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

Arthur Eddington

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Arthur Eddington
Age: 61 †
Born: 1882
Born: December 28
Died: 1944
Died: November 22
Astronomer
Astrophysicist
Philosopher
Physicist
Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington
Sir Arthur Eddington
Matter
Accidents
Star
Atheism
Cold
Bits
Stars
Gone
Stellar
Wrong
Accident

More quotes by Arthur Eddington

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An electron is no more (and no less) hypothetical than a star. Nowadays we count electrons one by one in a Geiger counter, as we count the stars one by one on a photographic plate.
Arthur Eddington
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The mathematics is not there till we put it there.
Arthur Eddington
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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
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Who will observe the observers?
Arthur Eddington
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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.
Arthur Eddington
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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
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Oh leave the Wise our measures to collate. One thing at least is certain, light has weight. One thing is certain and the rest debate. Light rays, when near the Sun, do not go straight.
Arthur Eddington
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Time is the supreme Law of nature.
Arthur Eddington
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Unless the structure of the nucleus has a surprise in store for us, the conclusion seems plain — there is nothing in the whole system of laws of physics that cannot be deduced unambiguously from epistemological considerations.
Arthur Eddington
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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
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Whatever else there may be in our nature, responsibility toward truth is one of its attributes.
Arthur Eddington
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Human life is proverbially uncertain few things are more certain than the solvency of a life-insurance company.
Arthur Eddington
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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.
Arthur Eddington
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The physical world is entirely abstract and without actuality apart from its linkage to consciousness.
Arthur Eddington
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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
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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.
Arthur Eddington
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There once was a brainy baboon, Who always breathed down a bassoon, For he said, It appears That in billions of years I shall certainly hit on a tune.
Arthur Eddington
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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
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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
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It is a primitive form of thought that things exist or do not exist.
Arthur Eddington