Magni Formica Laboris

We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes. - Laplace, Introduction to the Essai . ... if we conceive of a being whose faculties are so sharpened that he can follow every molecule in its course, such a being, whose attributes are as essentially finite as our own, would be able to do what is impossible to us. For we have seen that molecules in a vessel full of air at uniform temperature are moving with velocities by no means uniform, though the mean velocity of any great numbe

"Elspeth Crawford has sought to understand Faraday's creativity by studying his learning process. As she rightly emphasizes, learning about nature was for Faraday a form of self-knowledge and one that led to a particular emotional state by which he could, through humility, free himself from prejudice and give rein to his curiosity and creative powers." ( Michael Faraday: Sandemanian and Scientist p. 263)