Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective positions of the beings which compose it, if moreover this intelligence were vast enough to submit these data to analysis,… — Pierre-Simon Laplace Copy Share Image
Without any doubt, the regularity which astronomy shows us in the movements of the comets takes place in all phenomena. The trajectory of a simple molecule of air or vapour is regulated in a manner as certain as that of… — Pierre-Simon Laplace Copy Share Image
It is interesting thus to follow the intellectual truths of analysis in the phenomena of nature. This correspondence, of which the system of the… — Pierre-Simon Laplace Copy Share Image
“L'homme ne poursuit que des chimères. ( Man follows only phantoms .) { His true last words, according to Augustus De Morgan .}” — Pierre-Simon Laplace Copy Share Image
Such is the advantage of a well constructed language that its simplified notation often becomes the source of profound theories. — Pierre-Simon Laplace Copy Share Image
Napoleon: You have written this huge book on the system of the world without once mentioning the author of the universe. Laplace: Sire, I… — Pierre-Simon Laplace Copy Share Image
The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness. — Pierre-Simon Laplace Copy Share Image
“...by shortening the labours doubled the life of the astronomer. { On the benefit of John Napier 's logarithms .}” — Pierre-Simon Laplace Copy Share Image
To Napoleon on why his works on celestial mechanics make no mention of God: Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis. — Pierre-Simon Laplace Copy Share Image
We are so far from knowing all the forces of nature and their various modes of action that it would be unworthy of the… — Pierre-Simon Laplace Copy Share Image
If an event can be produced by a number n of different causes, the probabilities of the existence of these causes, given the event… — Pierre-Simon Laplace Copy Share Image
The word 'chance' then expresses only our ignorance of the causes of the phenomena that we observe to occur and to succeed one another… — Pierre-Simon Laplace Copy Share Image
The simplicity of the law by which the celestial bodies move, and the relations of their masses and distances, permit analysis to follow their… — Pierre-Simon Laplace Copy Share Image
His last words, according to De Morgan: Man follows only phantoms. — Pierre-Simon Laplace Copy Share Image
