“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

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British astrophysicist 1882–1944

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