Arthur Eddington Quotes
-
I think it is not irreligion but a tidiness of mind, which rebels against the idea of permeating scientific research with a religious implication.
-
Natural law is not applicable to the unseen world behind the symbols, because it is unadapted to anything except symbols, and its perfection is a perfection of symbolic linkage. You cannot apply such a scheme to the parts of our personality which are not measurable by symbols any more than you can extract the square root of a sonnet.
-
The quest of the absolute leads into the four-dimensional world.
-
pp. 90–92
-
You will understand the true spirit neither of science nor of religion unless seeking is placed in the forefront.
-
The mathematics is not there till we put it there.
-
We do not argue with the critic who urges that the stars are not hot enough for this process; we tell him to go and find a hotter place.
-
We have travelled far from the standpoint which identifies the real with the concrete. Even the older philosophy found it necessary to admit exceptions; for example, time must be admitted to be real, although no one could attribute to it a concrete nature.
-
Even if religion and morality are dismissed as illusion, the word 'Ought' still has sway.
-
We should not argue with the blind man who maintained that sight was an illusion to which some abnormal people were subject. Therefore in speaking of religious experience I do not attempt to prove the existence of religious experience...
-
Our environment may and should mean something towards us which is not to be measured with the tools of the physicist or described by the metrical symbols of the mathematician.
-
The exploration of the external world by the methods of physical science leads not to a concrete reality but to a shadow world of symbols, beneath which those methods are unadapted for penetrating.
-
Physics most strongly insists that its methods do not penetrate behind the symbolism.
-
At terrestrial temperatures matter has complex properties which are likely to prove most difficult to unravel; but 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.