Pierre-Simon Laplace, a French physicist and mathematician born a century after Newton, thought differently. Scholars debate over his true religious views, which seem to have vacillated between deism (God created the world, but did not subsequently intervene in its operation) and outright atheism. Laplace is the one who, when asked by Emperor Napoleón why God didn’t appear in his book on celestial mechanics, purportedly replied, “I had no need of that hypothesis.” Whatever his ultimate beliefs, it seems that Laplace held steadfastly against the idea of a Creator who would ever directly
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