“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

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Arthur Stanley Eddington 105

British astrophysicist 1882–1944

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“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 (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

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“Symbolically it is the end, but looking behind the symbolism it is the beginning.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

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“SPAN ID=The_process_by>The process by means of which human beings can arbitrarily make certan things stand for other things may be called the symbolic process. Whenever two or more human beings can communicate with each other, they can, by agreement, make anything stand for anything. For example, here are two symbols:
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S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

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“The ultimate politeness in art consists of speaking only to those who are able to uncover and measure its relationships. Anything else is symbolic, and symbolism is merely transcendental imagery.”

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“Their thinking has a different aim: To create out of their work symbols for their own time, symbols that belong on the altars of a future spiritual religion, symbols behind which the technical heritage cannot be seen. Scorn and stupidity will be like roses in their path.”

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“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.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Science and the Unseen World (1929), VII, p.73

“Flags are symbols. Words are symbols. Steeples are symbols. Red lights in front of cathouses are symbols. The world don’t know it, but the world lives by symbols, some good, some as bad as flags.”

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“We have to build the spiritual world out of symbols taken from our own personality, as we build the scientific world out of the symbols of the mathematician.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Source: Science and the Unseen World (1929), Ch. VIII, p.82

“ Citizens of a modern society need […] more than that ordinary "common sense" which was defined by Stuart Chase as that which tells you that the world is flat. They need to be systematically aware of the powers and limitations of symbols, especially words, if they are to guard against being driven into complete bewilderment by the complexity of their semantic environment. The first of the principles governing symbols is this: The symbol is NOT the thing symbolized; the word is NOT the thing; the map is NOT the territory it stands for. (editor's link)”

S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

See also: The Meaning of Meaning (1923)
See also: Science and Sanity (1933)
Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), The Word Is Not the Thing, pp. 29-30

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Arthur Stanley Eddington 105

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