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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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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
Path
Relativity
Less
Foolishness
Science
Paths
Felt
Theories
Keep
Quantum
Thinking
Physical
Theory
Discernible
Worst
Homesickness

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Events do not happen they are just there, and we come across them.
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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.
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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.
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We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong.
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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.
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Who will observe the observers?
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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?
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Don't believe the results of experiments until they're confirmed by theory.
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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.
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It is a primitive form of thought that things exist or do not exist.
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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.
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What is possible in the Cavendish Laboratory may not be too difficult in the sun.
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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.
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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'.
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I believe there are 15, 747, 724, 136, 275, 002, 577, 605, 653, 961, 181, 555, 468, 044, 717, 914, 527, 116, 709, 366, 231, 425, 076, 185, 631, 031, 296 protons in the universe and the same number of electrons.
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For the truth of the conclusions of physical science, observation is the supreme Court of Appeal.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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