The quest to understand quantum mechanics has led to remarkable technological advancements, granting us power and control over the natural world. However, despite these successes, the paradoxes and mysteries surrounding the theory continue to challenge our understanding of reality. This raises the question of whether science, particularly quantum mechanics, provides us with true comprehension of the world or merely equips us with power without deeper understanding, writes John Horgan.

As a science writer, I’ve always felt a little embarrassed by my lack of formal mathematical training. And so three years ago, at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, I set out to learn the math underlying quantum mechanics. My quantum experiment, as I came to call it, has had an unexpected outcome. Instead of enlightening me, it has made me wonder whether we’ll ever really know the world or ourselves.

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Let me back up a minute and ask a basic question: What is science for? One obvious end is power. Science helps us manipulate the world so we can live longer, see further, move faster, crush our enemies. I’ve never really been that interested in applied science. I became a science writer 40 years ago because I wanted to understand.

Ideally, these two ends of science—knowledge and power--complement each other. More knowledge leads to more technology leads to more knowledge leads to more technology and so on. This positive feedback effect fueled the explosive growth of science and technology in the 20^th century.

Quantum mechanics lies at the heart of these revolutionary developments. Quantum mechanics is, in one sense, science’s greatest achievement. Countless experiments have confirmed its predictions, and it has yielded technologies that help us probe the deepest recesses of matter and farthest reaches of the universe.