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Description: This is a new publication of Eddington’s book New Pathways In Science (Cambridge 1935). It contains the Messenger Lectures he delivered at Cornell University in April and May 1934. What warrants the new publication is that the physicist and deep thinker, who tested experimentally Einstein's general relativity in 1919 and wrote the first comprehensive expositions of the theory of relativity and also the father of modern theoretical astrophysics, explains a range of complex issues such as science and experience, determinism, indeterminacy and quantum theory, subatomic energy and the expanding universe. Notable quote - "there is a tendency in modem philosophy to adopt a view which is scientifically untenable" - (pp. 4-5): "I have elsewhere expressed this in the words: “Let us not forget that mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience; all else is remote inference”. That is a statement which, I believe, physicists accept almost as a truism, and philosophers generally condemn as a hoary fallacy. It is difficult to understand why there should be such a difference between us. I had thought that, like many other differences, it might arise because we do not talk the same language; but some recent writings seem to show that the cleavage may be deeper, and that there is a tendency in modem philosophy to adopt a view which is scientifically untenable."
Editor’s Preface i Preface iv I Science and Experience 1 II Dramatis Personae 21 III The End of the World 41 IV The Decline of Determinism 59 V Indeterminacy and Quantum Theory 75 VI Probability 89 VII The Constitution of the Stars 109 VIII Subatomic Energy 129 IX Cosmic Clouds and Nebulae 147 X The Expanding Universe 169 XI The Constants of Nature 189 XII The Theory of Groups 209 XIII Criticisms and Controversies 227 XIV Epilogue 253 |
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