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
thinking two study
We often think that when we have completed our study of one we know all about two, because 'two' is 'one and one.' We forget that we still have to make a study of 'and.'
feet profound mind
We have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind has put into nature. We have found a strange foot-print on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origin. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the foot-print. And Lo! it is our own.
book science understanding
The understanding between a non-technical writer and his reader is that he shall talk more or less like a human being and not like an Act of Parliament. I take it that the aim of such books must be to convey exact thought in inexact language... he can never succeed without the co-operation of the reader.
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.
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.
law time-management supreme
Time is the supreme Law of nature.
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.
ocean science engineering
An ocean traveler has even more vividly the impression that the ocean is made of waves than that it is made of water.
stars flower petals
You cannot disturb the tiniest petal of a flower without the troubling of a distant star.
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 future simple
It is reasonable to hope that in the not too distant future we shall be competent to understand so simple a thing as a star.