Is the Universe Queerer Than We Can Suppose?

Brett Hall Says No!

I sat down with Australian science educator Brett Hall to tackle the claim: The universe is “queerer than we can suppose.” This idea stems from British scientist J.B.S. Haldane, who wrote in his 1927 book Possible Worlds and Other Essays, “The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” Haldane was struck by reality’s strangeness, esp. in light of early 20th-century science. He thought that our minds might hit a wall when facing the universe’s oddities.

The conversation kicked off with a view I share with Richard Dawkins and Michael Shermer: The universe outstrips our ability to understand it. Our brains evolved for survival in the “middle realm,” think throwing spears or dodging predators, not for decoding quantum weirdness or for figuring out what happens inside a black hole. The universe feels alien, perhaps too bizarre for human comprehension.

Brett disagrees. He insists science equips us to unravel any mystery, no matter how strange. Take genes: They’re microscopic, irrelevant to our ancestors’ daily grind, yet we now understand them. Genes operate at a level far removed from the practical know-how of hunting or gathering, Brett notes. Still, through rigorous scientific inquiry, we’ve mapped their structure and function, proving we can master concepts beyond what evolution wired us for. If our stance held, he argues, genes would be gibberish to us—but they’re not. Brett leans on this idea: Our knack for abstract reasoning and possession of scientific tools lets us pierce the universe’s veil. (He questions the orthodoxy that quantum physics is a mental dead end or if we’re just asking the wrong questions.) To Brett, evolution doesn’t cap our understanding—it’s a springboard.

We also explored the Many Worlds Interpretation, where every quantum flip births a new universe, and the multiverse idea, hinting our universe is one of countless others with unique rules. The Many Worlds Theory says reality splits with every subatomic choice, defying our gut sense of a single world, Brett explains. Multiverses up the ante. Imagine universes where gravity repels or time runs backward. These stretch our imagination to breaking, but with logic and evidence, they’re not beyond us. The stranger the theory, the more it proves our minds can stretch.

Brett’s optimism runs deep. “There’s no ceiling to what we can fathom,” he asserts. Science’s future hinges on this: If he’s correct, no puzzle—dark energy, cosmic origins—stays unsolved forever. This isn’t faith. It’s a bet on human ingenuity, forged through centuries of cracking nature’s codes.

Not everyone buys it. Some counter that mysteries like consciousness—how squishy brains spark self-awareness—or the universe’s first moment might defy us indefinitely. These aren’t just tough nuts; they could demand a rethink of thought itself, tools we don’t yet possess.