Word.ws English Dictionary

Laplace's demon

Laplace's demon proper noun: a creature in a thought experiment that knows the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe, and therefore (according to determinism) can compute their past and future values using the laws of classical mechanics.

Proper noun

Laplace's demon

  1. A creature in a thought experiment that knows the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe, and therefore (according to determinism) can compute their past and future values using the laws of classical mechanics.

Origin of Laplace's demon

First described in 1814 by Pierre-Simon Laplace.

Questions about Laplace's demon

What does Laplace's demon mean?
Laplace's demon means a creature in a thought experiment that knows the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe, and therefore (according to determinism) can compute their past and future values using the laws of classical mechanics.
What part of speech is Laplace's demon?
Laplace's demon is a proper noun.

Words near Laplace's demon in the dictionary

  1. Laplace planes
  2. Laplace sphere
  3. Laplace spheres
  4. Laplace transform
  5. Laplace transforms
  6. Laplace's demon
  7. Laplace's equation
  8. Laplace-Beltrami operator
  9. Laplace-Beltrami operators
  10. Laplace-de Rham operator
  11. Laplacean

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Laplace's demon (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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