Eddington

Overview

From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

• “Physics has in the main contented itself with studying the abridged edition of the book of nature.”

• “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.”

• “If indeed, the subatomic energy is being freely used to maintain their great furnaces, it seems to bring a little nearer to fulfillment our dreams of controlling this latent power for the well being of the humans-or for its suicide.”

• “I suppose that the applied mathematician whose theory had just passed one still more stringent test by observation ought not to feel satisfaction, but rather disappointment—"Foiled again! This time I had hoped to find a discordance which would throw light on the points where my model could be improved." ...I own that I have never felt very keenly a disappointment of this kind.”

• “Never mind what two tons refers to. What is it? How has it entered in so definite a way into our exprerience? Two tons is the reading of the pointer when the elephant was placed on a weighing machine. Let us pass on. … And so we see that the poetry fades out of the problem, and by the time the serious application of exact science begins we are left only with pointer readings.”

• “Proof is the idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself.”

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.

Eddington across IJR