Our species has mastered and affected the natural environment more than any other in history yet our understanding of precisely what’s happening to it when we experiment with it—burning this or reshaping that—remains surprisingly shallow. In much the same way as we do not fully understand the physics of glass, we don’t entirely comprehend what’s happening at a molecular level when concrete sets, or what’s happening in the furnace when we turn quartz into metallic silicon. Mysteries abound.
