Science Quote by Arthur Eddington

Eddington is needling the comforting myth that “law” is simply out there, waiting to be copied down by a dutiful physicist. He’s pointing at an awkward fact about science: what we call a law is not raw nature speaking in clear sentences, but nature filtered through human categories, symbols, and habits of thought. A “law which have not their origin in the mind” sounds like the purest possible objectivity. Eddington flips it. If it didn’t originate in the mind, it might be irrational not because the universe is sloppy, but because “rational” is already a human standard. Rationality is a relationship between the world and our ways of organizing it.

The second clause tightens the screw: “we can never succeed in formulating them.” Formulating is doing cultural work. It’s turning experience into language, mathematics, and prediction. Eddington is reminding readers that a law that can’t be formulated can’t function as science. It can’t be shared, tested, or used; it can’t become part of the social technology of knowledge.

The context matters. Writing in the early 20th century, after relativity and amid quantum uncertainty, Eddington stood in a moment when physics had just learned that the observer’s frame and the limits of measurement aren’t annoyances; they’re built into the description. His intent isn’t anti-scientific. It’s a warning against naive realism and a defense of humility: if our “laws” feel clean, it may be because we’ve selected the aspects of reality that fit the shapes our minds can draw.