When We Cease to Understand the World

by Benjamín Labatut

And then they went further. None of these limits were theoretical: they were not a failure in the model, an experimental limitation or a technical difficulty. There simply existed no “real world” outside that science was capable of studying. “When we speak of the science of our era,” Heisenberg explained, “we are talking about our relationship with nature, not as objective, detached observers, but as actors in a game between man and the world. Science can no longer confront reality in the same way. The method of analysing, explaining and classifying the world has become conscious of its own limitations: these arise from the fact that its interventions alter the objects it proposes to investigate. The light science shines on the world not only changes our vision of reality, but even the behaviour of its fundamental building blocks.”