beforeword · English transcription of the sent letter
Intended recipient: David Deutsch
Author: Kirill Shebetov · beforeword
Sent to: david.deutsch@physics.ox.ac.uk
Sending date in the supplied materials: The header shows only “Friday”; the calendar date is not shown.
The sending timezone is not supplied.
Status: shown in the Sent folder; no reply published.
The published materials do not establish receipt or reading by the recipient.
Record: https://beforeword.xyz/letters/researchers/deutsch/en/#record
Record data: https://beforeword.xyz/letters/researchers/deutsch/record.json
Russian translation: https://beforeword.xyz/letters/researchers/deutsch/#letter
Transcribed from author-supplied screenshots. Screen line wraps are joined and overlaps included once; wording and punctuation are retained.
beforeword’s context and links to discussed publications are separate on the letter page.

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Subject: Changing the words, changing the explanation

Dear Professor Deutsch,

In the glossary to The Beginning of Infinity, you characterize a good explanation by how hard it is to vary “while still accounting for what it purports to account for”.

Please indicate, using one short example, what distinguishes a change of wording from a change of explanation when applying your criterion, and the grounds for that distinction.

beforeword proposes keeping three elements separately inspectable: the written formulations, the explanatory content attributed to them, and the grounds offered for that attribution.

The terms “explanation” and “knowledge” remain part of the writing under examination. The criterion’s own wording and interpretation, descriptions of criticism and experiment, human self-descriptions, and this letter receive the same treatment.

The reading procedure and worked examples:
https://beforeword.xyz/model/en/

Kirill Shebetov
beforeword

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