If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations - then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation - well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

Arthur Eddington

Categorized in : Science Hope Errors

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

design ideas thinking

The physical world is entirely abstract and without actuality apart from its linkage to consciousness.

Arthur Eddington

abstract consciousness world

Whatever else there may be in our nature, responsibility toward truth is one of its attributes.

Arthur Eddington

responsibility truth may

You cannot disturb the tiniest petal of a flower without the troubling of a distant star.

Arthur Eddington

petals stars flower

An ocean traveler has even more vividly the impression that the ocean is made of waves than that it is made of water.

Arthur Eddington

engineering ocean science

The pursuit of truth in science transcends national boundaries. It takes us beyond hatred and anger and fear. It is the best of us.

Arthur Eddington

anger-and-fear hatred boundaries

Do not put too much confidence in experimental results until they have been confirmed by theory.

Arthur Eddington

results too-much theory

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.

Arthur Eddington

nature light intellectual

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'.

Arthur Eddington

learning math thinking

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

Arthur Eddington

theory science knowledge

We have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind has put into nature. We have found a strange foot-print on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origin. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the foot-print. And Lo! it is our own.

Arthur Eddington

nature success science

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

atoms stars important

We are bits of stellar matter that got cold by accident, bits of a star gone wrong.

Arthur Eddington

atheism stars gone

Observation and theory get on best when they are mixed together, both helping one another in the pursuit of truth. It is a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in a theory until it has been confirmed by observation. I hope I shall not shock the experimental physicists too much if I add that it is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they have been confirmed by theory.

Arthur Eddington

together add science

Every body continues in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, except insofar as it doesn't.

Arthur Eddington

uniforms lines body

If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum.

Arthur Eddington

army writing book

Life would be stunted and narrow if we could feel no significance in the world around us beyond that which can be weighed and measured with the tools of the physicist or described by the metrical symbols of the mathematician.

Arthur Eddington

nature tools would-be

It is reasonable to hope that in the not too distant future we shall be competent to understand so simple a thing as a star.

Arthur Eddington

future stars simple

Events do not happen; they are just there, and we come across them.

Arthur Eddington

events grace happens

We often think that when we have completed our study of one we know all about two, because 'two' is 'one and one.' We forget that we still have to make a study of 'and.'

Arthur Eddington

study two thinking