Arthur Eddington - Physics Quotes

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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
I am afraid the knockabout comedy of modern atomic physics is not very tender towards our aesthetic ideals. The stately drama of stellar evolution turns out to be more like the hair-breadth escapades in the films. The music of the spheres has a painful suggestion of — jazz.

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
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
However successful the theory of a four-dimensional world may be, it is difficult to ignore a voice inside us which whispers "At the back of your mind, you know that a fourth dimension is all nonsense." I fancy that that voice must often have had a busy time in the past history of physics.... Let us not be beguiled by this voice. It is discredited.

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
I have not suggested that religion and free will can be deduced from modern physics...

Arthur Eddington
Nowadays whenever enthusiasts meet together to discuss theoretical physics the talk sooner or later turns in a certain direction. You leave them conversing on their special problems or the latest discoveries; but return after an hour and it is any odds that they will have reached an allengrossing topic - the desperate state of their ignorance.

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

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

Arthur Eddington
In most modern theories of physics probability seems to have replaced aether as "the nominative of the verb 'to undulate'."

Arthur Eddington
Between physics and philosophy there lies a debatable territory which I shall call scientific epistemology.

Arthur Eddington
To those who have any intimate acquaintance with the laws of chemistry and physics the suggestion that the spiritual world could be ruled by laws of allied character is as preposterous as the suggestion that a nation could be ruled by laws like the laws of grammar.

Arthur Eddington
Whatever may be time de jure, the Astronomer Royal's time is time de facto. His time permeates every corner of physics.

Arthur Eddington
So far as physics is concerned, time's arrow is a property of entropy alone.

Arthur Eddington
Wind, earthquake, fire—meteorology, seismology, physics—pass in review, as we have been reviewing the natural forces of evolution; the Lord was not in them. Afterwards, a stirring, an awakening in the organ of the brain, a voice which asks "What doest thou here?"

Arthur Eddington
Physics most strongly insists that its methods do not penetrate behind the symbolism.

Arthur Eddington
In the most modern theories of physics probability seems to have replaced aether as 'the nominative of the verb to undulate '

Arthur Eddington
It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.

Arthur Eddington
To the pure geometer the radius of curvature is an incidental characteristic — like the grin of the Cheshire cat. To the physicist it is an indispensable characteristic. It would be going too far to say that to the physicist the cat is merely incidental to the grin. Physics is concerned with interrelatedness such as the interrelatedness of cats and grins. In this case the "cat without a grin" and the "grin without a cat" are equally set aside as purely mathematical phantasies.

Arthur Eddington
If today you ask a physicist what he has finally made out the aether or the electron to be, the answer will not be a description in terms of billiard balls or fly-wheels or anything concrete; he will point instead to a number of symbols and a set of mathematical equations which they satisfy. What do the symbols stand for? The mysterious reply is given that physics is indifferent to that; it has no means of probing beneath the symbolism. To understand the phenomena of the physical world it is necessary to know the equations which the symbols obey but not the nature of that which is being symbolised.... this newer outlook has modified the challenge from the material to the spiritual world.

Arthur Eddington
Physics has in the main contented itself with studying the abridged edition of the book of nature.

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 remains a real world if there is a background to the symbols—an unknown quantity which the mathematical symbol x stands for. We think we are not wholly cut off from this background. It is to this background that our own personality and consciousness belong, and those spiritual aspects of our nature not to be described by any symbolism... to which mathematical physics has hitherto restricted itself.

Arthur Eddington