Sir, I have no need for that hypothesis.
– famously spoken in response to Napoleon’s question about why Laplace did not mention God in his Celestial Mechanics
An intelligence knowing, all forces acting in nature at a given instant, as well as the momentary positions of all things in the universe, would be able to comprehend in one single formula the motions of the largest bodies in the world as well as the lightest atoms, provided that its intellect were sufficiently powerful to subject all data to analysis; to it nothing would be uncertain, the future as well as the past would be present to its eyes.
A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities – somewhat reworded, the classic definition of “determinism”
– somewhat reworded, the classic definition of “determinism”