arthur stanley eddington

Human life is proverbially uncertain few things are more certain than the solvency of a life-insurance company.

- Arthur Stanley Eddington Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

To the pure geometer the radius of curvature is an incidental characteristic like the grin of the Cheshire cat. To the physicist it is an indispensable characteristic. It would be going too far to say that to the physicist the cat is merely incidental to the grin. Physics is concerned with interrelatedness such as the interrelatedness of cats and grins. In this case the 'cat without a grin' and the 'grin without a cat' are equally set aside as purely mathematical phantasies.

- Arthur Stanley Eddington Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

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 Stanley Eddington Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origins. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo It is our own.

- Arthur Stanley Eddington Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

We have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind put into nature.

- Arthur Stanley Eddington Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

For the truth of the conclusions of physical science, observation is the supreme Court of Appeal. It does not follow that every item which we confidently accept as physical knowledge has actually been certified by the Court our confidence is that it would be certified by the Court if it were submitted. But it does follow that every item of physical knowledge is of a form which might be submitted to the Court. It must be such that we can specify (although it may be impracticable to carry out) an observational procedure which would decide whether it is true or not. Clearly a statement cannot be tested by observation unless it is an assertion about the results of observation. Every item of physical knowledge must therefore be an assertion of what has been or would be the result of carrying out a specified observational procedure.

- Arthur Stanley Eddington Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

Let us suppose that an ichthyologist is exploring the life of the ocean. He casts a net into the water and brings up a fishy assortment. Surveying his catch, he proceeds in the usual manner of a scientist to systematise what it reveals. He arrives at two generalisations (1) No sea-creature is less than two inches long (2) All sea-creatures have gills. These are both true of his catch, and he assumes tentatively that they will remain true however often he repeats it. In applying this analogy, the catch stands for the body of knowledge which constitutes physical science, and the net for the sensory and intellectual equipment which we use in obtaining it. The casting of the net corresponds to observation for knowledge which has not been or could not be obtained by observation is not admitted into physical science. An onlooker may object that the first generalization is wrong. 'There are plenty of sea-creatures under two inches long, only your net is not adapted to catch them.' The icthyologist dismisses this objection contemptuously. 'Anything uncatchable by my net is ipso facto outside the scope of icthyological knowledge. In short, 'what my net can't catch isn't fish.' Or - to translate the analogy - 'If you are not simply guessing, you are claiming a knowledge of the physical universe discovered in some other way than by the methods of physical science, and admittedly unverifiable by such methods. You are a metaphysician. Bah'

- Arthur Stanley Eddington Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.

- Arthur Stanley Eddington Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

Proof is the idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself.

- Arthur Stanley Eddington Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

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.

- Arthur Stanley Eddington Visit FamousQuotes.com for more inspirational quotes

Something unknown is doing we don't know what.

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