, especially the ideas of replicator and meme as they integrate with Popperian problem-solving (the epistemological strand).

His theory of everything is (weakly) emergentist rather than reductive. It aims not at the reduction of everything to particle physics, but rather mutual support among multiverse, computational, epistemological, and evolutionary principles.

Views

Politically, Deutsch is known to be sympathetic to libertarianism, and was a founder, along with Sarah Fitz-Claridge and Kolya Wolf, of the Taking Children Seriously movement. He is also an atheist.

Awards

He was awarded the Dirac Prize of the Institute of Physics in 1998^[1], and the Edge of Computation Science Prize in 2005^[2]. The Fabric of Reality was shortlisted for the Rhone-Poulenc science book award in 1998^[3].

Popular publications

The Fabric of Reality, ISBN 0-14-014690-3

Forthcoming publications

Deutsch is currently working on a book entitled The Beginning of Infinity, which he hopes to finish in early 2008.

Notes

1. ^ Dirac prize award
2. ^ Edge of Computation Science Prize
3. ^ Rhone-Poulenc 1998 shortlist

External links

Deutsch's official homepage at Qubit.Org
David Deutsch, extracts from Chapter 14: "The Ends of the Universe" of The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes—and Its Implications (London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1997), ISBN 0713990619; with additional comments by Frank J. Tipler. Also available here and here.
"It's much bigger than it looks" -- Edge
New Scientist interview
Video of David Deutsch's talk on the study of physics as central to the survival of the human species. Presented July 2005 at the TED Conference in Oxford, UK. Duration: 19:45
Wired News: Interview

19th century - 20th century - 21st century
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1950 1951 1952 - 1953 - 1954 1955 1956

Year 1953 (MCMLIII
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Haifa (Hebrew: חֵיפָה‎ Ḥefa; Arabic: حَيْفَا
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Anthem
Hatikvah
The Hope

Capital
(and largest city) Jerusalem

Official languages Hebrew, Arabic
Demonym Israeli
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physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena spanning all length scales: from the sub-atomic particles from which all ordinary matter is made (particle physics) to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole
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University of Oxford (usually abbreviated as Oxon. for post-nominals, from "Oxoniensis"), located in the city of Oxford, England, is the oldest university in the English-speaking world.
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The Clarendon Laboratory in Oxford, England (not to be confused with the Clarendon Building, also in Oxford) is part of the Physics Department at Oxford University. It houses the atomic and laser physics and condensed matter physics groups within the Department, although four other
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quantum computer is any device for computation that makes direct use of distinctively quantum mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform operations on data.
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The many-worlds interpretation or MWI (also known as relative state formulation, theory of the universal wavefunction, many-universes interpretation, Oxford interpretation or many worlds), is an interpretation of quantum mechanics.
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quantum mechanics is the study of the relationship between energy quanta (radiation) and matter, in particular that between valence shell electrons and photons. Quantum mechanics is a fundamental branch of physics with wide applications in both experimental and theoretical physics.
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The Fabric of Reality is a 1997 book by physicist David Deutsch, which expands upon his views of quantum mechanics and its meanings for understanding reality. This interpretation, or what he calls the multiverse
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A multiverse (or meta-universe) is the hypothetical set of multiple possible universes (including our universe) that together comprise all of physical reality. The different universes within a multiverse are sometimes called parallel universes.
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Hugh Everett III
Born November 11 1930
Maryland, U.S.
Died July 19 1982 (aged 53)
McLean, Virginia, U.S.
Residence U.S.
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Karl Raimund Popper, CH, FRS, FBA (July 28, 1902 – September 17, 1994) was an Austrian and British^[1] philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics.
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Epistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature, methods, limitations, and validity of knowledge and belief.

The term "epistemology" is based on the Greek words "
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Scientific realism is, at the most general level, the view that the world described by science is the real world, as it is, independent of what we might take it to be. Within philosophy of science, it is often framed as an answer to the question "what does the success of science
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Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, logician, and cryptographer.

Turing is often considered to be the father of modern computer science.
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Turing machines are extremely basic abstract symbol-manipulating devices which, despite their simplicity, can be adapted to simulate the logic of any computer that could possibly be constructed. They were described in 1936 by Alan Turing.
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Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins lecturing on his book, The God Delusion.
Born March 26 1941
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Darwinism is a term for the underlying theory in those ideas of Charles Darwin concerning evolution and natural selection. Discussions of Darwinism usually focus on evolution by natural selection
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The modern evolutionary synthesis refers to a set of ideas from several biological specialities that were brought together to form a unified theory of evolution accepted by the great majority of working biologists.
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emergence refers to the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Like intelligence in the field of AI, or agents in distributed artificial intelligence, emergence is central to the theory of complex systems and yet very
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reductionism is a theory that asserts that the nature of complex things is reduced to the nature of sums of simpler or more fundamental things. This can be said of objects, phenomena, explanations, theories, and meanings.
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Libertarianism

Schools of thought
Agorism
Anarcho-capitalism
Geolibertarianism
Green libertarianism
Right-libertarianism
Left-libertarianism
Minarchism
Neolibertarianism
Paleolibertarianism
Progressive libertarianism

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Taking Children Seriously, TCS, is a worldwide parenting movement and educational philosophy based upon the idea that it is possible and desirable to raise and educate children without either doing anything to them against their will, or making them do anything
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Atheism

Concepts
ReligionNontheism
AntireligionAntitheism
AgnosticismHumanism
Metaphysical naturalism
Weak and strong atheism
Implicit and explicit atheism

History
History of atheism
EnlightenmentFreethought

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The Dirac Prize is the name of three prominent awards in the field of theoretical physics, computational chemistry, and mathematics, awarded by different organizations.

Dirac Medal of the ICTP

The Dirac Medal of the ICTP
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