I’ve always had a fundamental problem with the identification of human knowledge with reality. I see this idea as identifying the function with its graph, in a sense. But that requires us to have a logical framework that will asymptotically approach reality. I don’t think that may exist.
For one, the uncertainty principle suggests there is no exact, fully determined reality.
Second, Goedel showed us that logical systems are either incomplete or inconsistent.
Third, there is more certainty in the past than the future - in so far as credible measurements may exist of the past and not the future. The present may then be the collapse of all those possible futures into a knowable past. There is a way to discriminate the past, present, and future from one another.
While we certainly have some helpful wisdom built up, I think the true nature of reality may not be known. There will always be a layer below or additional properties unknown, unknowable, or undecidable portion to the universe.
> For one, the uncertainty principle suggests there is no exact, fully determined reality.
Absolutely not! The uncertainty principle suggests that position and momentum are inappropriate descriptions of reality. The quantum mechanical wave function would be a complete description, if quantum mechanics was all there is to reality.
> Second, Goedel showed us that logical systems are either incomplete or inconsistent.
He didn't. He showed us that finite theories in sufficiently powerful logical systems, specifically number theory expressed in first order logic, admit multiple models. Turning this into "any theory of the universe will be incomplete" is playing fast and lose with the meaning of the word "incomplete".
For one, the uncertainty principle suggests there is no exact, fully determined reality.
Second, Goedel showed us that logical systems are either incomplete or inconsistent.
Third, there is more certainty in the past than the future - in so far as credible measurements may exist of the past and not the future. The present may then be the collapse of all those possible futures into a knowable past. There is a way to discriminate the past, present, and future from one another.
While we certainly have some helpful wisdom built up, I think the true nature of reality may not be known. There will always be a layer below or additional properties unknown, unknowable, or undecidable portion to the universe.