Does the progress of science show us that we are going inevitably towards a realm where our intuition doesn’t
apply? I think there are a few things to mention here. One is what has been termed the ‘unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics’ – why does mathematics describe the world in the first place? It can be argued that mathematics is ultimately just a product of the mind, which is arguably a manifestation of our brain structure, which, in turn, as a biological entity, must be a product of evolutionary forces that have shaped our cognitive behaviour in terms of responses to the world. But then this wouldn’t explain why we’re able to grasp things like Quantum Mechanics or General Relativity, of which we have no experience at all. I’m not sure whether there is an explanation for the fact that there are things of which we don’t have any immediate experience – QM, something which is completely counterintuitive, weirder than you could possibly think – but which are accounted for by our mathematical constructs. This for me is the biggest puzzle of all – why should mathematics have anything to do with physical reality, and why should physical reality conform to this very abstract product of our minds? I don’t have an answer for this question, but I think it is something that tends to be swept under the carpet, in operational terms.
Robert Trotta in Collapse II