Arthur Eddington Quotes

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An electron could never decide how large it ought to be unless there existed some length independent of itself for it to compare itself with.

Arthur Eddington
Results of measurements are the subject-matter of physics; and the moral of the theory of relativity is that we can only comprehend what the physical quantities stand for if we first comprehend what they are.

Arthur Eddington
If we are to discern controlling laws of Nature not dictated by the mind it would seem necessary to escape as far as possible from the cut-and-dried framework into which the mind is so ready to force everything that it experiences.

Arthur Eddington
It is natural that our senses should have developed faculties for perceiving some of these intrinsic distinctions of the possible states of the world around us. I prefer to think of matter and energy, not as agents causing the degrees of curvature of the world, but as parts of our perceptions of the existence of the curvature.

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

Arthur Eddington
If there were no matter in the universe, the law of gravitation would fall to the ground.

Arthur Eddington
Verily, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a scientific man to pass through a door. And whether the door be barn door or church door it might be wiser that he should consent to be an ordinary man and walk in rather that wait till all the difficulties involved in a really scientific ingress are resolved.

Arthur Eddington
When a physicist refers to curvature of space he at once falls under suspicion of talking metaphysics.

Arthur Eddington
I have much to fear from the expert philosophical critic, but I am filled with even more apprehension at the thought of readers who may look to see whether the book is "on the side of the angels" and judge its trustworthiness accordingly.

Arthur Eddington
We commonly have had to deal with probabilities which arise through ignorance. With fuller knowledge we should sweep away the references to probability and substitute the exact facts. But it appears to be a fundamental point in Schrodinger's theory that his probabilities are not to be replaced in that way.

Arthur Eddington
It is curious that the philosophical denial of absolute motion is readily accepted, whilst the denial of absolute simultaneity appears to many people revolutionary.

Arthur Eddington
I would rather believe in ghosts than in hyperbolic meteors.

Arthur Eddington
The running away of the galaxies does not mean that they have a kind of aversion from us.

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
The stately drama of stellar evolution turns out to be more like the hair-breadth escapades of the films. The music of the spheres has almost a suggestion of—jazz.

Arthur Eddington
Accidental truth of a conclusion is no compensation for erroneous deduction.

Arthur Eddington
Science aims at constructing a world which shall be symbolic of the world of commonplace experience.

Arthur Eddington
The mind is not content to leave scientific Truth in a dry husk of mathematical symbols, and demands that it shall be alloyed with familiar images. The mathematician, who handles x so lightly, may fairly be asked to state, not indeed the inscrutable meaning of x in nature, but the meaning which x conveys to him.

Arthur Eddington
That queer quantity "infinity" is the very mischief, and no rational physicist should have anything to do with it. Perhaps that is why mathematicians represent it by a sign like a love-knot.

Arthur Eddington
In the vast expanse of the heavens the traffic is so thin that a star may reasonably count on travelling for the whole of its long life without serious risk of collision. The risk is negligible for any individual star; but ten thousand million stars in our own system and more in the systems beyond afford a wide playground for chance.

Arthur Eddington
I shall mix together results which may prove to be of scientific importance and results that are probably no more than mathematical curiosities. The plan is to set down anything that seems worthy of note, even though we cannot see that it has any ultimate importance in nature.

Arthur Eddington
All change is relative. The universe is expanding relatively to our common material standards; our material standards are shrinking relatively to the size of the universe. The theory of the "expanding universe" might also be called the theory of the "shrinking atom".

Arthur Eddington
It is by looking into our own nature that we first discover the failure of the physical universe to be co-extensive with our experience of reality. The "something to which truth matters" must surely have a place in reality what ever definition of reality we may adopt.

Arthur Eddington
Distance and duration are the most fundamental terms in physics; velocity, acceleration, force, energy, and so on, all depend on them; and we can scarcely make any statement in physics without direct or indirect reference to them.

Arthur Eddington
I admit I am hazy about strict definitions. There is not time for everything; and there are so many interesting things to find out in physics, which take up my attention.

Arthur Eddington
The recent tendencies of science do... take us to an eminence from which we can look down into the deep waters of philosophy; and if I rashly plunge into them, it is not because I have confidence in my powers of swimming, but to try to show that the water is really deep.

Arthur Eddington
Yea, the first Morning of Creation wrote What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read.

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
There was once a brainy baboon, Who always breathed down a bassoon, For he said "It appears That in billions of years, I shall certainly hit on a tune."

Arthur Eddington
With this brief glance at the scenery that we pass we shall plunge into the deep interior [of a star] - where the eye cannot penetrate, but where it is yet possible by scientific reasoning to learn a great deal about the conditions.

Arthur Eddington