Explainability: A Necessary Evil?

Abstract

The year was 1916. Albert Einstein and Lorentz had reached similar conclusions, albeit via different paths. Both agreed that if we approach the speed of light, we slow down. Lorentz suspected ether to be the cause, while Einstein proposed the theory of relativity to explain this phenomenon. The only problem with ether was that its existence was subsequently disproved. Eventually, the scientific community accepted Einstein’s theory of relativity. He made a famous remark harping on the usefulness of simplicity in the world which we live in, "It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without surrendering the adequate representation of a single datum of experience."