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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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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
Count
Hypothetical
Star
Electrons
Stars
Photographic
Less
Plate
Science
Counter
Plates
Hypothesis
Nowadays
Electron

More quotes by Arthur Eddington

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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'.
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Something unknown is doing we don't know what-that is what our theory amounts to.
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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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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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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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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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What is possible in the Cavendish Laboratory may not be too difficult in the sun.
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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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The electron, as it leaves the atom, crystallises out of Schrodinger's mist like a genie emerging from his bottle.
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Events do not happen they are just there, and we come across them.
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It is a primitive form of thought that things exist or do not exist.
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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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The mathematics is not there till we put it there.
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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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.
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For the truth of the conclusions of physical science, observation is the supreme Court of Appeal.
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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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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.
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Don't believe the results of experiments until they're confirmed by theory.
Arthur Eddington