page_title: Laplace's demon
hierarchical_section_title: Laplace's demon
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Pierre-Simon de Laplace, mathématicien et astronome, en habit de chancelier du Sénat sous l'Empire
context_page_description: In the history of science, Laplace's demon was the first published articulation of causal or scientific determinism, by Pierre-Simon Laplace in 1814. According to determinism, if someone knows the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe, their past and future values for any given time are entailed; they can be calculated from the laws of classical mechanics.
  A desire to confirm or refute Laplace's demon played a vital motivating role in the subsequent development of statistical thermodynamics, the first of several repudiations developed by later generations of physicists to the assumption of causal determinacy upon which Laplace's demon is erected.
context_section_description: In the history of science, Laplace's demon was the first published articulation of causal or scientific determinism, by Pierre-Simon Laplace in 1814. According to determinism, if someone (the demon) knows the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe, their past and future values for any given time are entailed; they can be calculated from the laws of classical mechanics.
  A desire to confirm or refute Laplace's demon played a vital motivating role in the subsequent development of statistical thermodynamics, the first of several repudiations developed by later generations of physicists to the assumption of causal determinacy upon which Laplace's demon is erected.
caption: French scholar Pierre-Simon de Laplace (1749–1827)
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