Arthur Eddington - Space Quotes

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There is no space without aether, and no aether which does not occupy space.

Arthur Eddington
[Experimental Physicist] Phys. I cannot imagine myself perceiving non-Euclidean space!
Math. Look at the reflection of the room in a polished doorknob, and imagine yourself one of the actors in what you see going on there.

Arthur Eddington
We can see that, the constant in the law of gravitation being fixed, there may be some upper limit to the amount of matter possible; as more and more matter is added in the distant parts, space curves round and ultimately closes; the process of adding more matter must stop, because there is no more space, and we can only return to the region already dealt with. But there seems nothing to prevent a defect of matter, leaving space unclosed. Some mechanism seems to be needed, whereby either gravitation creates matter, or all the matter in the universe conspires to define a law of gravitation.

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
Our ultimate analysis of space leads us not to a 'here' and a 'there', but to an extension such as that which relates 'here' and 'there' To put the conclusion rather crudely—space is not a lot of points close together; it is a lot of distances interlocked.

Arthur Eddington
Let us draw an arrow arbitrarily. If as we follow the arrow we find more and more of the random element in the world, then the arrow is pointing towards the future; if the random element decreases the arrow points towards the past…I shall use the phrase 'time's arrow' to express this one-way property of time which has no analogue in space.

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

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
An electron would not know how large it ought to be unless there existed independent lengths in space for it to measure itself against.

Arthur Eddington
The distinction between horizontal and vertical is not an illusion; and the man who thinks it is is likely to come to an untimely end. Yet we can not arrive at a comprehensive view of nature unless we combine horizontal and vertical dimensions into three dimensional space.

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

Arthur Eddington