Arthur Eddington Quotes

212 Sourced Quotes

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
My subject [astronomy] disperses the galaxies, but it unites the Earth.

Arthur Eddington
With fuller knowledge we should sweep away the references to probability and substitute the exact facts.

Arthur Eddington
Man is slightly nearer to the atom than to the star... From his central position he can survey the grandest works of Nature with the astronomer, or the minutest works with the physicist.

Arthur Eddington
If you take a pack of cards as it comes from the maker and shuffle it for a few minutes, all trace of the original systematic order disappears. The order will never come back however long you shuffle. Something has been done which cannot be undone, namely, the introduction of a random element in place of the arrangement.

Arthur Eddington
I do not think that the whole purpose of the Creation has been staked on the one planet where we live; and in the long run we cannot deem ourselves the only race that has been or will be gifted with the mystery of consciousness.

Arthur Eddington
The external world of physics has become a world of shadows.

Arthur Eddington
The great thing about time is that it goes on.

Arthur Eddington
We can scarcely describe the beauty of a landscape as non-existent when there is no conscious being to witness it; but it is through consciousness that we can attribute a meaning to it.

Arthur Eddington
It is probably true that the recent changes of scientific thought remove some of the obstacles to a reconciliation of religion with science; but this must be carefully distinguished from any proposal to base religion on scientific discovery. For my own part I am wholly opposed to any such attempt.

Arthur Eddington
The knowledge that has been attained [of the universe] shows only the more plainly how much there is to learn. The perplexities of to-day foreshadow the discoveries of the future.

Arthur Eddington
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
When we have taken together the sun and all the naked-eye stars and many hundreds of millions of telescopic stars, we have not reached the end of things; we have explored with one island - and oasis in the desert of space. Other islands lie beyond.

Arthur Eddington
I think there should be a law of Nature to prevent a star from behaving in this absurd way!

Arthur Eddington
Our conception of substance is only vivid so long as we do not face it. It begins to fade when we analyse it. We may dismiss many of its supposed attributes which are evidently projections of our sense-impressions outwards into the external world.

Arthur Eddington
I really cannot tell you anything about it, if you will not let me make measurements of any kind. Measurement is my only means of finding out about nature. I am not a metaphysicist.

Arthur Eddington
Our model of Nature... should be like an engine with movable parts. We need not fix the position of any one lever; that is to be adjusted from time to time as the latest observations indicate. The aim of the theorist is to know the train of wheels which the lever sets in motion — that binding of the parts which is the soul of the engine.

Arthur Eddington
We have certain preconceived ideas about location in space which have come down to us from ape-like ancestors.

Arthur Eddington
We walk the stage of life, performers of a drama for the benefit of the cosmic spectator. As the scene proceeds, he notices that the actors are growing smaller and the action quicker. When the last act opens the curtain rises on midgets rushing through their parts at frantic speed.

Arthur Eddington
The super-system of the galaxies is dispersing as a puff of smoke disperses. Sometimes I wonder whether there may not be a greater scale of existence of things, in which it is no more than a puff of smoke.

Arthur Eddington
There are two parties to every observation - the observed and the observer.

Arthur Eddington
The unanimity with which the galaxies are running away looks almost as though they had a pointed aversion to us. We wonder why we should be shunned as though our system were a plague spot in the universe.

Arthur Eddington
A reasoned theory is preferable to blind extrapolation.

Arthur Eddington
We have swept away the anti-chance from the field of our current physical problems, but we have not got rid of it. When some of us are so misguided as to try to get back milliards of years into the past we find the sweepings piled up high like a high wall, forming a boundary — a beginning of time — which we cannot climb over.

Arthur Eddington
Nature made nearly every possible mistake before she reached her greatest achievement, Man — or perhaps some would say her worst mistake of all.

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
One of our ancestors, taking arboreal exercise in the forest, failed to reach the bough intended and his hand closed on nothingness. The accident might well occasion philosophical reflections on the distinctions of substance and void - to say nothing of the phenomenon of gravity.

Arthur Eddington
It [the physical world is a thing; not like space, which is a mere negation; nor like time, which is — Heaven knows what!

Arthur Eddington
To imagine that Newton's great scientific reputation is tossing up and down in these latter-day revolutions is to confuse science with omniscience.

Arthur Eddington
"A fortuitous concourse of atoms" — that bugbear of the theologian — has a very harmless place in orthodox physics.

Arthur Eddington