Whether in the intellectual pursuits of science or in the mystical pursuits of the spirit, the light beckons ahead, and the purpose surging in our nature responds.
Arthur EddingtonRead
We have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind put into nature.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that scientific progress is a rediscovery of natural truths rather than an invention of new ideas.
Arthur Eddington's quote highlights the notion that the advancements made in science do not create new knowledge but rather uncover truths that are already present in nature. It implies that the human mind, through science, effectively retrieves the wisdom and understanding that it originally contributed to nature, suggesting a deep connection between our intellectual pursuits and the natural world.
In practice
In a lecture about the relationship between science and the natural world, this quote can be highlighted to emphasize the connection.
Whether in the intellectual pursuits of science or in the mystical pursuits of the spirit, the light beckons ahead, and the purpose surging in our nature responds.
The physical world is entirely abstract and without actuality apart from its linkage to consciousness.
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.
Whatever else there may be in our nature, responsibility toward truth is one of its attributes.
In the world of physics we watch a shadowgraph performance of the drama of familiar life. The shadow of my elbow rests on the shadow table as the shadow ink flows over the shadow paper. It is all symbolic, and as a symbol the physicist leaves it. ... The frank realisation that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances.
So far as physics is concerned, time's arrow is a property of entropy alone.
Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together.
To be ruthless requires belief that our life on earth is but a brief prelude to an afterlife, or a temporary sacrifice before some utopia can be instituted._x000D_ _x000D_ Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.
Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.
We do not want to create a situation like that which exists in South Africa, where the whites are the owners and rulers, and the blacks are the workers. If we do not do all kinds of work, easy and hard, skilled and unskilled, if we become merely landlords, then this will not be our homeland
A man is like a novel: until the very last page you don't know how it will end. Otherwise it wouldn't be worth reading.
The widespread assumption is that somehow, the brain produces the mind; somehow millions of neurons fire signals at one another create or produce consciousness... but we have no idea how or why this happens. I'm afraid that in many cases, people in the tech world fail to understand that.
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