Arthur Eddington Quotes
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Theological or anti-theological argument to prove or disprove the existence of a deity seems to me to occupy itself largely with skating among the difficulties caused by our making a fetish of this word existence.
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Shuffling is the only thing which Nature cannot undo.
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The laws of logic do not prescribe the way our minds think; they prescribe the way our minds ought to think.
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If God is as real as the shadow of the Great War on Armistice Day, need we seek further reason for making a place for God in our thoughts and lives? We shall not be concerned if the scientific explorer reports that he is perfectly satisfied that he has got to the bottom of things without having come across either.
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We do not want a religion that deceives us for our own good.
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Wind, earthquake, fire-meteorology, seismology, physics-pass in review, as we have been reviewing the natural forces of evolution; the Lord was not in them. Afterwards, a stirring, an awakening in the organ of the brain, a voice which asks 'What doest thou here?'
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Objections to religious mysticism lose their force if they can equally be turned against natural mysticism.
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The desire for truth so prominent in the quest of science, a reaching out of the spirit from its isolation to something beyond, a response to beauty in nature and art, an Inner Light of conviction and guidance-are these as much a part of our being as our sensitivity to sense impressions?
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If in a community of the blind one man suddenly received the gift of sight, he would have much to tell which would not be at all scientific.
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Ch. 2 Relativity
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The chairs and tables around us which broadcast to us incessantly those signals which affect our sight and touch cannot in their nature be like unto the signals or to the sensations which the signals awake at the end of their journey.
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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 origins. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own.
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Consciousness is not sharply defined, but fades into sub-consciousness; and beyond that we must postulate something indefinite but yet continuous with our mental nature. This I take it be the world-stuff.
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Ninety-nine people out of a hundred have not seriously considered what they mean by the term 'exist' nor how a thing qualifies itself to be labelled real.
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Science has an important part to play in our everyday existence, and there is far too much neglect of science; but its intention is to supplement not to supplant the familiar outlook.
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Mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience; all else is remote inference.
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What I may attempt is to dispel the feeling that in using the eye of the body or the eye of the soul, and incorporating what is thereby revealed in our conception of reality, we are doing something irrational and disobeying the leading of truth which as scientists we are pledged to serve.
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Matter and all else that is in the physical world have been reduced to a shadowy symbolism.
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Our system of philosophy is itself on trial; it must stand or fall according as it is broad enough to find room for this experience as an element of life.
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I think that science would never have achieved much progress if it had always imagined unknown obstacles hidden round every corner. At least we may peer gingerly round the corner, and perhaps we shall find there is nothing very formidable after all.
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pp. 56–57
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Study of the scientific world cannot prescribe the orientation of something which is excluded from the scientific world.
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Consciousness is not wholly, nor even primarily a device for receiving sense-impressions. ...there is another outlook than the scientific one, because in practice a more transcendental outlook is almost universally admitted. ...who does not prize these moments that reveal to us the poetry of existence?
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The mind has an outlook which transcends the natural law by which it functions.