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Pierre-Simon Laplace

Pierre-Simon Laplace Books

Mathematician

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“The simplicity of the law by which the celestial bodies move, and the relations of their masses and distances, permit analysis to follow their motions up to a certain point; and in order to determine the state of the system of these great bodies in past or future centuries, it suffices for the mathematician that their position and their velocity be given by observation for any moment in time.”

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Author:Pierre-Simon Laplace
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“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, it would embrace in the same formula both the movements of the largest bodies in the universe and those of the lightest atom; to it nothing would be uncertain, and the future as the past would be present to its eye.”

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Author:Pierre-Simon Laplace
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“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 the planetary orbits; the only difference between them is that which is contributed by our ignorance. Probability is relative in part to this ignorance, and in part to our knowledge.”

ShowsScienceCertainDifferencesSimpleKnowledgeDoubtAirMovementIgnorancePlantAstronomyIgnorantRelativeProbabilityMoleculesOrbitTrajectoryRegularityCometsVapour
Book:Pierre-Simon Laplace Philosophical Essay on Probabilities: Translated from the fifth French edition of 1825 With Notes by the Translator
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“[Science] dissipates errors born of ignorance about our true relations with nature, errors the more damaging in that the social order should rest only on those relations. TRUTH! JUSTICE! Those are the immutable laws. Let us banish the dangerous maxim that it is sometimes useful to depart from them and to deceive or enslave mankind to assure its happiness.”

ShouldSometimesLawScienceOrderSocialBornJusticeMankindDangerousIgnoranceAccountsRelationErrorsIgnorantDeceivingMaximsSocial OrderTrue Relation
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“The theory of probabilities is basically only common sense reduced to a calculus. It makes one estimate accurately what right-minded people feel by a sort of instinct, often without being able to give a reason for it.”

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Book:Pierre-Simon Laplace Philosophical Essay on Probabilities: Translated from the fifth French edition of 1825 With Notes by the Translator
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“We are so far from knowing all the forces of nature and their various modes of action that it would be unworthy of the philosopher to deny phenomena simply because they are inexplicable at the present state of our knowledge. The more difficult it is to acknowledge their existence, the greater the care with which we must study these phenomena.”

StatesWould BeCareActionForceSocialDifficultExistenceKnowingStudyGreaterPhilosophicalPhilosopherVariousDenyAcknowledgeUnworthyInexplicableForces Of Nature
Author:Pierre-Simon Laplace
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“However, the small probability of a similar encounter [of the earth with a comet], can become very great in adding up over a huge sequence of centuries. It is easy to picture to oneself the effects of this impact upon the Earth. The axis and the motion of rotation changed; the seas abandoning their old position to throw themselves toward the new equator; a large part of men and animals drowned in this universal deluge, or destroyed by the violent tremor imparted to the terrestrial globe.”

MenEarthScienceEasyAnimalSeaEffectsCenturyPositionChangedHugeUniversalImpactOneselfViolentDestroyedEncountersGlobesProbabilitySequenceAxesCometsRotationDelugeEquator
Author:Pierre-Simon Laplace
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“If an event can be produced by a number n of different causes, the probabilities of the existence of these causes, given the event (prises de l'événement), are to each other as the probabilities of the event, given the causes: and the probability of each cause is equal to the probability of the event, given that cause, divided by the sum of all the probabilities of the event, given each of the causes.”

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Author:Pierre-Simon Laplace
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“It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit. But its very simplicity and the great ease which it has lent to computations put our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions; and we shall appreciate the grandeur of the achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest men produced by antiquity.”

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Author:Pierre-Simon Laplace
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“I see with much pleasure that you are working on a large work on the integral Calculus ... The reconciliation of the methods which you are planning to make, serves to clarify them mutually, and what they have in common contains very often their true metaphysics; this is why that metaphysics is almost the last thing that one discovers. The spirit arrives at the results as if by instinct; it is only on reflecting upon the route that it and others have followed that it succeeds in generalising the methods and in discovering its metaphysics.”

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Author:Pierre-Simon Laplace
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