Arthur Stanley Eddington > Quotes

“Whether in the intellectual pursuits of science or in the mystical pursuits of the spirit, the light beckons ahead, and the purpose surging in our nature responds.”
― Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World

“An ocean traveler has even more vividly the impression that the ocean is made of waves than that it is made of water.”
― Arthur S. Eddington

“We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong.”
― Sir Arthur S. Eddington

“Something unknown is doing we don't know what.”
― Arthur Stanley Eddington

“The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations - then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation - well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the Second Law of Thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it to collapse in deepest humiliation.”
― Arthur Eddington, New Pathways in Science

“We have learnt that the exploration of the external world by the methods of physical science leads not to a concrete reality but to a shadow world of symbols, beneath which those methods are unadapted for penetrating. Feeling that there must be more behind, we return to our starting point in human consciousness - the one centre where more might become known. There we find other stirrings, other revelations than those conditioned by the world of symbols... Physics most strongly insists that its methods do not penetrate behind the symbolism. Surely then that mental and spiritual nature of ourselves, known in our minds by an intimate contact transcending the methods of physics, supplies just that... which science is admittedly unable to give.”
― Arthur Stanley Eddington, Science and the unseen world

“We often think that when we have completed our study of one we know all about two, because 'two' is 'one and one'. We forget that we have still to make a study of 'and'.”
― A. S. Eddington

“Asked in 1919 whether it was true that only three people in the world understood the theory of general relativity, [Eddington] allegedly replied: 'Who's the third?”
― Arthur Stanley Eddington

“The mind-stuff of the world is, of course, something more general than our individual conscious minds.... It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept the view that the substratum of everything is of mental character. But no one can deny that mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience, and all else is remote inference.”
― Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World

“The physical world is entirely abstract and without actuality apart from its linkage to consciousness.”
― Sir Arthur Eddington

“When we analyse the picture into a large number of particles of paint, we lose the aesthetic significance of the picture. The particles of paint go into the scientific inventory, and it is claimed that everything that there really was in the picture is kept. But this way of keeping a thing may be much the same as losing it. The essence of a picture (as distinct from the paint) is arrangement.”
― Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World

“Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine - it is stranger than we can imagine.”
― Arthur Stanley Eddington

“I believe that there are 15,747,724,136,275,02,577,605,653,961,181,555,468,044,717,914,527,116,709,366,231,425,076,185,631,031,296 protons in the universe and the same number of electrons.”
― Arthur S. Eddington

“We are all of us clocks whose faces tell the passing years.”
― Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World

“Proof is the idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself.”
― Sir Arthur Eddington

“The more perfect the instrument as a measurer of time, the more completely does it conceal time's arrow.”
― Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World

“It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.”
― Arthur Eddington

“Of the two alternatives - a curved manifold in a Euclidean space of ten dimensions or a manifold with non-Euclidean geometry and no extra dimensions - which is right? I would rather not attempt a direct answer, because I fear I should get lost in a fog of metaphysics. But I may say at once that I do not take the ten dimensions seriously; whereas I take the non-Euclidean geometry of the world very seriously, and I do not regard it as a thing which needs explaining away.”
― Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World

“Better admit that there was some truth both in science and religion; and if they must fight, let it be elsewhere than in the brain of a hard-working scientist.”
― Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World

“We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about ‘and.”
― Sir Arthur Eddington

“Never trust an experimental result until it has been confirmed by theory”
― Eddington Arthur Stanley

“You will understand the true spirit neither of science nor of religion unless seeking is placed in the forefront.”
― Arthur Stanley Eddington, Science and the Unseen World

“The actuality of Nature is like the beauty of Nature. We can scarcely describe the beauty of a landscape as non-existent when there is no conscious being to witness it; but it is through consciousness that we can attribute a meaning to it. And so it is with the actuality of the world. If actuality means 'known to mind' then it is a purely subjective character of the world; to make it objective we must substitute 'knowable to mind'.”
― Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World

“Science aims at constructing a world which shall be symbolic of the world of commonplace experience. It is not at all necessary that every individual symbol that is used should represent something in common experience or even something explicable in terms of common experience. The man in the street is always making this demand for concrete explanation of the things referred to in science; but of necessity he must be disappointed. It is like our experience in learning to read. That which is written in a book is symbolic of a story in real life. The whole intention of the book is that ultimately a reader will identify some symbol, say BREAD, with one of the conceptions of familiar life. But it is mischievous to attempt such identifications prematurely, before the letters are strung into words and the words into sentences. The symbol A is not the counterpart of anything in familiar life.”
― Arthur Eddington

“When we encounter unexpected obstacles in finding out something which we wish to know, there are two possible courses to take. It may be that the right course is to treat the obstacle as a spur to further efforts; but there is a second possibility - that we have been trying to find something which does not exist. You will remember that that was how the relativity theory accounted for the apparent concealment of our velocity through the aether.”
― Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World

“We know the prodigality of Nature. How many acorns are scattered for one that grows to an oak? And need she be more careful of her stars than of her acorns? If indeed she has no grander aim than to provide a home for her greatest experiment, Man, it would be just like her methods to scatter a million stars whereof one might haply achieve her purpose.”
― Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World

“In the world of physics we watch a shadowgraph performance of the drama of familiar life. The shadow of my elbow rests on the shadow table as the shadow ink flows over the shadow paper. It is all symbolic, and as a symbol the physicist leaves it. Then comes the alchemist Mind who transmutes the symbols. The sparsely spread nuclei of electric force become a tangible solid; their restless agitation becomes the warmth of summer; the octave of aethereal vibrations becomes a gorgeous rainbow. Nor does the alchemy stop here. In the transmuted world new significances arise which are scarcely to be traced in the world of symbols; so that it becomes a world of beauty and purpose - and, alas, suffering and evil.”
― Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World

“An individual is a four-dimensional objectof greatly elongated form; in ordinary language we say he has considerable extension in time and insignificant extension in space.”
― Sir Arthur Eddington, Nature of the Physical World

“Each of us is armed with this touchstone of actuality; by applying it we decide that this sorry world of ours is actual and Utopia is a dream. As our individual consciousnesses are different, so our touchstones are different; but fortunately they all agree in their indication of actuality - or at any rate those which agree are in sufficient majority to shut the others up in lunatic asylums.”
― Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World

“The simpler elements of the scientific world have no immediate counterparts in everyday experience; we use them to build things which have counterparts.”
― Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World