Current state

“Physics,” Bohr wrote, “is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but as the development of methods for ordering and surveying human experience.”

If all we ask of physics is that it describe human experience, then the paradox goes away.

Of all the weird things about quantum mechanics, this limitation on the knowable is the weirdest, and the most profound. It suggests that scientists’ most accurate model of the world can’t describe whatever goings-on underlie our observations — or even be specific about what “observations” actually are, and what their effects are.