If my life as a physicist has taught me anything at all, it’s that Plato was right: modern physics has made abundantly clear that the ultimate nature of reality isn’t what it seems. But if reality isn’t what we thought it was, then what is it? What’s the relation between the internal reality of our mind and the external reality? What’s everything ultimately made of? How does it all work? Why? Is there a meaning to it all, and if so, what? As Douglas Adams put it in his sci-fi spoof The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “What’s the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and
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