Quote

When an investigator has developed a formula which gives a complete representation of the phenomena within a certain range, he may be prone to satisfaction. Would it not be wiser if he should say 'Foiled again! I can find out no more about Nature along this line.'

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
Natural
Satisfaction
Prone
Science
Complete
Phenomena
Nature
Line
Formula
Certain
Along
Formulas
May
Gives
Representation
Theory
Wiser
Foiled
Find
Lines
Developed
Investigator
Giving
Within
Range
Investigators
Would

More quotes by Arthur Eddington

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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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If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum.
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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.
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It is a primitive form of thought that things exist or do not exist.
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For the truth of the conclusions of physical science, observation is the supreme Court of Appeal.
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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.
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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 put into nature.
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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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Who will observe the observers?
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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.
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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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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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Our ultimate analysis of space leads us not to a here and a there, but to an extension such as that which relates here and there. To put the conclusion rather crudely-space is not a lot of points close together it is a lot of distances interlocked.
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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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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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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What is possible in the Cavendish Laboratory may not be too difficult in the sun.
Arthur Eddington
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You cannot disturb the tiniest petal of a flower without the troubling of a distant star.
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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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