Hence we have experiments that show that light travels as a wave, and we have experiments that show that light travels as a particle. This strange dual nature of light, where it behaves as a wave when treated as a wave but like a particle when treated as a particle, baffled many of our greatest physicists for many years. Wilson’s point is that both the ‘wave model’ and the ‘particle model’ are our own inventions, the lines that we have drawn on the map. Both models are elegant and useful, but they are not light itself. Light is not affected by our attempts to understand it.
