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To: betty boop; ModelBreaker
But as you say, truly Laplace was a world-class thinker, and his work on Bayesian probability theory was truly foundational.

His statement that (freely paraphrasing) "seeing everything, and having the intellect to analyze the data, allows for knowledge of the future" brings up an interesting difficulty that I recalled today, while reviewing an orbital mechanics text.

The immediate context was that, while the motion of a body subject to central body gravitation is completely solveable, an "imposed non-two-body acceleration ... will render the new system [of equations] insolvable." (Emphasis mine.)

The author's essential point is that imposing perturbations other than gravity leaves us with a trajectory problem having more unknowns than parameters to explain the motion in a closed-form way. (This explains why there's no solution to the n-body problem, for example.)

It's an interesting lesson on the limitations of mathematics as they apply to the real world. At best, Laplace's statement boils down to a statement of perfect measurement of an immense number of initial conditions; coupled with zero-error numerical prediction methods -- neither of which are attainable in the real world.

150 posted on 11/14/2006 11:57:09 AM PST by r9etb
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To: r9etb; betty boop
At best, Laplace's statement boils down to a statement of perfect measurement of an immense number of initial conditions; coupled with zero-error numerical prediction methods -- neither of which are attainable in the real world. Or, as I posted just a moment ago, he was describing God's, not man's, perspective.
153 posted on 11/14/2006 12:02:48 PM PST by ModelBreaker
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To: r9etb
At best, Laplace's statement boils down to a statement of perfect measurement of an immense number of initial conditions; coupled with zero-error numerical prediction methods -- neither of which are attainable in the real world.

Indeed r9etb -- thank you so much for this telling insight!

260 posted on 11/15/2006 10:06:26 AM PST by betty boop (Beautiful are the things we see...Much the most beautiful those we do not comprehend. -- N. Steensen)
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