Reading the article, I understood so little of it. And I guess it’s because so much of the language is just words chosen through some sort of consensus to represent an abstract idea itself composed of such words-idea-representations which I’ve never encountered before.
What we don't understand is the fundamental structure of that matter or of our Universe. I personally feel that the people ostensibly "in charge" of this effort are a little chagrined at their decades of inability to produce not only a cohesive result but even a reasonable intermediate explanation that they intentionally couch these problems in the most arcane and impenetrable language available to them.
In any case, you shouldn't feel discontent for humanity, as we've simply discovered all the easy problems, cleverly worked out all the average problems, and now all we're left with is the intractably hard ones. It's very likely that a different type of effort we haven't engaged in yet will be necessary to make progress.
I mean heck, even something as mundane as concrete is still the subject of active research as to the chemical reactions and complexities involved.
I guess it's more a spectrum of understanding than a yes/no situation.
For myself, I find it exciting to keep discovering how little we understand, despite our abilities. We seem to be barely a step removed from alchemy, from some points of view.
Going the other way, you most likely cannot explain why your body or your brain works, yet, here we are, using and understanding them just fine.
Which leads to what I was trying to get at. Perhaps our tentative understandings and our means of receiving them are what gets in the way of deeper comprehension.
I think we’re failing miserably precisely because we don’t.
If I recall correctly, the we can't really solve the equations for anything more complex than a helium atom (or is it hydrogen?). That's not to say there isn't useful work we can do, numerical approximations, etc. But things do get astoundingly complex very quickly, even with the "mastered" bits.