An intellect which at a given instant knew all the forces with which nature is animated, and the respective situations of the beings that compose nature— supposing the said intellect were vast enough to subject these data to analysis—would embrace in the same formula the motions of the greatest bodies in the
universe and those of the slightest atom: nothing would be uncertain for it, and the future, like the past, would be present to its eyes
-Laplace, 'Introduction à la theorie analytique des
probabilités' Oeuvres Complètes, vol. VII. Paris, 1886, p.
vi.
via RA Fisher
No comments:
Post a Comment