Our Puzzling Universe: From a Promising Beginning to Forbidden Knowledge

Abstract

What is the world made of? From Antiquity to our day, philosophers and scientists have battled over this question, deploying vivid inventions of the imagination and, more recently, ominous speculations about the darkness of matter, energy, and black holes. Among these various thinkers, one primary debate has been whether the fundamental processes of physical nature are intuitively comprehensible or are inherently unimaginable.