Laplace's Demon
This is the 3rd demon in my 'Imaginary Friends of Science' series. In fairness Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace (23 March 1749 – 5 March 1827) , French mathematical physicist, was pretty hard-headed and probably didn't really have any imaginary friends. In 1814, when he suggested an entity envisioned such that if it knew the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe then it could use deterministic principles to reveal the entire course of cosmic events, past and future, he didn't name it a demon. His biographers did. But less face it - hard-headed or not, this hypothetical entity is much like those thought experiments of Maxwell and Descartes, also called demons. So, I've made linocuts of the entire trio. Each block is 6 inches by 7 inches and printed on Japanese kozo (or mulberry paper).
I imagined this demon as containing 'everything' between his horns (galaxies, stars, planets, comets, and so on), bearing a maked ressemblance to Laplace, and, since it knows everything, being enlightened, so I've borrowed some associated iconography.*
*there is a story about Laplace, possible apocryphal, that when questioned by Napoleon about the lack of reference to God or a Creator that he stated that he had had 'no need of that hypothesis' (Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là).
Laplace's Demon
This is the 3rd demon in my 'Imaginary Friends of Science' series. In fairness Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace (23 March 1749 – 5 March 1827) , French mathematical physicist, was pretty hard-headed and probably didn't really have any imaginary friends. In 1814, when he suggested an entity envisioned such that if it knew the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe then it could use deterministic principles to reveal the entire course of cosmic events, past and future, he didn't name it a demon. His biographers did. But less face it - hard-headed or not, this hypothetical entity is much like those thought experiments of Maxwell and Descartes, also called demons. So, I've made linocuts of the entire trio. Each block is 6 inches by 7 inches and printed on Japanese kozo (or mulberry paper).
I imagined this demon as containing 'everything' between his horns (galaxies, stars, planets, comets, and so on), bearing a maked ressemblance to Laplace, and, since it knows everything, being enlightened, so I've borrowed some associated iconography.*
*there is a story about Laplace, possible apocryphal, that when questioned by Napoleon about the lack of reference to God or a Creator that he stated that he had had 'no need of that hypothesis' (Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là).