Science Quote by Arthur Eddington

Even in its understatement, Eddington is smuggling a bombshell past the reader’s defenses. “Probably,” “simplest,” “may be,” “slow process”: the sentence is padded with caution, the verbal equivalent of a scientist clearing his throat. That hedging is the point. Eddington is modeling a way to talk about ideas that threaten to outrun the evidence. The line doesn’t swagger; it tiptoes, because the concept - matter not as permanent stuff but as something with an expiry date - is cosmologically destabilizing.

The intent is pragmatic: offer a mechanism that explains observations without multiplying assumptions. In early 20th-century physics, the old picture of the universe as a stable warehouse of matter was already collapsing under the weight of relativity, radioactivity, and the dawning realization that stars shine by converting mass into energy. “Annihilation” here isn’t pulp-science drama; it’s a controlled term pointing toward mass-energy conversion and the idea that the universe is not merely changing form but spending itself.

The subtext is philosophical, delivered with laboratory restraint: permanence is a comforting folk belief, not a scientific guarantee. By calling annihilation “slow,” Eddington also defuses panic and invites scale-thinking; cosmic change doesn’t need fireworks to be real. Context matters: Eddington was a key popularizer and interpreter of relativity, writing at a moment when physics was becoming both stranger and more public. The sentence performs that era’s new contract with the reader: the universe is intelligible, but only if you’re willing to let go of intuition.