“It remains a real world if there is a background to the symbols”
Science and the Unseen World (1929)
Context: 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.<!--III, p.37-38
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Arthur Stanley Eddington 105
British astrophysicist 1882–1944Related quotes

“The real is what resists symbolization absolutely.”
Source: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Freud's Papers on Technique

“We, the Poles, do not understand war as a symbol but as a real fight.”
in World of Tanks: 1 Polski Odrodzony Batalion Pancerny im. gen. Sikorskiego http://worldoftanks.eu/community/clans/500019796-1POBP/ and Cytatybaza: Władysław Sikorski http://cytatybaza.pl/autorzy/wladyslaw-sikorski.html
Original: My Polacy rozumiemy wojnę nie jak symbol, lecz jako prawdziwą walkę.

Media as the New Nature, 1969, p. 14
1960s

Science and the Unseen World (1929)
Context: 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.<!--III, p.37-38