Arthur Eddington - Knowledge Quotes

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I ask you to look both ways. For the road to a knowledge of the stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom has been reached through the stars.

Arthur Eddington
It is an astonishing feat of deciphering that we should have been able to infer an orderly scheme of natural knowledge from such indirect communication.

Arthur Eddington
There is only one law of Nature-the second law of thermodynamics-which recognises a distinction between past and future more profound than the difference of plus and minus. It stands aloof from all the rest.... It opens up a new province of knowledge, namely, the study of organisation; and it is in connection with organisation that a direction of time-flow and a distinction between doing and undoing appears for the first time.

Arthur Eddington
The mind-stuff is not spread in space and time. But we must presume that in some other way or aspect it can be differentiated into parts. Only here and there does it arise to the level of consciousness, but from such islands proceeds all knowledge. The latter includes our knowledge of the physical world.

Arthur Eddington
There are no purely observational facts about the heavenly bodies. Astronomical measurements are, without exception, measurements of phenomena occurring in a terrestrial observatory or station; it is only by theory that they are translated into knowledge of a universe outside.

Arthur Eddington
We have discovered that it is actually an aid in the search for knowledge to understand the nature of the knowledge we seek.

Arthur Eddington
Let the observer place himself so that he is, to the best of his knowledge, at rest. If he is a normal human being, he will seat himself in an arm-chair; if he is an astronomer, he will place himself on the sun or at the centre of the stellar universe.

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

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
An addition to knowledge is won at the expense of an addition to ignorance. It is hard to empty the well of Truth with a leaky bucket.

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