Marquis Pierre Simon de Laplace was one of the founders of the reductionist tradition. He wrote in his Philospohical Essay on Probabilities (1814): "An intellect which at any given moment knew all the forces that animate and mutual positions of the beings that comprise it, if this intellect were vast enough to submit its data to analysis, could condense into a single formula the movement of the greatest bodies of the universe and that of the lightest atom: for such an intellect nothing could be uncertain; and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes." [This passage may have been read by H. G. Wells, and could have inspired his "Universe Rigid" essay, and later The Time Machine (after the Universe Rigid manuscript was lost by the publisher).]

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