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
knowledge math idols
Proof is an idol before which the mathematician tortures himself.
knowledge theory amount
Something unknown is doing we don't know what-that is what our theory amounts to.
knowledge waiting lists
There was a time when we wanted to be told what an electron is. The question was never answered. No familiar conceptions can be woven around the electron; it belongs to the waiting list.
knowledge law mind
Unless the structure of the nucleus has a surprise in store for us, the conclusion seems plain-there is nothing in the whole system if laws of physics that cannot be deduced unambiguously from epistemological considerations. An intelligence, unacquainted with our universe, but acquainted with the system of thought by which the human mind interprets to itself the contents of its sensory experience, and should be able to attain all the knowledge of physics that we have attained by experiment.
science thinking path
[When thinking about the new relativity and quantum theories] I have felt a homesickness for the paths of physical science where there are ore or less discernible handrails to keep us from the worst morasses of foolishness.
science bottles atoms
The electron, as it leaves the atom, crystallises out of Schrödinger's mist like a genie emerging from his bottle.
falling-in-love love-is men
Falling in love is one of the activities forbidden that tiresome person, the consistently reasonable man.
reality
The word reality frightens me.
science atoms levels
But it is necessary to insist more strongly than usual that what I am putting before you is a model-the Bohr model atom-because later I shall take you to a profounder level of representation in which the electron instead of being confined to a particular locality is distributed in a sort of probability haze all over the atom.
arrows physics entropy
So far as physics is concerned, time's arrow is a property of entropy alone.
perfect impossible physics
It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.
law mind may
It is one thing for the human mind to extract from the phenomena of nature the laws which it has itself put into them; it may be a far harder thing to extract laws over which it has no control. It is even possible that laws which have not their origin in the mind may be irrational, and we can never succeed in formulating them.
science causes force
Electrical force is defined as something which causes motion of electrical charge; an electrical charge is something which exerts electric force.
grace events happens
Events do not happen; they are just there, and we come across them.