Wednesday, 22 July 2026

The Senior Common Room Discusses Reality Without Metaphors Or: The Impossible Dream

The Senior Common Room had reached a rare moment of agreement.

This was considered by Professor Quillibrace to be suspicious.

"I have noticed something," said Mr Blottisham.

"That is encouraging."

"Thank you."

"It was not intended as a compliment."

Miss Stray smiled.

"What have you noticed?"

"Every time we discuss physics, we end up talking about metaphors."

"Yes."

"Particles."

"Yes."

"Fields."

"Yes."

"Time flowing."

"Yes."

Blottisham looked pleased.

"So perhaps the solution is obvious."

Professor Quillibrace looked wary.

"That is generally when I become concerned."

"We should stop using metaphors."

Silence.

Miss Stray looked thoughtful.

"And what would we use instead?"

"Literal language."

"What would that look like?"

Blottisham opened his mouth.

Then closed it.

Professor Quillibrace smiled.

"An excellent demonstration."

"Of what?"

"That the question is more difficult than it first appears."

He walked to the blackboard.

"Let us imagine a physics without metaphors."

He wrote:

NO OBJECTS

"Because 'object' is a metaphor from ordinary experience."

Blottisham nodded.

"Very well."

Professor Quillibrace continued.

NO MOTION

"Because 'motion' assumes things moving through space."

"All right."

NO SPACE

"Because 'space' itself began as a metaphor of an empty container."

Blottisham looked alarmed.

"No space?"

"Correct."

"No objects?"

"Correct."

"No motion?"

"Correct."

"What exactly is left?"

Professor Quillibrace turned.

"An excellent question."

Miss Stray laughed.

"So eliminating metaphors may be rather difficult."

"Indeed."

"Because the concepts we use to eliminate metaphors are themselves conceptual constructions."

Professor Quillibrace nodded.

"Precisely."

Blottisham frowned.

"So mathematics?"

"Perhaps."

"Mathematics has no metaphors."

The room became quiet.

Professor Quillibrace smiled.

"Does it not?"

Blottisham looked uncertain.

"Does it?"

Miss Stray picked up the notebook.

"We speak of mathematical spaces."

"Yes."

"Fields."

"Yes."

"Dimensions."

"Yes."

"Groups."

"Yes."

"We even speak of mathematical objects."

Blottisham stared.

"Those are metaphors too?"

"Not necessarily in the same way."

"No?"

"But they are still conceptual tools."

Professor Quillibrace nodded.

"Mathematics does not escape thinking."

"It refines thinking."

"Exactly."

Blottisham looked at the blackboard.

"So there is no view from nowhere."

"That is a very philosophical phrase."

"Is it wrong?"

"No."

"Then?"

"I dislike how often philosophy turns out to be useful."

Miss Stray smiled.

"Perhaps the goal is not to eliminate metaphors."

"No."

"But to know which ones we are using."

"Yes."

"And what they allow us to see."

"Yes."

"And what they prevent us from seeing."

"Precisely."

Professor Quillibrace wrote:

A METAPHOR IS A LENS

"Like a pair of glasses?"

"Yes."

"Glasses help us see."

"Yes."

"But they also frame what we see."

"Exactly."

"So a different metaphor is like a different pair of glasses."

"An excellent analogy."

Blottisham looked pleased.

"I have just used a metaphor."

"You have."

"Was it allowed?"

"Unfortunately."

The room laughed.

Miss Stray looked towards the window.

"I think there is something rather beautiful here."

"What?"

"Physics is often described as a search for the deepest reality."

"Yes."

"But perhaps it is also a search for better ways of seeing."

Professor Quillibrace nodded.

"That is a more modest claim."

"Is it less profound?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because every way of seeing creates possibilities."

Blottisham looked at the blackboard.

"Objects allowed Newtonian mechanics."

"Yes."

"Fields allowed electromagnetism."

"Yes."

"Spacetime allowed relativity."

"Yes."

"Quantum ideas allowed..."

He hesitated.

"...something we still haven't quite finished understanding."

Professor Quillibrace smiled.

"An excellent summary."

"So perhaps science progresses by changing metaphors."

"Sometimes."

"Not only by discovering new facts."

"Correct."

The clock ticked.

After a while, Blottisham spoke.

"Can I ask one final question?"

"Naturally."

"If we can never escape metaphors..."

"Yes?"

"...how do we know when we have found a better one?"

Professor Quillibrace considered.

For once, he did not answer immediately.

Finally he said:

"A good metaphor opens more possibilities than it closes."

Miss Stray nodded.

"It lets us ask better questions."

"And a bad one?"

Blottisham asked.

Professor Quillibrace looked around the room.

At the shelves.

The books.

The countless human attempts to understand.

"A bad metaphor persuades us that we have stopped using one."

Nobody spoke.

The fire burned quietly.

The empty teapot sat on the table.

The blackboard contained only one sentence:

HOW ARE WE THINKING?

Blottisham read it aloud.

"That is the question?"

Professor Quillibrace collected his books.

"No."

"No?"

"It is the question beneath the questions."

Miss Stray switched off the light.

And the Senior Common Room was quiet once more.

Not because the questions had been answered.

But because better questions had been found.

By at No comments:

The Senior Common Room Discusses Particles That Are Not Particles Or: When Things Stop Being Things

The Senior Common Room had been discussing reality for nearly an hour.

This was considered by Professor Quillibrace to be a dangerous amount of time.

"Reality," he observed, "has a tendency to become less cooperative the longer one examines it."

Mr Blottisham entered carrying a notebook.

"I have a question."

Professor Quillibrace smiled.

"Excellent."

"Why?"

"Because after three weeks of discussing physics, you have finally arrived at the most useful opening sentence."

Miss Stray looked up from her book.

"What is the question?"

Blottisham sat down.

"What exactly is a particle?"

Professor Quillibrace looked pleased.

"Ah."

"That seems like a simple question."

"Those are often the most dangerous."

Blottisham opened his notebook.

"I thought a particle was a very small thing."

"Yes."

"Like a tiny object."

"Yes."

"Just too small to see."

"That is certainly how the word encourages us to think."

"But?"

Professor Quillibrace walked to the blackboard.

He wrote:

PARTICLE

"The word itself carries assumptions."

"Such as?"

He wrote:

1. It is a thing.

"Yes."

2. It has an identity.

"Yes."

3. It occupies a location.

"Yes."

4. It possesses properties.

"Yes."

Blottisham nodded.

"That sounds reasonable."

"It does."

"So what's the problem?"

Professor Quillibrace turned.

"The problem is that quantum physics repeatedly asks us to reconsider all four."

Miss Stray smiled.

"And yet the word remains."

"Why?"

"Because replacing a familiar metaphor is not easy."

Blottisham looked puzzled.

"But if the metaphor no longer works..."

"Yes?"

"Why keep it?"

Professor Quillibrace smiled.

"An excellent question."

He wrote:

ELECTRON

"Imagine an electron."

"Yes."

"What image appears?"

"A tiny sphere."

"Naturally."

"Something moving around."

"Naturally."

"But that image belongs to classical physics."

"Before quantum mechanics?"

"Yes."

"In quantum theory, the electron behaves differently."

"How?"

"Sometimes like a particle."

"Yes."

"Sometimes like a wave."

"Yes."

Blottisham looked pleased.

"Ah. So it is both."

"That is the usual phrase."

"Is it correct?"

Professor Quillibrace paused.

"It is useful."

"That sounds like a politician's answer."

"It is a physicist's answer."

Miss Stray laughed.

"The difficulty," she said,

"is that 'particle' and 'wave' are both inherited metaphors."

Blottisham looked between them.

"So neither is the thing itself?"

"Perhaps."

"Then what is the thing itself?"

Silence.

Professor Quillibrace sat down.

"That question may assume too much."

"What do you mean?"

"Perhaps we are asking nature to provide an answer in categories that belong to us."

Blottisham frowned.

"You mean the universe doesn't know about particles?"

"Precisely."

"It doesn't?"

"No more than a river knows it is a river."

Miss Stray smiled.

"The names are ours."

"Yes."

"The patterns are discovered."

"Yes."

"But the categories..."

"Are human ways of organising experience."

Blottisham looked at the notebook.

"So a particle might not be a little thing."

"Correct."

"But it is still something."

"Perhaps."

"Perhaps?"

"That word is doing considerable work."

The room became quiet.

Miss Stray looked towards the window.

"Maybe physics has gradually moved away from asking, 'What things exist?'"

"Towards?"

"'What structures and relationships exist?'"

Professor Quillibrace nodded.

"That is a very modern way of thinking."

Blottisham looked thoughtful.

"So instead of objects first..."

"Yes?"

"...relations first?"

"Possibly."

"That sounds rather strange."

"Only because we are accustomed to objects being fundamental."

"But perhaps objects are what appear when relationships become stable."

Professor Quillibrace looked at him.

A pause.

"That..."

he said carefully,

"...is an unexpectedly sophisticated observation."

Blottisham smiled.

"I've been reading."

"Ah."

"Badly?"

"Not necessarily."

Miss Stray laughed.

"But there is something important here."

"What?"

"If our basic metaphor changes..."

"Yes?"

"Our whole picture of reality changes."

Professor Quillibrace pointed to the blackboard.

"For centuries, physics imagined reality as a collection of things."

"Objects."

"Yes."

"Then it began to imagine reality as fields."

"Yes."

"And interactions."

"Yes."

"So the question becomes..."

He wrote:

WHAT IS FUNDAMENTAL?

Blottisham looked at the words.

"Things?"

"Perhaps."

"Fields?"

"Perhaps."

"Information?"

Professor Quillibrace glanced at Miss Stray.

"That is a question for another afternoon."

The clock struck five.

As they gathered their books, Blottisham looked once more at the word on the board.

"Particle."

"Yes?"

"It seems strange now."

"Good."

"Good?"

"Strangeness is often the beginning of understanding."

Miss Stray smiled.

"The moment a familiar word becomes unfamiliar again..."

"Yes?"

"...we have started thinking."

Professor Quillibrace erased everything except the title.

He left one word behind:

THING

Blottisham looked at it.

"Is that the question?"

"No."

"Then what is?"

Professor Quillibrace picked up his coat.

"Whether reality is made of things..."

He paused.

"...or whether things are how reality appears to us."

The room fell silent.

The blackboard remained.

The question remained.

And somewhere beneath all the mathematics, one of the oldest philosophical questions had quietly returned.

By at No comments:

The Senior Common Room Discusses Fields That Are Not Fields Or: The Invisible Landscape of Reality

The Senior Common Room had acquired a new blackboard.

This was considered by Professor Quillibrace to be both useful and dangerous.

Useful, because ideas could be displayed.

Dangerous, because Mr Blottisham could now display his ideas.

"I have been thinking about fields," said Blottisham.

Professor Quillibrace looked cautious.

"Physical fields?"

"Yes."

"Good."

"I was worried you might think I meant fields with sheep."

Miss Stray smiled.

"Although the connection is not entirely accidental."

"It isn't?"

"No."

Blottisham looked surprised.

"Surely a field in physics is completely different from a field with sheep."

"Of course."

"So why the same word?"

Professor Quillibrace picked up a piece of chalk.

"An excellent question."

He wrote:

FIELD

"The original meaning is familiar."

"A piece of land."

"Yes."

"Something extended."

"Yes."

"Something in which things can happen."

"Yes."

He then wrote:

ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELD

"Here the word is no longer describing land."

"No."

"But something spread throughout space."

"Yes."

Blottisham nodded.

"So the physicists borrowed the word."

"Precisely."

"Why?"

"Because they needed a way to think about something invisible."

Miss Stray looked thoughtful.

"Before fields, physics imagined objects."

"Yes."

"Things with properties."

"Yes."

"And forces between them."

"Exactly."

Blottisham smiled.

"So the world was rather like billiards."

Professor Quillibrace nodded.

"An excellent metaphor."

"Little objects."

"Yes."

"Moving around."

"Yes."

"Colliding."

"Yes."

"And then?"

"And then the billiard table itself became interesting."

Blottisham frowned.

"The table?"

"Yes."

Professor Quillibrace drew two dots on the board.

"Imagine two objects attracting each other."

"Gravity?"

"Yes."

"Newton describes the objects."

"Yes."

"And the force between them."

"Yes."

"But Faraday asks a different question."

"What question?"

"Could the space between them have structure?"

The room became quiet.

Blottisham looked at the two dots.

"So instead of saying..."

He thought.

"'This object affects that object'..."

"Yes?"

"We say..."

"'The space between them has changed.'"

Professor Quillibrace nodded.

"Now you are thinking in fields."

Miss Stray smiled.

"And notice what happened."

"What?"

"The metaphor changed the possible questions."

Blottisham looked puzzled.

"How?"

"With objects, you ask: What acts on what?"

"Yes."

"With fields, you ask: What pattern exists throughout space?"

"So the world changes."

"Not necessarily."

"But the way we can think about it changes."

"Exactly."

Professor Quillibrace wrote:

OBJECTS → RELATIONS → STRUCTURES

"This is a remarkable shift."

Blottisham looked at the board.

"But a field isn't really a field."

"Correct."

"There isn't a meadow of electricity."

"Correct."

"No grass?"

"No."

"No sheep?"

"Fortunately."

Miss Stray laughed.

"So once again, physics borrows a metaphor and then tells us not to take it literally."

Professor Quillibrace nodded.

"Indeed."

"And yet the metaphor does something important."

"Yes."

"It allows us to imagine invisible organisation."

"Precisely."

Blottisham considered this.

"So a field is like a map."

"Not exactly."

"Why not?"

"A map represents something else."

"Yes."

"A field is part of the theory of what exists."

The room fell silent.

Miss Stray spoke quietly.

"Perhaps this is where physics becomes philosophically interesting."

"In what way?"

"When the metaphor stops merely helping us calculate and begins shaping our idea of reality itself."

Professor Quillibrace nodded.

"Well observed."

Blottisham looked at the blackboard.

"So fields changed physics."

"Yes."

"Because they changed the mathematics?"

"Partly."

"Or because they changed what physicists imagined was there?"

"Ah."

Professor Quillibrace smiled.

"Now you have arrived."

The clock ticked.

"Perhaps..."

Miss Stray continued,

"...the greatest changes in science occur not only when we discover new facts."

"But?"

"When we discover new ways of seeing."

Blottisham looked pleased.

"So the metaphor is not just a label."

"No."

"It is a doorway."

Professor Quillibrace considered this.

"A slightly poetic expression."

"Is it inaccurate?"

"No."

"Then?"

"I dislike how often you are becoming correct."

Blottisham beamed.

As they prepared to leave, he paused.

"One more question."

"Yes?"

"If fields are everywhere..."

"Yes?"

"Are we inside them?"

Professor Quillibrace stopped.

Miss Stray smiled.

"That is rather the interesting consequence."

The three looked around the room.

The walls.

The furniture.

The empty space between objects.

For centuries, people had imagined things existing in space.

Now physics was suggesting something stranger:

Perhaps space itself was not merely the container.

Perhaps it had a role.

Perhaps the stage was not separate from the performance.

Professor Quillibrace picked up his coat.

"My dear Blottisham..."

"Yes?"

"I fear your question has just made the room considerably more complicated."

"Sorry."

"Do not apologise."

"Really?"

"No."

Quillibrace smiled.

"Complications are often where interesting things begin."

The lights went out.

The blackboard remained.

On it were two words:

THE FIELD

By at No comments:

The Senior Common Room Discusses Things That Flow Or: The River That Physics Says Does Not Exist

The Senior Common Room was gathered around the fireplace when Mr Blottisham entered carrying a book.

Professor Quillibrace looked up.

"Another scientific discovery?"

"Not exactly."

"An article?"

"No."

"A question?"

"Yes."

Quillibrace smiled.

"Those are generally the most troublesome."

Blottisham placed the book on the table.

"It says that time does not flow."

Miss Stray looked interested.

"And what did you think?"

"I thought..."

He paused.

"...that it seemed rather unlikely."

Professor Quillibrace raised an eyebrow.

"Why?"

"Because yesterday became today."

"Yes."

"And today will become tomorrow."

"Yes."

"So something is clearly moving."

"Something?"

"Well..."

Blottisham frowned.

"Time."

Professor Quillibrace leaned back.

"An excellent answer."

"Thank you."

"Unfortunately, it may contain the entire problem."

Miss Stray poured tea.

"Perhaps we should ask what we mean by 'flow'."

"Why?"

"Because we use the word constantly."

Professor Quillibrace counted on his fingers.

"Rivers flow."

"Yes."

"Water flows."

"Yes."

"Traffic flows."

"Yes."

"Information flows."

"Yes."

"And time?"

Blottisham smiled.

"Time flows."

"Does it?"

Blottisham looked uncertain.

"It feels as though it does."

"Indeed."

"Isn't that enough?"

Professor Quillibrace smiled.

"It is enough for ordinary life."

"And not enough for physics?"

"Precisely."

Miss Stray looked thoughtful.

"Perhaps the difficulty is that a river contains different moments."

"What do you mean?"

"You can stand beside a river and watch water arrive and depart."

"Yes."

"The past water is gone."

"Yes."

"The future water has not arrived."

"Yes."

"But where is the equivalent in time?"

Blottisham frowned.

"Where is yesterday?"

"Exactly."

Professor Quillibrace approached the blackboard.

He wrote:

TIME FLOWS

Then beneath it:

FROM WHERE?

Blottisham looked at the words.

"That is irritating."

"Good."

"Good?"

"Questions that are too comfortable rarely produce discoveries."

Miss Stray smiled.

"The metaphor works beautifully until we ask it to explain itself."

"Like the particle knowing?"

"Exactly."

Blottisham nodded.

"So 'flow' helps us think about time."

"Yes."

"But it also smuggles in assumptions."

"Yes."

"What assumptions?"

Professor Quillibrace wrote:

A thing that flows requires:

  1. A substance
  2. A direction
  3. A place from which it comes
  4. A place towards which it goes

"Do we have these with time?"

Blottisham considered.

"A substance of time?"

"Unknown."

"A direction?"

"Possibly."

"A place from which it comes?"

"Problematic."

"A destination?"

"Also problematic."

Blottisham sighed.

"So time is a river without water, banks, a source, or an end."

Professor Quillibrace smiled.

"An excellent description of why the metaphor is troublesome."

Miss Stray looked into the fire.

"I wonder whether the problem is that we treat metaphors as though they were pictures."

"What do you mean?"

"A picture can resemble something."

"Yes."

"But a metaphor is more like a tool."

"A tool?"

"Yes."

"A hammer is useful because of what it lets us do."

"Exactly."

"Not because it resembles the thing it acts upon."

Professor Quillibrace nodded.

"Very good."

"So metaphors are tools for thinking."

"Yes."

"But tools can become limitations."

"Precisely."

Blottisham looked puzzled.

"Then should we stop saying time flows?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because the metaphor remains extraordinarily useful."

"For what?"

"For living."

Professor Quillibrace sat down again.

"When you say, 'I don't have enough time,' the metaphor helps you understand something important."

"That time is limited?"

"Yes."

"When you say, 'Time heals,' it expresses something meaningful."

"Yes."

"When you say, 'Those days have passed,' everyone understands."

"So the metaphor isn't false."

"No."

"But it isn't a literal description."

"Exactly."

Miss Stray smiled.

"Perhaps the mistake is expecting one metaphor to do every job."

The room became quiet.

Blottisham looked pleased.

"So physics has a different metaphor."

"Perhaps."

"What is it?"

"Physics often treats time as a dimension."

"A place?"

"In a sense."

"Like space?"

"Yes."

Blottisham looked troubled.

"But space doesn't flow."

"No."

"So now we have a problem."

"Indeed."

"We have one metaphor saying time flows."

"Yes."

"And another saying time is like a location."

"Yes."

"And they don't quite agree."

Professor Quillibrace smiled.

"Now you are asking the interesting questions."

Miss Stray added:

"Perhaps the metaphors are not competing descriptions."

"No?"

"Perhaps each reveals something different."

"The river tells us about experience."

"Yes."

"The dimension tells us about mathematical structure."

"Yes."

"But neither is the whole truth."

Professor Quillibrace nodded.

"That may be the most important sentence spoken today."

The college clock struck five.

Blottisham gathered his book.

"One last question."

"Naturally."

"If time doesn't flow..."

"Yes?"

"...why does it feel as though it does?"

Professor Quillibrace smiled.

"Ah."

"The dangerous question?"

"Indeed."

"Perhaps..."

Miss Stray said quietly,

"...because we are not observers standing outside time."

Nobody spoke.

"We are events within it."

Professor Quillibrace looked at the clock.

For once, he did not immediately correct anyone.

The room remained silent.

The fire burned.

The clock ticked.

And somewhere between one tick and the next, everyone experienced something they could describe only by saying:

time passed.

By at No comments:

The Senior Common Room Discusses Particles That Know Or: The Curious Case of the Quoted Metaphor

The Senior Common Room had been unusually quiet.

This was rarely a good sign.

Professor Quillibrace had learned that silence in academic settings generally indicated one of two things:

Either everyone had reached a profound insight.

Or someone had used a word that nobody wished to define.

Mr Blottisham entered carrying his tablet.

"I have been watching a lecture about quantum physics."

Professor Quillibrace looked up.

"An ambitious undertaking."

"I found it fascinating."

"Excellent."

"Although there was one thing I didn't understand."

"Only one?"

Miss Stray smiled.

"What was it?"

Blottisham opened the tablet.

"The speaker said that the particle 'knows' which path it takes."

Professor Quillibrace nodded.

"Ah."

"You see the problem?"

"I see several."

Blottisham looked pleased.

"I thought you might."

"The first question is whether the particle possesses knowledge."

"Exactly."

"And the second?"

"Whether it has attended sufficient educational establishments."

Miss Stray laughed.

"I suspect the particle has not."

Blottisham looked at the screen again.

"But the speaker put quotation marks around the word."

"Did she?"

"Yes."

"Ah."

Professor Quillibrace settled back in his chair.

"The quotation marks are important."

"Why?"

"They perform a kind of intellectual apology."

"An apology?"

"Yes."

"The speaker says something like: 'The particle knows...'"

"Yes."

"And then immediately adds: 'Of course, it does not literally know.'"

"Exactly."

Blottisham looked puzzled.

"So why say it?"

Professor Quillibrace smiled.

"An excellent question."

The room became quiet.

Miss Stray poured the tea.

"Perhaps because the metaphor helps us imagine something unfamiliar."

"Possibly."

"But then the question becomes..."

She paused.

"...why this metaphor?"

Blottisham looked between them.

"I don't understand."

Professor Quillibrace stood and walked towards the blackboard.

"When we encounter something unfamiliar, we often describe it using familiar ideas."

"Yes."

"We say electrons 'move'."

"Yes."

"We say fields 'interact'."

"Yes."

"We say systems 'choose' or 'prefer'."

"Yes."

"And we understand that none of these are literally true."

"Correct."

"So?"

"So perhaps the interesting question is not whether the metaphor is true."

"What is it?"

"Why the metaphor appears at all."

Blottisham considered this.

"Because we need it?"

"Perhaps."

"Then it isn't just a mistake."

"Precisely."

Miss Stray looked thoughtful.

"Maybe metaphors are not only ways of explaining things."

"No?"

"Maybe they are ways of thinking."

Professor Quillibrace nodded.

"Now we approach the interesting territory."

He wrote on the blackboard:

REALITY → LANGUAGE → UNDERSTANDING

Then he crossed it out.

"Too simple."

He wrote:

REALITY ↔ METAPHOR ↔ CONCEPTUAL POSSIBILITY

Blottisham frowned.

"That looks more complicated."

"It is."

"Does it help?"

"Usually."

"That seems inconvenient."

"It often is."

Miss Stray pointed at the board.

"So a metaphor doesn't simply describe reality."

"No."

"It shapes what we can ask."

"Exactly."

Blottisham thought about this.

"So if we think of particles as little objects..."

"We expect them to behave like little objects."

"With locations."

"Yes."

"Paths."

"Yes."

"Identities."

"Yes."

"And if quantum physics doesn't behave like that..."

"Then our old metaphors begin to struggle."

Blottisham nodded slowly.

"So perhaps saying the particle 'knows' is a sign that we are trying to describe something outside our ordinary categories."

Professor Quillibrace looked mildly surprised.

"That is a remarkably good way of putting it."

"Thank you."

"Please do not become accustomed to such praise."

Miss Stray smiled.

"I wonder whether this happens often in science."

"Constantly."

"Really?"

"Consider gravity."

"Newton described forces acting at a distance."

"Yes."

"Einstein described spacetime curvature."

"Yes."

"Different metaphors."

"Very different."

"But both helped scientists think."

"Exactly."

Blottisham looked back at the tablet.

"So when physicists use words like 'knows'..."

"Yes?"

"They aren't saying the particle has a little mind."

"No."

"They're saying..."

He searched for the words.

"...that something is happening which our ordinary language finds difficult to express."

Professor Quillibrace nodded.

"That is the beginning of wisdom."

The clock ticked quietly.

After a moment, Blottisham spoke again.

"But I still have one question."

"Naturally."

"If everyone agrees the particle doesn't know..."

"Yes?"

"Why does nobody ask why they keep using a word that means knowing?"

Professor Quillibrace looked at Miss Stray.

Miss Stray looked at Professor Quillibrace.

"Because..."

she said slowly,

"...the metaphor may be telling us something about the limits of our current concepts."

Professor Quillibrace picked up his tea.

"Indeed."

"What do you mean?"

"Perhaps the particle does not know."

"Obviously."

"But perhaps our language is trying to tell us that the universe is not behaving like the kind of thing we once imagined."

Blottisham considered this.

"So the quotation marks are not the end of the story."

"No."

"They're the beginning."

Professor Quillibrace smiled.

"My dear Blottisham..."

"Yes?"

"You have just discovered that punctuation can be philosophical."

The college clock struck five.

Books were closed.

The tablet was switched off.

The three remained for a moment in the quiet room.

On the blackboard, the word remained:

knows

surrounded by quotation marks.

Not as a conclusion.

As a question.

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