Geburtstag: 28. Dezember 1882
Todesdatum: 22. November 1944
Andere Namen:Sir Arthur Eddington,Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington
Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington war ein britischer Astrophysiker. Er war der Erste, dem die Modellierung des inneren Aufbaus von Sternen gelang. Weitere Schwerpunkte seiner Forschungen waren Dynamik der Sternbewegungen, astronomische Anwendungen der Relativitätstheorie und die Philosophie der Naturwissenschaften.
— Arthur Stanley Eddington
Zitiert von Robert B. Laughlin: Abschied von der Weltformel, Deutsch von Helmut Reuter, 10. Kap. "Das Gewebe der Raumzeit", S. 179, Piper Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3492047180
— Arthur Stanley Eddington
Zitiert von Robert B. Laughlin: Abschied von der Weltformel, Deutsch von Helmut Reuter, Widmungsblatt für Laughlings Frau Anita, S. 5, Piper Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3492047180
— Arthur Stanley Eddington
Context: It remains a real world if there is a background to the symbols—an unknown quantity which the mathematical symbol x stands for. We think we are not wholly cut off from this background. It is to this background that our own personality and consciousness belong, and those spiritual aspects of our nature not to be described by any symbolism... to which mathematical physics has hitherto restricted itself.<!--III, p.37-38
— Arthur Stanley Eddington
Context: To those who have any intimate acquaintance with the laws of chemistry and physics the suggestion that the spiritual world could be ruled by laws of allied character is as preposterous as the suggestion that a nation could be ruled by laws like the laws of grammar.<!--V, p.54
— Arthur Stanley Eddington
Context: 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. <!-- p. 277
Ch. 13 Reality
— Arthur Stanley Eddington
Context: It is of interest to inquire what happens when the aviator's speed... approximates to the velocity of light. Lengths in the direction of flight become smaller and smaller, until for the speed of light they shrink to zero. The aviator and the objects accompanying him shrink to two dimensions. We are saved the difficulty of imagining how the processes of life can go on in two dimensions, because nothing goes on. Time is arrested altogether. This is the description according to the terrestrial observer. The aviator himself detects nothing unusual; he does not perceive that he has stopped moving. He is merely waiting for the next instant to come before making the next movement; and the mere fact that time is arrested means that he does not perceive that the next instant is a long time coming.<!--p.26
— Arthur Stanley Eddington
Context: ... The present revolution of scientific thought follows in natural sequence on the great revolutions at earlier epochs in the history of science. Einstein's special theory of relativity, which explains the indeterminateness of the frame of space and time, crowns the work of Copernicus who first led us to give up our insistence on a geocentric outlook on nature; Einstein's general theory of relativity, which reveals the curvature or non-Euclidean geometry of space and time, carries forward the rudimentary thought of those earlier astronomers who first contemplated the possibility that their existence lay on something which was not flat. These earlier revolutions are still a source of perplexity in childhood, which we soon outgrow; and a time will come when Einstein's amazing revelations have likewise sunk into the commonplaces of educated thought.
The Theory of Relativity and its Influence on Scientific Thought (1922), p. 31-32
— Arthur Stanley Eddington
Context: It is of interest to inquire what happens when the aviator's speed... approximates to the velocity of light. Lengths in the direction of flight become smaller and smaller, until for the speed of light they shrink to zero. The aviator and the objects accompanying him shrink to two dimensions. We are saved the difficulty of imagining how the processes of life can go on in two dimensions, because nothing goes on. Time is arrested altogether. This is the description according to the terrestrial observer. The aviator himself detects nothing unusual; he does not perceive that he has stopped moving. He is merely waiting for the next instant to come before making the next movement; and the mere fact that time is arrested means that he does not perceive that the next instant is a long time coming.<!--p.26
— Arthur Stanley Eddington
Context: The exploration of the external world by the methods of physical science leads not to a concrete reality but to a shadow world of symbols, beneath which those methods are unadapted for penetrating.<!--VII, p.73
— Arthur Stanley Eddington
Context: It is perhaps difficult sufficiently to emphasise Seeking without disparaging its correlative Finding. But I must risk this, for Finding has a clamorous voice that proclaims its own importance; it is definite and assured, something that we can take hold of —that is what we all want, or think we want. Yet how transitory it proves.
The finding of one generation will not serve for the next. It tarnishes rapidly except it be reserved with an ever-renewed spirit of seeking.<!--IX, p.87-88
— Arthur Stanley Eddington
Context: Objections to religious mysticism lose their force if they can equally be turned against natural mysticism.<!--IV, p.47
— Arthur Stanley Eddington
Context: 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 — inference either intuitive or deliberate. <!-- 281
Ch. 13 Reality
— Arthur Stanley Eddington
Context: We do not want a religion that deceives us for our own good.<!--VII, p.68
— Arthur Stanley Eddington
Context: If to-day you ask a physicist what he has finally made out the æther or the electron to be, the answer will not be a description in terms of billiard balls or fly-wheels or anything concrete; he will point instead to a number of symbols and a set of mathematical equations which they satisfy. What do the symbols stand for? The mysterious reply is given that physics is indifferent to that; it has no means of probing beneath the symbolism. To understand the phenomena of the physical world it is necessary to know the equations which the symbols obey but not the nature of that which is being symbolised.... this newer outlook has modified the challenge from the material to the spiritual world.<!--III, p.30
— Arthur Stanley Eddington
Context: 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.
Ch. 7 Pointer Readings <!-- p. 252 -->
