"Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings who compose it—an intelligence sufficiently vast to submit these data to analysis—it would embrace in the same formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the lightest atom; for it, nothing would be uncertain and the future, as the past, would be present to its eyes. The human mind offers, in the perfection which it has been able to give to astronomy, a feeble idea of this intelligence. Its discoveries in mechanics and geometry, added to that of universal gravity, have enabled it to comprehend in the same analytical expressions the past and future states of the system of the world."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Pierre-Simon Laplace
1749 – 1827
Pierre-Simon Laplace (23 March 1749 – 5 March 1827) was a French mathematician and astronomer, discoverer of the Laplace transform and Laplace's equation.
30 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Pierre-Simon Laplace →
Related Quotes
"Said the great and magnanimous Laplace: 'It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by t…"
""Les questions les plus importantes de la vie ne sont en effet, pour la plupart, que des problèmes de probabilité." T…"
"La dernière chose que nous attendions de vous, Général, est une leçon de géométrie !"
"Ce que nous connaissons est peu de chose, ce que nous ignorons est immense."
"L'homme ne poursuit que des chimères."
"Lisez Euler, lisez Euler, c'est notre maître à tous."
"Nature laughs at the difficulties of integration."
"Il est facile de voir que..."
"It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by means of ten symbols, each symbol receivin…"
"On voit, par cet Essai, que la théorie des probabilités n'est, au fond, que le bon sens réduit au calcul; elle fait a…"