Pierre-Simon Laplace
In Our Time: Science
00:00
The Determinism of the Universe
Laplace believed that if you know everything about the universe, and it doesn't need to be everything, a small error in your knowledge can result in a completely different outcome. This is an idea which came a little bit later, the idea of a demon having this kind of complete information. And I think this was the moment when he said, okay, if Newton is right, then these equations that Newton came up with provided we know where everything is in the universe,. how it's moving now, a snapshot. That snapshot can be run using Newton's equations into the future and back into the past. It leads to the idea of the universe being clockwork deterministic.
Transcript
Play full episode
