“It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.”
New Pathways in Science (1935) Ch. V Indeterminacy and Quantum Theory, p. 105
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Arthur Stanley Eddington 105
British astrophysicist 1882–1944Related quotes
Source: An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition), Chapter XV, Markov Chains, p. 420.
“It is dangerous to attach probability zero to anything other than a logical impossibility.”
5. The Rules of Probability. p. 64.
Understanding Uncertainty (2006)
Quote about the computerized estimates of the end of the world. Cited in: Ian Murray (1972) " Workers told of peril of technology http://www.kwilliam-kapp.de/pdf/Kapp%20in%20NYT%2072.pdf". In: The Times, April 16, 1972
Principles of Modern Chemistry (7th ed., 2012), Ch. 5 : Quantum Mechanics and Atomic Structure

On his education at MIT.
Nobel Prize autobiography (1998)
Context: I learned about X-ray diffraction, neutron scattering, raman scattering, infrared absorption spectroscopy, heat capacity, transport, time-dependent transport, magnetic resonance, electron diffraction, electron energy loss spectroscopy — all the experimental techniques that constitute the eyes and ears of modern solid state physics. As this occurred I slowly became disillusioned with the reductionist ideal of physics, for it was completely clear that the outcome of these experiments was almost always impossible to predict from first principles, yet was right and meaningful and certainly regulated by the same microscopic laws that work in atoms. Only many years later did I finally understand that this truth, which seems so natural to solid state physicists because they confront experiments so frequently, is actually quite alien to other branches of physics and is vigorously repudiated by many scientists on the grounds that things not amenable to reductionist thinking are not physics.

How Dangerous Are Atomic Weapons?, 1947