Such lack of materiality vexes the scientist. If he does detect the photon, as, say on a photographic plate, it is annihilated and has no future to predict. Heisenberg, in 1925, first called attention to the fact that to observe an electron, we must disturb it. Since, in theory, it is impossible to know the exact position and velocity of a particle, we can only predict probabilities. What Heisenberg failed to note is that when this principle is applied to photons, we cannot predict at all.
Science thus comes back to where it started, before it decided to exclude what was unobservable.
Such enigmatic expressions warn that the ultimate essence is not a thing, it is no thing. Before taking up my main topic, support for the thesis, let me go back for a moment. In my engineering experience, I came to appreciate the measure formulae of physics. They include position and its three derivatives, already discussed under Bateson. Quantum physics provided the answer.