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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

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If Someone Points Out

Arthur Eddington

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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.

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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.

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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'.

It Is Impossible To Trap Modern Physics Into Predicting Anything With Perfect Determinism Because It Deals With Probabilities From The Outset.

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.

If I Let My Fingers Wander Idly Over The Keys Of A Typewriter It Might Happen That My Screed Made An Intelligible Sentence. If An Army Of Monkeys Were Strumming On Typewriters They Might Write All The Books In The British Museum. The Chance Of Their Doing So Is Decidedly More Favourable Than The Chance Of The Molecules Returning To One Half Of The Vessel.

Shuffling Is The Only Thing Which Nature Cannot Undo.

It Is One Thing For The Human Mind To Extract From The Phenomena Of Nature The Laws Which It Has Itself Put Into Them; It May Be A Far Harder Thing To Extract Laws Over Which It Has No Control. 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.

In Einstein's Theory Of Relativity The Observer Is A Man Who Sets Out In Quest Of Truth Armed With A Measuring-rod. In Quantum Theory He Sets Out With A Sieve.

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.

The Word Reality Frightens Me.

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 An Investigator Has Developed A Formula Which Gives A Complete Representation Of The Phenomena Within A Certain Range, He May Be Prone To Satisfaction. Would It Not Be Wiser If He Should Say 'foiled Again! I Can Find Out No More About Nature Along This Line.'

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It Is A Primitive Form Of Thought That Things Exist Or Do Not Exist.

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The Mathematics Is Not There Till We Put It There.

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For The Truth Of The Conclusions Of Physical Science, Observation Is The Supreme Court Of Appeal.

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Our Model Of Nature Should Not Be Like A Building-a Handsome Structure For The Populace To Admire, Until In The Course Of Time Some One Takes Away A Corner Stone And The Edifice Comes Toppling Down. It Should Be Like An Engine With Movable Parts. We Need Not Fix The Position Of Any One Lever; That Is To Be Adjusted From Time To Time As The Latest Observations Indicate. The Aim Of The Theorist Is To Know The Train Of Wheels Which The Lever Sets In Motion-that Binding Of The Parts Which Is The Soul Of The Engine.

Science Is One Thing, Wisdom Is Another. Science Is An Edged Tool, With Which Men Play Like Children, And Cut Their Own Fingers. If You Look At The Results Which Science Has Brought In Its Train, You Will Find Them To Consist Almost Wholly In Elements Of Mischief. See How Much Belongs To The Word "explosion" Alone, Of Which The Ancients Knew Nothing.

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