What are you hoping will be understood? We've gone as far back as the big bang and as far down as the atom in understanding. Our bodies are made up of trillions of cells all cooperating, and no one is particularly impressed with it. It's just matter, energy and motion. Everything can be reduced to billiard balls on a table. Is there a way to understand something scientifically that is not ultimately put in those terms?
If anyone has ever said anything cynical ever I think this beats it.
Biology is amazing.
>What are you hoping will be understood.
Understanding is like the apparent horizon. The closer you get the further away you realize it is. There will always be more to understand, we will just reach a point where our little monkey minds are incapable of holding enough 'state' to grasp for the next step. I say that as a monkey who is awfully fond of my own little monkey mind.
People say they are impressed, but it has no real quality to it, it's just a word. Actual wonder is gone by the time a person reaches adolescence. From there it's just cramming more facts in. The basis of understanding the physical world is already given: it's a mechanical process involving matter, energy and motion. What is so interesting about learning another variation of those? If you could build an AI to give us all the valid variations, you're still stuck with the premise. It's like being a chess piece and being shown another position on the board. If you can be satisfied with that then good luck I guess.
This is like deciding that we've already figured out that the celestial spheres are why the stars move in the way they do. Why bother to figure out any more?
Improvements to understanding always seem obvious after they're made and it always seema like you have a mostly complete worldview right up until you realize you don't. That's how it works.
If you can explain to me from base principles why the fine structure constant has the value it does, or why there is such a pronounced baryon asymmetry or any of the many big open questions in basic physics I will acquiesce the point.
Being ignorant of the big questions doesn't mean big questions don't exist, only that you don't know about them yet.
I'm not saying everything is known. The question is, are there any questions we can ask that have a potential answer that will not be answered by a material, mechanical description. Because we already know what that entails. Can you conceive of an explanation of the fine structure constant or any other question in physics, or any other domain of science that doesn't have a material mechanical basis as the answer?
If not, then all the answers are variations on each other. To be fair, in some sense that project has already broken down. We have 'fields' in empty space, 'virtual' particles, correlation over distances where causation is not possible, and other things that, basically, are inconceivable.
