Arthur Eddington
Arthur Eddington
Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington OM FRSwas an English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician of the early 20th century who did his greatest work in astrophysics. He was also a philosopher of science and a popularizer of science. The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the luminosity of stars, or the radiation generated by accretion onto a compact object, is named in his honor...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth28 December 1882
too-much theory results
Do not put too much confidence in experimental results until they have been confirmed by theory.
form primitive
It is a primitive form of thought that things exist or do not exist.
order genuine should
Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of Nature is repugnant to me ... I should like to find a genuine loophole.
four world quests
The quest of the absolute leads into the four-dimensional world.
cat would-be physics
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.
shuffling
Shuffling is the only thing which Nature cannot undo.
science verbs physics
In the most modern theories of physics probability seems to have replaced aether as "the nominative of the verb 'to undulate'."
law time-management supreme
Time is the supreme Law of nature.
nature light intellectual
Whether in the intellectual pursuits of science or in the mystical pursuits of the spirit, the light beckons ahead, and the purpose surging in our nature responds.
thinking mathematical-logic two
We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and'.
stars important looks
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.
book writing army
If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum.
responsibility may truth-is
Whatever else there may be in our nature, responsibility toward truth is one of its attributes.
thinking ideas design
The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory.