"The surprising discovery of Newton’s age is just the clear separation of laws of nature on the one hand and initial conditions on the other. The former are precise beyond anything reasonable; we know virtually nothing about the latter. ,,, … how can we ascertain that we know all the laws of nature relevant to a set of phenomena? If we do not, we would determine unnecessarily many initial conditions in order to specify the behavior of the object."
January 1, 1970