This is an extract of Scientific Controversies: String Theory by Pioneer Works.

David Gross first talked about ordinary spacetime as mental construct.

He later said: "We've learned in the last hundred years the basic structure of physical reality is a different space called Hilbert space where we live in quantum mechanics. (And) We're just as physicists, I truly believe, learning quantum mechanics. It's a very new deep new way of looking at the world and a hundred years isn't enough to grasp it...... But we are still getting used to living in Hilbert space and amazing things about these dualities that have been explored and discovered in this exploration of the theoretical framework which is sometimes called string theory is connecting those two most basic concepts."

His profound insight is: "both trying to, if you want, to understand what space and time are made out of, in terms of quantum mechanical system and understanding the structure of the quantum space in which we live in terms of geometry - geometry and structure of quantum mechanics."

He continued: "All of us are like children discovering a new world and we have no idea where it is going to lead."

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