Quotes from Arthur Stanley Eddington

The appearance of a four-dimensional world is due to Minkowski. Einstein showed the relativity of the familiar quantities of physics; Minkowski showed how to recover the absolute by going back to their four-dimensional origin and searching more deeply.

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.

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.

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.

Physics most strongly insists that its methods do not penetrate behind the symbolism.

Neither matter, nor energy, nor anything capable of being used as a signal can travel faster than the speed of light. This limitation of the speed signalling to 299,796 kilometres a second seems a rather arbitrary decree of Nature.

The speed of 299,796 kilometres a second, which occupies a unique position in every measure-system, is commonly referred to as the speed of light. But it is much more than that; it is the speed at which the mass of matter becomes infinite, lengths contract to zero, clocks stand still.

The influence of the sensory equipment with which we observe, and the intellectual equipment with which we formulate the results of observation as knowledge, is so far reaching that by itself it decides the number of particles into which matter in the universe appears to be divided.

Within the whole domain of experience [only] a selected portion is capable of that exact representation which is requisite for development by the scientific method.

Something unknown is doing we don't know what.

Asked in 1919 whether it was true that only three people in the world understood the theory of general relativity, [Eddington] allegedly replied: 'Who's the third?

When we analyse the picture into a large number of particles of paint, we lose the aesthetic significance of the picture. The particles of paint go into the scientific inventory, and it is claimed that everything that there really was in the picture is kept. But this way of keeping a thing may be much the same as losing it. The essence of a picture (as distinct from the paint) is arrangement.

The mind-stuff of the world is, of course, something more general than our individual conscious minds.... It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept the view that the substratum of everything is of mental character. But no one can deny that mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience, and all else is remote inference.

The more perfect the instrument as a measurer of time, the more completely does it conceal time's arrow.

We are all of us clocks whose faces tell the passing years.

Of the two alternatives - a curved manifold in a Euclidean space of ten dimensions or a manifold with non-Euclidean geometry and no extra dimensions - which is right? I would rather not attempt a direct answer, because I fear I should get lost in a fog of metaphysics. But I may say at once that I do not take the ten dimensions seriously; whereas I take the non-Euclidean geometry of the world very seriously, and I do not regard it as a thing which needs explaining away.

When we encounter unexpected obstacles in finding out something which we wish to know, there are two possible courses to take. It may be that the right course is to treat the obstacle as a spur to further efforts; but there is a second possibility - that we have been trying to find something which does not exist. You will remember that that was how the relativity theory accounted for the apparent concealment of our velocity through the aether.

Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine - it is stranger than we can imagine.

You will understand the true spirit neither of science nor of religion unless seeking is placed in the forefront.

We know the prodigality of Nature. How many acorns are scattered for one that grows to an oak? And need she be more careful of her stars than of her acorns? If indeed she has no grander aim than to provide a home for her greatest experiment, Man, it would be just like her methods to scatter a million stars whereof one might haply achieve her purpose.

Each of us is armed with this touchstone of actuality; by applying it we decide that this sorry world of ours is actual and Utopia is a dream. As our individual consciousnesses are different, so our touchstones are different; but fortunately they all agree in their indication of actuality - or at any rate those which agree are in sufficient majority to shut the others up in lunatic asylums.

The actuality of Nature is like the beauty of Nature. We can scarcely describe the beauty of a landscape as non-existent when there is no conscious being to witness it; but it is through consciousness that we can attribute a meaning to it. And so it is with the actuality of the world. If actuality means 'known to mind' then it is a purely subjective character of the world; to make it objective we must substitute 'knowable to mind'.

Out of the numbers proceeds that harmony of natural law which it is the aim of science to disclose. We can grasp the tune but not the player. Trinculo might have been referring to modern physics in the words: 'This is the tune of our catch, played by the picture of Nobody.

The simpler elements of the scientific world have no immediate counterparts in everyday experience; we use them to build things which have counterparts.