Arthur Eddington Quotes

Quotes about:

• The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory.

  Arthur Eddington

  Thinking, Ideas, Design

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• You cannot disturb the tiniest petal of a flower without the troubling of a distant star.

  Arthur Eddington

  Stars, Flower, Petals

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• The physical world is entirely abstract and without actuality apart from its linkage to consciousness.

  Arthur Eddington

  World, Consciousness, Abstract

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• If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations - then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation - well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

  Arthur Eddington

  Hope, Science, Errors

  "The Nature of the Physical World" by Arthur Eddington, (Ch. 4), 1928.

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• 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'.

  Arthur Eddington

  Learning, Math, Thinking

  "A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations" by Alan L. Mackay, (p. 79), 1991.

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• Something unknown is doing we don't know what-that is what our theory amounts to.

  Arthur Eddington

  Knowledge, Science, Theory

  Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (1933). “The nature of the physical world”

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• Events do not happen; they are just there, and we come across them.

  Arthur Eddington

  Grace, Events, Happens

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• Whatever else there may be in our nature, responsibility toward truth is one of its attributes.

  Arthur Eddington

  Truth, Responsibility, May

  Sir Arthur Eddington (2013). “New Pathways In Science”, p.236, Read Books Ltd

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• The pursuit of truth in science transcends national boundaries. It takes us beyond hatred and anger and fear. It is the best of us.

  Arthur Eddington

  Hatred, Anger And Fear, Boundaries

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• 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.

  Arthur Eddington

  Nature, Light, Intellectual

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• 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.

  Arthur Eddington

  Stars, Important, Atoms

  1928 Stars and Atoms, lecture 1.

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• If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum.

  Arthur Eddington

  Book, Writing, Army

  The Nature of the Physical World ch. 4 (1928)

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• 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.

  Arthur Eddington

  Success, Nature, Science

  Space, Time and Gravitation (p. 131)

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• In Einstein's theory of relativity the observer is a man who sets out in quest of truth armed with a measuring-rod. In quantum theory he sets out with a sieve.

  Arthur Eddington

  Men, Quests, Physics

  Arthur Eddington (2012). “New Pathways in Science: Messenger Lectures (1934)”, p.267, Cambridge University Press

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• An ocean traveler has even more vividly the impression that the ocean is made of waves than that it is made of water.

  Arthur Eddington

  Ocean, Science, Engineering

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• Do not put too much confidence in experimental results until they have been confirmed by theory.

  Arthur Eddington

  Too Much, Results, Theory

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• Science is one thing, wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers.

  Arthur Eddington

  Children, Cutting, Men

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• Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of Nature is repugnant to me ... I should like to find a genuine loophole.

  Arthur Eddington

  Order, Should, Genuine

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• It cannot be denied that for a society which has to create scarcity to save its members from starvation, to whom abundance spells disaster, and to whom unlimited energy means unlimited power for war and destruction, there is an ominous cloud in the distance though at present it be no bigger than a man's hand.

  Arthur Eddington

  War, Distance, Mean

  Arthur Eddington (2012). “New Pathways in Science: Messenger Lectures (1934)”, p.163, Cambridge University Press

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• We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong.

  Arthur Eddington

  Stars, Atheism, Gone

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• 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.

  Arthur Eddington

  Stars, Future, Simple

  Arthur S. Eddington, Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (1926). “The Internal Constitution of the Stars”, p.393, Cambridge University Press

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• There is only one law of Nature-the second law of thermodynamics-which recognises a distinction between past and future more profound than the difference of plus and minus. It stands aloof from all the rest. ... It opens up a new province of knowledge, namely, the study of organisation; and it is in connection with organisation that a direction of time-flow and a distinction between doing and undoing appears for the first time.

  Arthur Eddington

  Time, Knowledge, Science

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• Asked in 1919 whether it was true that only three people in the world understood the theory of general relativity, [Eddington] allegedly replied: "Who's the third?"

  Arthur Eddington

  Science, People, Understanding

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• Observation and theory get on best when they are mixed together, both helping one another in the pursuit of truth. It is a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in a theory until it has been confirmed by observation. I hope I shall not shock the experimental physicists too much if I add that it is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they have been confirmed by theory.

  Arthur Eddington

  Science, Together, Add

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• It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.

  Arthur Eddington

  Math, Perfect, Impossible

  Arthur Eddington (2012). “New Pathways in Science: Messenger Lectures (1934)”, p.105, Cambridge University Press

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