Arthur Eddington Quotes

212 Sourced Quotes

It is true that the whole scientific inquiry starts from the familiar world and in the end it must return to the familiar world; but the part of the journey over which the physicist has charge is in foreign territory.

Arthur Eddington
If our so-called facts are changing shadows, they are shadows cast by the light of constant truth. So too in religion we are repelled by that confident theological doctrine... but we need not turn aside from the measure of light that comes into our experience showing us a Way through the unseen world.

Arthur Eddington
In any attempt to bridge the domains of experience belonging to the spiritual and physical sides of nature, time occupies the key position.

Arthur Eddington
Consciousness is not wholly, nor even primarily a device for receiving sense-impressions.... there is another outlook than the scientific one, because in practice a more transcendental outlook is almost universally admitted.... who does not prize these moments that reveal to us the poetry of existence?

Arthur Eddington
In science we sometimes have convictions as to the right solution of a problem which we cherish but cannot justify; we are influenced by some innate sense of the fitness of things.

Arthur Eddington
The scientific answer is relevant so far as concerns the sense-impressions... For the rest the human spirit must turn to the unseen world to which it itself belongs.

Arthur Eddington
If indeed, the subatomic energy in the stars is being freely used to maintain their great furnaces, it seems to bring a little nearer to fulfillment our dream of controlling this latent power for the well-being of the human race — or for its suicide.

Arthur Eddington
Philosophically the notion of a beginning of Nature is repugnant to me.

Arthur Eddington
There can be no unique probability attached to any event or behavior: we can only speak of "probability in the light of certain given information", and the probability alters according to the extent of the information.

Arthur Eddington
Something unknown is doing we don't know what.

Arthur Eddington
In the world of physics we watch a shadowgraph performance of the drama of familiar life. The shadow of my elbow rests on the shadow table as the shadow ink flows over the shadow paper. It is all symbolic, and as a symbol the physicist leaves it.... The frank realization that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances.

Arthur Eddington
It is perhaps difficult sufficiently to emphasise Seeking without disparaging its correlative Finding. But I must risk this, for Finding has a clamorous voice that proclaims its own importance; it is definite and assured, something that we can take hold of —that is what we all want, or think we want. Yet how transitory it proves.
The finding of one generation will not serve for the next. It tarnishes rapidly except it be reserved with an ever-renewed spirit of seeking.

Arthur Eddington
Proof is an idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself. In physics we are generally content to sacrifice before the lesser shrine of plausibility.

Arthur Eddington
The solar system is not the typical product of development of a star; it is not even a common variety of development; it is a freak.

Arthur Eddington
A rainbow described in the symbolism of physics is a band of aethereal vibrations arranged in systematic order of wavelength from about -000040 cm to -000072 cm.

Arthur Eddington
The time has gone by when the physicists prescribed dictatorially what theories the geologist might be permitted to consider.

Arthur Eddington
The future is not predetermined, and Nature has no need to protect herself from giving away plans which she has not yet made.

Arthur Eddington
Events do not happen; they are just there, and we come across them.

Arthur Eddington
That which in the physical world shadows the nonsense in the mind affords no ground for its condemnation. In a world of aether and electrons we might perhaps encounter nonsense; we could not encounter damned nonsense.

Arthur Eddington
We can now form some sort of picture of the inside of a star — a hurly burly of atoms, electrons and aether-waves. Disheveled atoms tear along at a hundred miles a second, their normal array of electrons being torn from them in the scrimmage. The lost electrons are speeding a hundred times faster to find new resting places.

Arthur Eddington