I believe a major obstacle to our understanding of the universe has to do with language. Unlike us, dogs and cats lack any mechanism for precise communication. They rely on a combination of physical behavior, vocalization, urination, and violence in order to communicate. Humans have come to rely mostly on language, in the form of vocalization and coded symbols; and much less on physical behavior, urination, or violence.

Although the precision of our language has improved over time, the structure has remained essentially the same. Like every other species, we have evolved by taking advantage of the tools we have. These tools are used to insure our immediate and long term survival; not to understand quantum mechanics. It’s easy to forget that words are only symbolic representations of reality but possess no reality of their own; not unlike the dollars in your pocket. Language has had a much greater influence on our thought process than our thought process has had on language. Someone who speaks only Spanish, for example, sees the world slightly different than one who speaks only English.

Over the last few hundred years, a more universal language has emerged. It has transformed our understanding of the world and made possible most of the technological innovations we have today. Some will argue that mathematics is the one true, universal language. But this is only true up to a point. Math describes relationships. The quantity on the left must always equal the quantity on the right. That’s why we use an equals sign. This is very useful when you want to know how much weight a bridge will tollerate, but it won’t be able to tell us what the bridge actually is. And that’s our problem. When it comes to describing quantum mechanics or general relativity, we don’t really have a very good language for it.

I used to believe that there were special people, highly credentialed scientists, mathematicians and engineers, who understood the complexities of the universe far better than I did. I believed that if I read enough of their books, and asked enough questions, I would understand it too, and it would make sense. As it turned out, I believed too much.

In his book, The Trouble with Physics, Lee Smolin states, “precious little progress has been made over the last 30 years.” This is very disappointing. What that means is that for as long as I have been alive, nothing truly new has been discovered or proposed. He even went so far as to say that meaningful progress may not be possible without contributions from people “outside the community”. I’m not exactly sure how far outside these people were expected to be, but I don’t think I’m one of them. From his website: “Lee Smolin is happy to correspond with readers who have questions or comments. Please note that he is unable to afford the time to examine or comment on theories sent by anyone without a formal degree in physics.”

The job of science is to describe and predict HOW things work. The job of religion is to explain WHY things work the way they do. And both try to have a role in explaining WHAT things actually are. Unlike religion, there are no designated authority figures in science. However, there are some who do seem to have a monopoly on good ideas. Just like religion, these people have followers.

There’s a limit to what can be learned from other people; and there’s REALLY a limit to what can be learned from dead people. Dead people can neither defend their work nor add to their ideas. Living people, who may or may not have any ideas of their own, do it for them. Dead people don’t come up with new ideas either. Living people do that too. It’s much easier, and far less risky, to build off of an accepted idea than it is to come up with something original. I only mention this because what I am going to show you is a new idea.

This is a story about the universe. It’s not a complete story; and it might not even be right. But it’s better than what we’ve got now. Not that what we’ve got now is wrong. I just think it stops short of a much larger story. A story that allows the quantum nature of reality to make sense. Science, it seems, has fallen on hard times. These days, funding for scientific research is often supplied by biased sources with a vested interest in specific outcomes. When business, political, or religious interests start guiding the hand of scientific inquiry, the credibility of science suffers.

According to Lee Smolin, physics is in a rut. I will not be getting into how it got there or what’s keeping it there. The rut itself has to do with two highly successful schools of thought. General Relativity, which explains the behavior of the very large; and the Standard Model or Quantum Physics which explains the very small. Unfortunately, neither one of these can explain the other. They are incompatible. Physicists and mathematicians have been stringing us along for decades with various theories that attempt to reconcile these two ideas; but it’s just not working.