Arthur Stanley Eddington: Trending quotes

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“If in a community of the blind one man suddenly received the gift of sight, he would have much to tell which would not be at all scientific.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

Source: Science and the Unseen World (1929), Ch. VIII, p.79

“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 but to collapse in deepest humiliation.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

Source: The Nature of the Physical World (1928), Ch. 4 The Running-Down of the Universe

“The mathematics is not there till we put it there.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

The Philosophy of Physical Science (1938)

“At terrestrial temperatures matter has complex properties which are likely to prove most difficult to unravel; but it is reasonable to hope that in the not too distant future we shall be competent to understand so simple a thing as a star.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

The Internal Constitution of Stars, Cambridge. (1926). ISBN 0521337089
Paraphrased variants: It is sound judgment to hope that in the not too distant future we shall be competent to understand so simple a thing as a star.
It is not too much to hope that in the not too distant future we shall be competent to understand so simple a thing as a star.

“If the kind of controversy which so often springs up between modernism and traditionalism in religion were applied to more commonplace affairs of life we might see some strange results. …It arises, let us say, from a passage in an obituary notice which mentions that the deceased had loved to watch the sunsets from his peaceful country home.. …it is forgotten that what the deceased man looked out for each evening was an experience and not a creed.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

Science and the Unseen World (1929)

“Ninety-nine people out of a hundred have not seriously considered what they mean by the term "exist" nor how a thing qualifies itself to be labelled real.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

Science and the Unseen World (1929)

“The chairs and tables around us which broadcast to us incessantly those signals which affect our sight and touch cannot in their nature be like unto the signals or to the sensations which the signals awake at the end of their journey.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

III, p.36
Science and the Unseen World (1929)

“I think that science would never have achieved much progress if it had always imagined unknown obstacles hidden round every corner. At least we may peer gingerly round the corner, and perhaps we shall find there is nothing very formidable after all.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

Stars and Atoms (1927); lecture 1

“Materialism in its literal sense is long since dead. …It is …belief in the universal dominance of scientific law which is nowadays generally meant by materialism.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

Science and the Unseen World (1929)

“Our environment may and should mean something towards us which is not to be measured with the tools of the physicist or described by the metrical symbols of the mathematician.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

IV, p.47
Science and the Unseen World (1929)

“There once was a brainy baboon,
Who always breathed down a bassoon,
For he said, "It appears
That in billions of years
I shall certainly hit on a tune."”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

New Pathways in Science (1935) Ch. IV The End of the World, p. 62

“[Experimental Physicist] Phys. I cannot imagine myself perceiving non-Euclidean space!
Math. Look at the reflection of the room in a polished doorknob, and imagine yourself one of the actors in what you see going on there.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

p, 125
Space, Time and Gravitation (1920)

“Natural law is not applicable to the unseen world behind the symbols, because it is unadapted to anything except symbols, and its perfection is a perfection of symbolic linkage. You cannot apply such a scheme to the parts of our personality which are not measurable by symbols any more than you can extract the square root of a sonnet.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

Source: Science and the Unseen World (1929), Ch. V, p.53

“The quest of the absolute leads into the four-dimensional world.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

Source: The Nature of the Physical World (1928), Ch. 2 Relativity

“Proof is the idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

Source: The Nature of the Physical World (1928), Ch. 15 Science and Mysticism

“Spherical space is not very easy to imagine. We have to think of the properties of the surface of a sphere—the two-dimensional case—and try to conceive something similar applied to three-dimensional space. Stationing ourselves at a point let us draw a series of spheres of successively greater radii. The surface of a sphere of radius r should be proportional to r2; but in spherical space the areas of the more distant spheres begin to fall below the proper proportion. There is not so much room out there as we expected to find. Ultimately we reach a sphere of biggest possible area, and beyond it the areas begin to decrease. The last sphere of all shrinks to a point—our antipodes. Is there nothing beyond this? Is there a kind of boundary there? There is nothing beyond and yet there is no boundary. On the earth's surface there is nothing beyond our own antipodes but there is no boundary there.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

p, 125
Space, Time and Gravitation (1920)

“Consciousness is not sharply defined, but fades into sub-consciousness; and beyond that we must postulate something indefinite but yet continuous with our mental nature. This I take it be the world-stuff.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

The Nature of the Physical World (1928)

“We do not argue with the critic who urges that the stars are not hot enough for this process; we tell him to go and find a hotter place.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

The Internal Constitution of Stars, Cambridge. (1926). ISBN 0521337089

“Physics most strongly insists that its methods do not penetrate behind the symbolism.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

III, p.36
Science and the Unseen World (1929)

“Phys. I know that it is often a help to represent pressure and volume as height and width on paper; and so geometry may have applications to the theory of gases. But is it not going rather far to say that geometry can deal directly with these things and is not necessarily concerned with lengths in space?
Math. No. Geometry is nowadays largely analytical, so that in form as well as in effect, it deals with variables of an unknown nature. …It is literally true that I do not want to know the significance of the variables x, y, z, t that I am discussing. …
Phys. Yours is a strange subject. You told us at the beginning that you are not concerned as to whether your propositions are true, and now you tell us you do not even care to know what you are talking about.
Math.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

That is an excellent description of Pure Mathematics, which has already been given by an eminent mathematician <nowiki>[</nowiki>Bertrand Russell<nowiki>]</nowiki>.
Space, Time and Gravitation (1920)