Arthur Eddington - The Nature of the Physical World (1928)

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Proof is the idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself.

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

Arthur Eddington
I think it incredible that the wider scheme of Nature which includes life and consciousness can be completely predetermined; yet I have not been able to form a satisfactory conception of any kind of law or causal sequence which shall be other than deterministic.

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

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

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
I am an Evolutionist, not a Multiplicationist. It seems rather stupid to keep doing the same thing over and over again.

Arthur Eddington
In any attempt to bridge the domains of experience belonging to the spiritual and physical sides of nature, time occupies the key position.

Arthur Eddington
The symbol A is not the counterpart of anything in familiar life. To the child the letter A would seem horribly abstract; so we give him a familiar conception along with it.

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
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 need scarcely add that the contemplation in natural science of a wider domain than the actual leads to a far better understanding of the actual.

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

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
Rather against my better judgment I will try to give a rough impression of the theory. It would probably be wiser to nail up over the door of the new quantum theory a notice, "Structural alterations in progress — No admittance except on business", and particularly to warn the doorkeeper to keep out prying philosophers.

Arthur Eddington
There can be no unique probability attached to any event or behavior: we can only speak of "probability in the light of certain given information", and the probability alters according to the extent of the information.

Arthur Eddington
It is obvious that the moon and the mathematician use different methods of finding the lunar orbit.

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

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
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
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
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
So far as broader characteristics are concerned we see in Nature what we look for or are equipped to look for.

Arthur Eddington