Arthur Eddington
Arthur Eddington
Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington OM FRSwas an English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician of the early 20th century who did his greatest work in astrophysics. He was also a philosopher of science and a popularizer of science. The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the luminosity of stars, or the radiation generated by accretion onto a compact object, is named in his honor...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth28 December 1882
thinking mathematical-logic two
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'.
stars flower petals
You cannot disturb the tiniest petal of a flower without the troubling of a distant star.
stars important looks
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.
science law giving
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.
ocean science engineering
An ocean traveler has even more vividly the impression that the ocean is made of waves than that it is made of water.
book writing army
If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters, they might write all the books in the British Museum.
responsibility may truth-is
Whatever else there may be in our nature, responsibility toward truth is one of its attributes.
thinking ideas design
The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory.
british-scientist idol whom
Proof is an idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself.
against british-scientist collapse found second theory
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.
british-scientist mind possible
It is even possible that laws which have not their origin in the mind may be irrational, and we can never succeed in formulating them.
british-scientist
Something unknown is doing we don't know what.
british-scientist competent distant future hope judgment shall sound understand
It is sound judgment to hope that in the not too distant future we shall be competent to understand so simple a thing as a star.
british-scientist footprint shores
We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown.