In the Cohen brothers’ movie A Serious Man, physics professor Larry Gopnik stands matter-of-factly before a wall of equations and states, “The uncertainty principle: it proves we can’t ever really know what’s going on.”

Recently separated and awaiting a tenure decision, Gopnik is caught between a cruelly disinterested universe and the wrath of a vengeful god. 

As the bell rings and students rise to leave, he adds, ”But even though you can’t figure anything out, you will be responsible for it on the midterm.” 

I recently spoke with an evolutionary theorist who studies coevolution, the transmission of two traits in a population.

She explained that this type of modeling is uncommon because the math gets messy really quickly. Even a simple, highly generalized model will produce staggering complexity with two traits. Beyond two, forget it. 

Why do it, then? I asked. Because it’s closer to reality, she said. Our world is messy. Even if the math isn’t as elegant as we’d like, it’s worth it to model something approaching reality.

This past weekend we took our 4-year-olds to see Paddington 2 at the local theater. As the lights dimmed, one of them experienced a sudden metacognitive awakening, exclaiming, “Why do I have eyes—to look? What are my hands for?”

Just then, the movie started. 

The sparse and beautiful dystopian novel I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman explores what endures about the human spirit when all else is stripped away.

As the last person on her planet, the narrator writes, “I could count myself lucky if this bizarre world that I inhabited was kind enough to add a few more questions to my list of unanswered ones.”

Reality is messy—questions beget questions—and yet we’re daily held responsible.

What are hands for?