Scientific Determinism Vs. Creative Surrender
Laplace, the French mathematician, is one of the very first proponents of Scientific Determinism. In his Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1814) , he speaks about the possibility of a Vast Intellect that might perceive at once the past, the present and the future – by its sheer ability to see through the internal links of the flow of events. Prior to this proposal, the uncanny scholar had corrected the Newtonian hypothesis of divine interventions to maintain stability of the solar system. Essentially, Laplace explained through integral calculus the perturbations of larger planets that couldn’t be deduced through Newtonian formulas. Nevertheless, nowhere do we find in the writings of this extraordinary Scientific Reformer an openly confessed atheism, which is a fashionable trend among some of the greatest intellectuals of our own times. At the same time, the French Scholar wasn't an ardent advocate of Christianity either. One could therefore assert this much ...