it's about listening deeply enough.

... one of the assertions of science is that we don't know everything and that, in order to increase our knowledge, we have to be in dialogue with nature and it has to be a constant dialogue. And it's not sufficient to end that dialogue because, as we increase our ability to measure nature, we can ask questions that are [on a] finer and finer level. And so we keep finding new things not because nature is changing, but because we are increasing our capacity to ask the questions of nature.

- Dr. S. James Gates, Jr.
excerpted from the transcripts of "Uncovering the Codes for Reality"

a broadcast of "On Being" with Krista Tippet

Gates is Toll Professor of Physics and Director of the Center for String and Particle Theory at the University of Maryland in College Park. He serves on President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.