Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1902)
Context: The theory of chance consists in reducing all the events of the same kind to a certain number of cases equally possible, that is to say, to such as we may be equally undecided about in regard to their existence, and in determining the number of cases favorable to the event whose probability is sought.<!--p.6
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Philosophical Essay on Probabilities
Pierre-Simon Laplace
Pierre-Simon Laplace:
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Famous Pierre-Simon Laplace Quotes
“Life's most important questions are, for the most part, nothing but probability problems.”
citation needed
"Les questions les plus importantes de la vie ne sont en effet, pour la plupart, que des problèmes de probabilité."
“"The last thing we expect of you, General, is a lesson in geometry!"”
"La dernière chose que nous attendions de vous, Général, est une leçon de géométrie !"
Laplace to Napoléon, after the latter had reported on some new elementary geometry results[citation needed]
His true last words, according to Augustus De Morgan's Budget of Paradoxes (1866).
Compare Edmund Burke's famous remark, after a parliamentary candidate's sudden death, about ""what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue"".
Quoted in H Eves Return to Mathematical Circles (Boston 1988). http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Quotations/Laplace.html
“All these efforts in the search for truth tend to lead it”
Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1902)
Context: All these efforts in the search for truth tend to lead it [the human mind] back continually to the vast intelligence... but from which it will always remain infinitely removed. This tendency peculiar to the human race is that which renders it superior... and their progress in this respect distinguishes nations and ages and constitutes their true glory.<!--pp.4-5
Pierre-Simon Laplace Quotes
“Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces”
Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1902)
Context: Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings who compose it—an intelligence sufficiently vast to submit these data to analysis—it would embrace in the same formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the lightest atom; for it, nothing would be uncertain and the future, as the past, would be present to its eyes. The human mind offers, in the perfection which it has been able to give to astronomy, a feeble idea of this intelligence. Its discoveries in mechanics and geometry, added to that of universal gravity, have enabled it to comprehend in the same analytical expressions the past and future states of the system of the world.<!--p.4
Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1902), p.3
“The most important questions of life… are indeed for the most part only problems of probability.”
Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1902)
Context: The most important questions of life... are indeed for the most part only problems of probability. Strictly speaking it may even be said that nearly all our knowledge is problematical; and in the small number of things which we are able to know with certainty, even in the mathematical sciences themselves, the principal means for ascertaining truth—induction and analogy—are based on probabilities.<!--p.1
p, 125
Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1902)
p, 125
Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1902)
“"It is therefore obvious that…"”
Frequently used in the Traité de mécanique céleste when he had proved something and mislaid the proof, or found it clumsy. Notorious as a signal for something true, but hard to prove.
“Nature laughs at the difficulties of integration.”
Quoted in I. Gordon and S. Sorkin, The Armchair Science Reader, New York, 1959.
“What we know is not much. What we do not know is immense.”
"Ce que nous connaissons est peu de chose, ce que nous ignorons est immense."
Allegedly his last words, reported in Joseph Fourier's "Éloge historique de M. le Marquis de Laplace" (1829) with the comment, "This was at least the meaning of his last words, which were articulated with difficulty." Quoted in Augustus De Morgan's Budget of Paradoxes (1866).
"On voit, par cet Essai, que la théorie des probabilités n'est, au fond, que le bon sens réduit au calcul; elle fait apprécier avec exactitude ce que les esprits justes sentent par une sorte d'instinct, sans qu'ils puissent souvent s'en rendre compte."
From the Introduction to Théorie Analytique des Probabilités http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=Gallica&O=NUMM-88764, second and later editions; also published separately as Essai philosophique sur les Probabilités (1814). Œuvres complètes de Laplace, tome VII, p. cliii, Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1878-1912.
Also reported as: "The theory of probabilities is at bottom nothing but common sense reduced to calculus; it enables us to appreciate with exactness that which accurate minds feel with a sort of instinct for which ofttimes they are unable to account."
Or as: "Probability theory is nothing but common sense reduced to calculation."
