"Laplace" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... corpuscular theory of light, determined the function (n^2-1), where n is the refractive index, to be the expression for the refractive power; dividing this expression by the density (d), he obtained (n^2-1)/d, which he named the "absolute refractive power." To P.S. Laplace is due the theoretical proof that this function is independent of temperature and pressure, and apparent experimental confirmation was provided by Biot and Arago's, and by Dulong's observations ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... which are not touched by Mr. Darwin, namely, the origin of the present form of the solar system, and that of living matter. Full justice is done to Kant, as the originator of that "cosmic gas theory," as the Germans somewhat quaintly call it, which is commonly ascribed to Laplace. With respect to spontaneous generation, while admitting that there is no experimental evidence in its favour, Professor Haeckel denies the possibility of disproving it, and points out that the assumption that it has occurred is a necessary part of the doctrine ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... thousand years old? Are all those ages of past {17} history, when the earth and the sun were but nebulae, a mere imagination, or did that nebulous mass come into existence thousands or millions of years afterwards when Kant or Laplace first conceived that it had existed? The supposition is clearly self-contradictory and impossible. If Science be not a mass of illusion, this planet existed millions of years before any human—or, so far as we know, any animal minds—existed ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... matter," says Kant, "and I will build the world;" and he proceeds to deduce from the simple data from which he starts, a doctrine in all essential respects similar to the well-known "Nebular Hypothesis" of Laplace.[13] He accounts for the relation of the masses and the densities of the planets to their distances from the sun, for the eccentricities of their orbits, for their rotations, for their satellites, for the general agreement in the direction of rotation among the celestial ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... say would, after this, convince the Nawab that there was any virtue in telescopes; his religions feeling had been greatly excited against them; and had Galileo, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Newton, Laplace, and the Herschels, all been present to defend them, they would not have altered his opinion of their demerits. The old man has, I believe, a shrewd suspicion that they are inventions of the devil to lead men from the right way; and were he told all that these great men have ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
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