Quotessence
Home / Authors / Pierre-Simon Laplace
Pierre-Simon Laplace

Pierre-Simon Laplace Quotes

Mathematician

Filter quotes by topic

AllScienceProbabilityLawMathematicalMathematicsHypothesisNeedsCommonIfsIgnoranceIgnorantKnowsMenNatureNumbersOrderPositionSimpleTheoryAnalysis

Famous Pierre-Simon Laplace Quotes

“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.”

IfsEnoughBodyWould BeEyePastUniverseGivenForceMovementPositionEmbraceDataAnalysisInstantFree WillFormulasAtomsSubmitUncertainAnimated
Author:Pierre-Simon Laplace
Create 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 (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.”

IfsDifferentScienceGivenCausesChanceNumbersExistenceEventsEqualDividedProbability
Author:Pierre-Simon Laplace
Create image

“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.”

IfsLastsScienceSpiritPleasureResultsCommonSucceedMethodInstinctPlanningDiscoveringMetaphysicsRoutesReconciliationReflectingCalculusIntegral CalculusReflecting Upon
Author:Pierre-Simon Laplace
Create image