One thing was certain. We did not live in a mechanical universe.

A mechanical universe was not a necessary assumption. It was not self evident. It was not an observation. It was a vision. Physicists first pictured a mechanical universe in their minds, then found ways to make this vision come true.

Physicists decided they could successfully analyze the universe by measuring distances and building clocks, using the concepts of geometry to understand an inscrutable reality that went way beyond the simple elements and formal relationships of geometry, a reality that was utterly incompatible with the mathematical forms they were envisioning in their heads. Still they sought to perpetuate the illusion of an ordered universe of precise laws and worked tirelessly to create a mathematical system that wasn’t found anywhere in the natural world, a fictitious realm completely unsupported by the infinite particulars of material existence.

Physicists should have embraced the world. They should have recognized its essential nature and extolled its aspects and behaviors. Instead they turned away from it and withdrew into their imaginations, entering a completely different world of their own making. The real world was unruly, troublesome, incorrigible. Objects were either unmeasurable or the measurements irrelevant. Natural phenomena were unpredictable and unmanageable. Events could not be understood as interplays of ideas. Yet physicists could create their own world, a world built out of their vivid imaginations, a world that was much more to their liking.