Arthur Eddington Quotes
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The mind has an outlook which transcends the natural law by which it functions.
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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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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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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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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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Our story of evolution ended with a stirring in the brain-organ of the latest of Nature's experiments; but that stirring of consciousness transmutes the whole story and gives meaning to its symbolism. Symbolically it is the end, but looking behind the symbolism it is the beginning.
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As truly as the mystic, the scientist is following a light; and it is not a false or an inferior light.
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We have to build the spiritual world out of symbols taken from our own personality, as we build the scientific world out of the symbols of the mathematician.
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To those who have any intimate acquaintance with the laws of chemistry and physics the suggestion that the spiritual world could be ruled by laws of allied character is as preposterous as the suggestion that a nation could be ruled by laws like the laws of grammar.
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Physics has in the main contented itself with studying the abridged edition of the book of nature.
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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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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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The problem of experiences is not limited to the interpretation of sense-impressions.
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Mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience; all else is remote inference.
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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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However closely we may associate thought with the physical machinery of the brain, the connection is dropped as irrelevant as soon as we consider the fundamental property of thought-that it may be correct or incorrect. ...that involves recognising a domain of the other type of law-laws which ought to be kept, but may be broken.
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Experimental Physicist Phys. I cannot imagine myself perceiving non-Euclidean space!Math. Look at the reflection of the room in a polished doorknob, and imagine yourself one of the actors in what you see going on there.
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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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I think it is not irreligion but a tidiness of mind, which rebels against the idea of permeating scientific research with a religious implication.
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We are no longer tempted to condemn the spiritual aspects of our nature as illusory because of their lack of concreteness.
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The mind-stuff is not spread in space and time. But we must presume that in some other way or aspect it can be differentiated into parts. Only here and there does it arise to the level of consciousness, but from such islands proceeds all knowledge. The latter includes our knowledge of the physical world.
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You will understand the true spirit neither of science nor of religion unless seeking is placed in the forefront.
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The quest of the absolute leads into the four-dimensional world.
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The mathematics is not there till we put it there.