This week I chose Planck because we’re struggling—not just with truth, but with where truth honestly ends. In science, Planck time marks the boundary where our best explanations stop working and humility becomes necessary. In our social and political world, we rarely mark those boundaries. We push certainty past what evidence can support, and communication breaks down as beliefs harden into identities. This week’s piece explores what happens when we forget where explanation ends—and why learning to recognize those limits may be the first step back toward understanding one another.
A few more minutes for core takeaways.
This week:
Boundaries.
Boundaries reveal where understanding ends—and honesty begins.
Here are the six core takeaways that forged the depths of this week’s column.
1.
Max Planck
1858
Lived from 1858 to 1947, aged 89.
Max Planck didn’t seek to overturn classical physics. He ran into its limits. By taking experimental results seriously and refusing to force certainty where it no longer fit, Planck revealed one of science’s deepest lessons: progress often begins when explanation must stop.
2.
“It was an act of despair, to sacrifice physics for the sake of finding an explanation.”
- Max Planck
- circa 1900
Planck didn’t advance physics by defending what he believed, but by surrendering it when the evidence refused to cooperate. His “act of despair” reminds us that truth doesn’t yield to confidence. It yields to honesty—especially at the moment when our most trusted explanations stop working.
3.
Why is Planck time important?
Planck time isn’t invented—it’s unavoidable. It emerges when quantum mechanics, relativity, and gravity are forced to coexist. The moment their constants intersect marks the shortest time our current physics can describe coherently. Beyond that, the frameworks diverge, and explanation gives way to speculation.
4.
Did talking our way through life drive a million years of brain growth?
We don’t see language fossilized, but we do see its likely impact. Once communication became central to survival—through teaching, storytelling, and coordination—intelligence itself became a selection pressure. Culture didn’t just use big brains; it may have built them.
5.
Why do we struggle to recognize the limits of our own thinking?
In science, boundaries are marked openly and honestly. In social and political thinking, they’re often ignored. When certainty pushes past what evidence can support, belief replaces reasoning. Viewpoint prevention begins with recognizing conceptual limits—and having the humility to stop where understanding ends.
6.
Has Planck’s Constant been updated?
Planck’s constant wasn’t updated by changing its meaning, but by increasing its precision—scientifically, conceptually, and philosophically. What began as a desperate mathematical workaround became a fundamental constant and, ultimately, a boundary of understanding. Progress didn’t come from greater certainty, but from recognizing where math, reality, and knowledge intersect.
That’s it. The end.