The Limits of Knowing with Elise Crull

About This Episode

How do you know what you know? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice explore issues with quantum mechanics and objectivity, the history of physics, and how scientists ask questions on the edge of our understanding with philosopher of physics Elise Crull.

What is philosophy today compared to hundreds of years ago? We revisit the era of Principia Mathematica to ask: how do we know anything about anything? Learn how Newton’s work was a response to Descartes and how Principia gave a philosophical framework for space before outlining the laws of motion. Discover Émilie du Châtelet and her philosophical contributions to physics and how Leibniz came up with calculus at the same time as Newton. Is space a substance or is it relational?

How did we go from that spirit of inquiry to “shut up and calculate”? As physics professionalized through the Industrial Revolution and Cold War, did we lose sight of why we ask questions at all? We unpack Einstein’s obsession with simultaneity, the struggle to reconcile relativity and quantum mechanics, and the idea that maybe nature doesn’t care about our sense of elegance. Do we understand fundamental concepts like gravity the way we should be?

Can science ever be truly objective? What happens when the observer becomes part of the experiment? From quantum entanglement and nonlocality to wormholes and decoherence, and how you could win a Nobel prize for nonlocality and still not agree on what it means. Can philosophy still help guide physics forward? Should philosophers and physicists share lunch again? Neil reflects on his own critiques of philosophy and the value of stepping back to ask not just what we know, but how we know it. Can we actually understand the universe?

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