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

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
Amounts
Unknown
Theory
Amount
Knowledge
Science
Something

More quotes by Arthur Eddington

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Shuffling is the only thing which Nature cannot undo.
Arthur Eddington
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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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[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.
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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It is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they are confirmed by theory.
Arthur Eddington
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The quest of the absolute leads into the four-dimensional world.
Arthur Eddington
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A hundred thousand million Stars make one Galaxy A hundred thousand million Galaxies make one Universe. The figures may not be very trustworthy, but I think they give a correct impression.
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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The helium which we handle must have been put together at some time and some place. We do not argue with the critic who urges that the stars are not hot enough for this process we tell him to go and find a hotter place.
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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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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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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In the most modern theories of physics probability seems to have replaced aether as the nominative of the verb 'to undulate'.
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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What we makes of the world must be largely dependent on the sense-organs that we happen to possess. How the world must have changed since the man came to rely on his eyes rather than his nose.
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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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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The physical world is entirely abstract and without actuality apart from its linkage to consciousness.
Arthur Eddington
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Don't believe the results of experiments until they're confirmed by theory.
Arthur Eddington