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

Pierre-Simon Laplace Quotes

Mathematician

Filter quotes by topic

AllScienceProbabilityLawMathematicalMathematicsHypothesisNeedsCommonIfsIgnoranceIgnorantKnowsMenNatureNumbersOrderPositionSimpleTheoryAnalysis

Famous Pierre-Simon Laplace Quotes

“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.”

StatesMomentsBodyPastMovingLawScienceCertainOrderGivenCenturyPositionMassRelationDistanceSimplicityDetermineObservationAnalysisPermitMathematicianCelestialMoments In TimeVelocityCelestial Bodies
Author:Pierre-Simon Laplace
Create image

“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

“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
Create image

“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.”

MenFirstsWellsMeanTwoImportantIdeasRememberValuesSimpleNumbersEducationPositionGeniusTenAchievementAppreciateIndiaAbsolutesMathematicsMethodProfoundSimplicityAppreciationMathInventionSymbolsMathematicalEaseMeritReceivingGrandeurAntiquityIngeniousArithmeticComputationNumbers And MathGreatest ManGreat Math
Author:Pierre-Simon Laplace
Create image