Who said this quote? December 4, 2007 4:33 PM Subscribe
Who said "Given the velocity and position of all atoms I can predict the future." (or something very similar to that)? posted by sepsis to science & nature (13 comments total)
Are you thinking of Marquis de LaPlace:
"We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at any given moment knew all of the forces that animate nature and the mutual positions of the beings that compose it, if this intellect were vast enough to submit the data to analysis, could condense into a single formula the movement of the greatest bodies of the universe and that of the lightest atom; for such an intellect nothing could be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes." posted by justkevin at 4:38 PM on December 4, 2007 [3 favorites]
Not sure if this helps, but might you be thinking of Archimedes?
"Give me a place to stand on, and I can move the earth." posted by war wrath of wraith at 4:38 PM on December 4, 2007
This idea, generally speaking, is called determinism. De La Place was not articulating a new idea, but interpreting it eloquently in terms of new physical understanding provided his contemporaries and forebearers (Newton, for one). The idea was widespread and debated after Newtonian physics came to prominence. Poincare spoke of what we now think of as chaos theory (systems may be deterministic, but tiny changes in initial conditions can have extremely complicated effects on the results). See butterfly effect.
Are you looking for a real person? I know a character in Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia, Thomasina, says something very similar to this. posted by Stacey at 4:57 PM on December 4, 2007
justkevin answered my question. I know all about the concept, I just wanted the quote...turned out the actual quote was a lot wordier than I thought it was. Oh well. Thanks for the help! posted by sepsis at 5:02 PM on December 4, 2007
Actually, Heisenberg didn't disprove the statement, he just showed that it wasn't possible to get both pieces of knowledge required. posted by flaterik at 10:37 PM on December 4, 2007
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"We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at any given moment knew all of the forces that animate nature and the mutual positions of the beings that compose it, if this intellect were vast enough to submit the data to analysis, could condense into a single formula the movement of the greatest bodies of the universe and that of the lightest atom; for such an intellect nothing could be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes."
posted by justkevin at 4:38 PM on December 4, 2007 [3 favorites]