Arthur Eddington quotes

Arthur Eddington was a British astrophysicist and mathematician renowned for his work on the theory of relativity. His experiments during a 1919 solar eclipse provided key evidence confirming Einstein's predictions. He made significant contributions to our understanding of stars and the universe. Here are 128 of his quotes:

The mathematics is not there till we put it there.

Arthur Eddington

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

Arthur Eddington

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

Arthur Eddington

Shuffling is the only thing which Nature cannot undo.

Arthur Eddington

The quest of the absolute leads into the four-dimensional world.

Arthur Eddington

We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown.

Arthur Eddington

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.

Arthur Eddington

There once was a brainy baboon, Who always breathed down a bassoon, For he said, It appears That in billions of years I shall certainly hit on a tune.

Arthur Eddington

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

Arthur Eddington

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 Eddington

Schrödinger's wave-mechanics is not a physical theory, but a dodge - and a very good dodge too.

Arthur Eddington

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

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?

Arthur Eddington

The law that entropy always increases, holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. 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

Spherical space is not very easy to imagine. We have to think of the properties of the surface of a sphere - the two-dimensional case - and try to conceive something similar applied to three-dimensional space. Stationing ourselves at a point let us draw a series of spheres of successively greater radii. The surface of a sphere of radius r should be proportional to r; but in spherical space the areas of the more distant spheres begin to fall below the proper proportion. There is not so much room out there as we expected to find. Ultimately we reach a sphere of biggest possible area, and beyond it the areas begin to decrease. The last sphere of all shrinks to a point - our antipodes. Is there nothing beyond this? Is there a kind of boundary there? There is nothing beyond and yet there is no boundary. On the earth's surface there is nothing beyond our own antipodes but there is no boundary there.

Arthur Eddington

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].

Arthur Eddington

A non-mathematical presentation has necessary limitations; and the reader who wishes to learn how certain exact results follow from Einstein's, or even Newton's, law of gravitation is bound to seek the reasons in a mathematical treatise. ...[T]he geometry of relativity in its perfect harmony expresses a truth... which my bowdlerised version misses. But the mind is not content to leave scientific Truth in a dry husk of mathematical symbols, and demands that it shall be alloyed with familiar images.

Arthur Eddington

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

Oh leave the Wise our measures to collate. One thing at least is certain, light has weight. One thing is certain and the rest debate. Light rays, when near the Sun, do not go straight.

Arthur Eddington

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 Eddington

Probably the simplest hypothesis... is that there may be a slow process of annihilation of matter.

Arthur Eddington

If your theory is found to be against the second law of theromodynamics, I give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

Arthur Eddington