I was glad to discover this is an analogy to electrical circuits further down the page. It's a good topic to understand, the write-up is comprehensive.

> They are the only man-made technology in history that we don’t fully understand from first principles

…what? What about bicycles? Ice skates? General anesthetics? I feel like there are a ton of commonly-used man-made items we don’t fully understand from a first-principles perspective.

Am I missing something here?