Arthur Stanley Eddington Quotes (105 quotes, page 2)

“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.

Hope , Star , Understanding , Distant

“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)

Love , Life , Peace , Religion

“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)

People

“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

Imagination , Thinking , Science

“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)

Law , Sense , Universe , Dead

“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

Appearance

“[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)

Imagination

“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)

Imagination , Thinking , Distant , Success

“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

Star

“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)

“The whole subject-matter of exact science consists of pointer readings and similar indications.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

Source: The Nature of the Physical World (1928), Ch. 10 The New Quantum Theory

Science , Reading

“We should not argue with the blind man who maintained that sight was an illusion to which some abnormal people were subject. Therefore in speaking of religious experience I do not attempt to prove the existence of religious experience…”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

Source: Science and the Unseen World (1929), Ch. IV, p.48-49

People

“The laws of logic do not prescribe the way our minds think; they prescribe the way our minds ought to think.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

V, p.55
Science and the Unseen World (1929)

Law , Way , Thinking

“Theological or anti-theological argument to prove or disprove the existence of a deity seems to me to occupy itself largely with skating among the difficulties caused by our making a fetish of this word”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

existence
Science and the Unseen World (1929)

“The universe is of the nature of a thought or sensation in a universal Mind… To put the conclusion crudely — the stuff of the world is mind-stuff. As is often the way with crude statements, I shall have to explain that by "mind" I do not exactly mean mind and by "stuff" I do not at all mean stuff. Still that is about as near as we can get to the idea in a simple phrase. The mind-stuff of the world is something more general than our individual conscious minds; but we may think of its nature as not altogether foreign to feelings in our consciousness… Having granted this, the mental activity of the part of world constituting ourselves occasions no great surprise; it is known to us by direct self-knowledge, and we do not explain it away as something other than we know it to be — or rather, it knows itself to be.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

Source: The Nature of the Physical World (1928), Ch. 13 Reality

World , Way , Feeling , Idea

“Even if religion and morality are dismissed as illusion, the word "Ought" still has sway.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

Science and the Unseen World (1929)

Religion

“As truly as the mystic, the scientist is following a light; and it is not a false or an inferior light.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

IV, p.41
Science and the Unseen World (1929)

Light , Falseness

“Schrödinger's wave-mechanics is not a physical theory, but a dodge — and a very good dodge too.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

The Nature of the Physical World (1928)

“Accordingly the primordial state of things which I picture is an even distribution of protons and electrons, extremely diffuse and filling all (spherical) space, remaining nearly balanced for an exceedingly long time until its inherent instability prevails. We shall see later that the density of this distribution can be calculated; it was about one proton and electron per litre. There is no hurry for anything to begin to happen. But at last small irregular tendencies accumulate, and evolution gets under way. The first stage is the formation of condensations ultimately to become the galaxies; this, as we have seen, started off an expansion, which then automatically increased in speed until it is now manifested to us in the recession of the spiral nebulae.

As the matter drew closer together in the condensations, the various evolutionary processes followed—evolution of stars, evolution of the more complex elements, evolution of planets and life.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

pp. 56–57 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KHyV4-2EyrUC&pg=PA56
The Expanding Universe (1933)

Life , Way , Star , Time

“If our so-called facts are changing shadows, they are shadows cast by the light of constant truth. So too in religion we are repelled by that confident theological doctrine … but we need not turn aside from the measure of light that comes into our experience showing us a Way through the unseen world.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

Science and the Unseen World (1929)

Confidence , Religion , Light , Truth

“Physical science comes nearest to that complete system of exact knowledge which all sciences have before them as an ideal. Some fall far short of it. The physicist who inveighs against the lack of coherence and the indefiniteness of theological theories, will probably speak not much less harshly of the theories of biology and psychology. They also fail to come up to his standard of methodology. On the other side of him stands an even superior being — the pure mathematician — who has no high opinion of the methods of deduction used in physics, and does not hide his disapproval of the laxity of what is accepted as proof in physical science. And yet somehow knowledge grows in all these branches. Wherever a way opens we are impelled to seek by the only methods that can be devised for that particular opening, not over-rating the security of our finding, but conscious that in this activity of mind we are obeying the light that is in our nature.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

Science and the Unseen World (1929)

Light , Nature , Knowledge , Way

“It remains a real world if there is a background to the symbols — an unknown quantity which the mathematical symbol x stands for. We think we are not wholly cut off from this background. It is to this background that our own personality and consciousness belong, and those spiritual aspects of our nature not to be described by any symbolism … to which mathematical physics has hitherto restricted itself.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

Science and the Unseen World (1929)

Personality , Nature , Thinking , Mathematics

“If to-day you ask a physicist what he has finally made out the æther or the electron to be, the answer will not be a description in terms of billiard balls or fly-wheels or anything concrete; he will point instead to a number of symbols and a set of mathematical equations which they satisfy. What do the symbols stand for? The mysterious reply is given that physics is indifferent to that; it has no means of probing beneath the symbolism. To understand the phenomena of the physical world it is necessary to know the equations which the symbols obey but not the nature of that which is being symbolised. … this newer outlook has modified the challenge from the material to the spiritual world.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

Science and the Unseen World (1929)

Understanding , Indifference , Nature , Mathematics

“The mind-stuff is not spread in space and time. But we must presume that in some other way or aspect it can be differentiated into parts. Only here and there does it arise to the level of consciousness, but from such islands proceeds all knowledge. The latter includes our knowledge of the physical world.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

Source: The Nature of the Physical World (1928), Ch. 13 : Reality

Time , Knowledge , Way , World

“Never mind what two tons refers to. What is it? How has it entered in so definite a way into our exprerience? Two tons is the reading of the pointer when the elephant was placed on a weighing machine. Let us pass on. … And so we see that the poetry fades out of the problem, and by the time the serious application of exact science begins we are left only with pointer readings.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

Source: The Nature of the Physical World (1928), Ch. 12 : Pointer Readings

Time , Reading , Problem , Way

“A star is drawing on some vast reservoir of energy by means unknown to us. This reservoir can scarcely be other than the sub-atomic energy which, it is known, exists abundantly in all matter; we sometimes dream that man will one day learn to release it and use it for his service. The store is well-nigh inexhaustible, if only it could be tapped.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

The Internal Constitution of Stars (1926)

Drawing , Dreams , Learning , Star

“All change is relative. The universe is expanding relatively to our common material standards; our material standards are shrinking relatively to the size of the universe. The theory of the "expanding universe" might also be called the theory of the "shrinking atom."”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

[…] Let us then take the whole universe as our standard of constancy, and adopt the view of a cosmic being whose body is composed of intergalactic spaces and swells as they swell. Or rather we must now say it keeps the same size, for he will not admit that it is he who has changed. Watching us for a few thousand million years, he sees us shrinking; atoms, animals, planets, even the galaxies, all shrink alike; only the intergalactic spaces remain the same. The earth spirals round the sun in an ever‑decreasing orbit. It would be absurd to treat its changing revolution as a constant unit of time. The cosmic being will naturally relate his units of length and time so that the velocity of light remains constant. Our years will then decrease in geometrical progression in the cosmic scale of time. On that scale man's life is becoming briefer; his threescore years and ten are an ever‑decreasing allowance. Owing to the property of geometrical progressions an infinite number of our years will add up to a finite cosmic time; so that what we should call the end of eternity is an ordinary finite date in the cosmic calendar. But on that date the universe has expanded to infinity in our reckoning, and we have shrunk to nothing in the reckoning of the cosmic being.
We walk the stage of life, performers of a drama for the benefit of the cosmic spectator. As the scenes proceed he notices that the actors are growing smaller and the action quicker. When the last act opens the curtain rises on midget actors rushing through their parts at frantic speed. Smaller and smaller. Faster and faster. One last microscopic blurr of intense agitation. And then nothing.

pp. 90–92 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KHyV4-2EyrUC&pg=PA90
The Expanding Universe (1933)

Universe , Change

“In physics we have outgrown archer and apple-pie definitions of the fundamental symbols. To a request to explain what an electron really is supposed to be we can only answer, "It is part of the A B C of physics."”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

The external world of physics has thus become a world of shadows. In removing our illusions we have removed the substance, for indeed we have seen that substance is one of the greatest of our illusions. Later perhaps we may inquire whether in our zeal to cut out all that is unreal we may not have used the knife too ruthlessly. Perhaps, indeed, reality is a child which cannot survive without its nurse illusion. But if so, that is of little concern to the scientist, who has good and sufficient reasons for pursuing his investigations in the world of shadows and is content to leave to the philosopher the determination of its exact status in regard to reality. 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.
The frank realisation that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances.

Introduction
The Nature of the Physical World (1928)

Parting

“The writings of Einstein, Minkowski, Hilbert, Lorentz, Weyl, Robb, and others, have provided the groundwork; in the give and take of debate with friends and correspondents, the extensive ramifications have gradually appeared.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

Space, Time and Gravitation (1920)

Appearance

“A non-mathematical presentation has necessary limitations; and the reader who wishes to learn how certain exact results follow from Einstein's, or even Newton's, law of gravitation is bound to seek the reasons in a mathematical treatise. ...[T]he geometry of relativity in its perfect harmony expresses a truth... which my bowdlerised version misses.
But the mind is not content to leave scientific Truth in a dry husk of mathematical symbols, and demands that it shall be alloyed with familiar images.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

Space, Time and Gravitation (1920)

Law , Learning , Perfection , Truth

“By his theory of relativity Albert Einstein has provoked a revolution of thought in physical science. ...Physical space and time are found to be closely bound... with... motion of the observer; and only an amorphous combination of the two is left... It is my aim to give an account of this work without introducing anything very technical in... mathematics, physics, or philosophy. ...[T]he task is one of interpreting a clear-cut theory... although perhaps not everyone would accept the author's views of its meaning.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington

Space, Time and Gravitation (1920)