Emphasis, of course, on "essence" (unelaborated), lest we quibble. 
That NPR article also includes a thematically related poem by Wisława Szymborska, which i interpret as being about how external reality just IS; that the inherent nature of external reality does not depend on human concepts; So even our best scientific attempts to understand reality are always at risk of conceptual bias; fortunately our theories are also subject to successive refinement by multiple, independent observations; which is still a kind of knowing that is very much worth having.
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