My work confronts challenging subjects head on. I find the most difficult thing I can think of, then look for the art in it. Right now I'm looking at the nature of the universe. What it's made of and how it works. There's really only one place to do this and it's quantum physics - the physics of the very small.

It’s perhaps the most difficult to understand subject there has ever been. It has taken me into a world where nothing is what it seems and everything you thought you knew is wrong. It has changed my understanding of the universe, and has raised questions about the nature of existence, free will and randomness that Newton thought he had put to bed 300 years ago.

But the main thing I’ve realised after two years of full immersion, is that I don't believe it - and that's a problem because it's been proved right lots of times. So I’m wrong, but still I don't believe it.

I should believe it, because quantum physics works beautifully. It predicts observed behaviour with extreme accuracy. One of the reasons for this is that it’s probabilistic. When physicists started looking at the molecular behaviour of gases, they realised they couldn’t analyse them at the level of individual particles because there were just too many. There are 2.7×10^19 hydrogen molecules in just 1cm³. What they could do, was look at the probabilities that particles would behave in different ways, and averaged out over a very large number of particles, those probabilities gave a very accurate description of their actual behaviour.

It’s a bit like the maths of tossing a coin. It’s really hard to predict which way up a coin will land, because there are too many variables. That’s why we toss coins to decide things like which team goes first in sport – it’s impossible to predict the outcome. But if we toss a thousand coins, we know with a high degree of accuracy that 500 will be heads and 500 tails. We don’t need to know anything about the coin, or how it was tossed, or what the aerodynamic conditions were. Over a large number, the probabilities are accurate.

That’s all fine and makes perfect sense. But then quantum physics made what is perhaps the greatest leap of imagination in human history. It suggested that those probabilities were more than just mathematical tricks for describing things that were very complex – they were actual descriptions of physical reality. So sticking with the analogy of the spinning coin, it's not just that it has a 50/50 chance of being heads or tails, the spinning coin is in an actual physical superposition of both heads and tails simultaneously. It only becomes one or the other when it is stopped.

This belief that the maths represents reality has had profound consequences. It has lead quantum physics down a path that is not only counterintuitive, but is often difficult to believe.

Einstein didn’t like it, calling it “spooky”. He said: “God doesn’t play dice,” and “The more success the quantum theory has, the sillier it looks”. Erwin Schrödinger, famous for the cat in the box, said “I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it”, and Niels Bohr, who developed the modern model of the atom, said “Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.”

There is a surprising parallel here with modern art. Quantum physics and modern art developed on a similar timeline, with the basic breakthroughs in both happening between 1900 and 1930 – and both provoked a similar response.

In its early days, modern art was met with confusion, scepticism and even hostility, with accusations that it was nonsense or meaningless. Winston Churchill, himself a capable painter, said: "Modern art treats us as fools", and social critic Camille Paglia cannibalised another famous Churchillian quote saying: "Never in the field of human endeavour has so much been used by so many to say so little." Early exhibitions such as the 1913 Armory Show in the U.S. shocked the public and provoked both protest and ridicule. Even today, the question “what is art?”, or perhaps more accurately “is that art?” persists.

The answer to that question is that if someone says it's art, then it is. And the better respected the person saying it, the better the art. So an artist saying something is art means it is art, but a gallery saying it art is even better, and a public gallery or museum or a famous critic better still. The average person on the street, who can’t really tell whether a painting is by a modern master or a 5-year-old, just has to trust that the people who say it's art, know what they're talking about.

Quantum physics is in a similar position. The average person on the street has no way of understanding it. The maths is too complex, and the ideas too far removed from their lived experience. They have no way of conceptualising it – no way of relating to it. They just have to trust that the people saying it’s true, are right.

With a subject so complex, this is also true for the physicists themselves. Experimentalists have to trust that theorists have got the theories right. And theorists have to trust the maths of the pioneers that came before them. Quantum physics is equations built on equations, built on equations – stretching back for more than 100 years. It’s now impossible for one individual to untangle and check every part, they just have to trust it, or they would grind to a halt. In that respect, it's a bit like a religion - you have to have faith.

This isn’t just true of physics. Increasingly the world is carved up into smaller and smaller specialisms that in themselves may seem obscure, but combined with other things give us mastery over complex systems that would be impossible for an individual working alone. We are reliant on others; many others - who we will never know, but in whom we place great trust.