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.