Jim Holt

It's all, they're not, they don't seem to be grounded in anything.

And if something is, in principle, unobservable, you may as well say it doesn't exist.

So what is a rock?

I mean, a rock looks like a good, solid, persisting object.

But it's really, our perception of it is...

Energy transitions, changes in the distribution of energy from one state to another.

When that happens, the energy is irradiated, it goes through my retina, goes through my pupil rather, and strikes my retina, and I perceive the rock.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've heard one physicist say that the cosmos is ultimately a concept.

Yeah, yeah.

Maybe at 100 years from now, when string theory is finally worked out, we might have a very different conception of it.

But what it looks is that it's going to be mathematics and structure all the way down.

You're OK with this.

Well, I'm a sort of mathematical romantic.

I love the idea that the essence of reality is not stuff.

Stuff is kind of ugly.

I mean, you want to get rid of stuff.

There's too much stuff in your apartment.

It's gross, viscous, absurd.