Art & Creativity Quote by David Deutsch

Deutsch is doing a sly bit of intellectual stagecraft: he makes a claim that sounds wildly speculative (time travel) and immediately files it under business as usual. The provocation isn’t “time travel is possible,” it’s “if it’s possible, it’s not metaphysically scandalous.” That’s a direct shot at the reflex that treats exotic physics as a threat to common sense. He’s reassuring the reader that the universe won’t have to become magical just because a result feels like science fiction.

The phrasing “should not require any fundamental change in world-view” is the tell. Deutsch is arguing for continuity between frontier physics and a particular philosophical posture: realism, explanatory ambition, and a comfort with counterintuitive implications when they’re earned by good theory. “For those who broadly share the world view I am presenting in this book” quietly narrows the audience: if you don’t buy his framework, time travel will look like heresy; if you do, it becomes an engineering question, not a worldview crisis.

Context matters. Deutsch’s work is bound up with the many-worlds interpretation and the idea that quantum theory, taken seriously, already stretches what “one world” means. In that light, time travel isn’t introduced as a narrative gimmick but as a stress test for whether your metaphysics is doing real explanatory work. The subtext: the real leap isn’t the physics; it’s accepting a worldview that can metabolize paradoxes without retreating into hand-waving or bans.