“Mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience; all else is remote inference.”
Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist
Science and the Unseen World (1929), III, p.37
“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 — inference either intuitive or deliberate.”
Source: The Nature of the Physical World (1928), Ch. 13 Reality
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Do you have more details about the quote "It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept the view that the substratum of everything is of mental char…" by Arthur Stanley Eddington?
Arthur Stanley Eddington105
British astrophysicist 1882–1944Related quotes
Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer
Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)
Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist
On the game of bridge, as quoted in Forbes (2 June 1997); also quoted in The Warren Buffett Portfolio: Mastering the Power of the Focus Investment Strategy (2000), p. 112
Context: It’s a game of a million inferences. There are a lot of things to draw inferences from — cards played and not played. These inferences tell you something about the probabilities. It's got to be the best intellectual exercise out there. You're seeing through new situations every ten minutes. Bridge is about weighing gain/loss ratios. You're doing calculations all the time.
“The substratum of mental activity must be sought only in ponderable matter.”
Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician
Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)
“Sometimes the character of the mistress is inferred from the dress of her maids.”
Interdum animus dominarum ex ancillarum habitu iudicatur.
Jerome (345–420) Catholic saint and Doctor of the Church
Letter 54
Letters
Gilbert Ryle book The Concept of Mind
Source: The Concept of Mind (1949), Ch. II: Knowing How and Knowing That, (10) Solipsism
“But no one, no matter how intelligent, could make good inferences from bad data.”
Charles Sheffield book Transcendence
Source: The Heritage Universe, Transcendence (1992), Chapter 11 (p. 126)
Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001) American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist
Source: 1980s and later, "Why a diagram is (sometimes) worth ten thousand words," (1987), p. 71, as cited in: Bauer, Malcolm I., and Philip N. Johnson-Laird. " How diagrams can improve reasoning http://mentalmodels.princeton.edu/papers/1993diags%26reasoning.pdf." Psychological Science 4.6 (1993): 372-378.
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics (1927)
1920s