Determinate Science

Milton,  Paradise Lost (1674)
"Him God beholding from his prospect high, / Wherein past, present, future he beholds, / Thus to his only Son forseeing spake" (Book III, 78-79)
". . . reveal to Adam what shall come in future days / As I shall thee enlighten" (Book XI, 114-15)

Isaac Newton, Principia Mathematica (1687)
". . . we offer this work as the mathematical principles of philosophy; . . . and to this end the general propositions . . .[are directed to an]. . . explication of the System of the World; for by the propositions mathematically demonstrated . . .[we]. . . derive from the celestial phenomena the forces of gravity with which bodies tend to the sun and the several planets. Then from these forces, by other propositions which are also mathematical, we deduce the motions of the planets, the comets, the moon, and the sea. I wish we could derive the rest of the phenomena of nature by the same kind of reasoning from mechanical principles; for I am induced by many reasons to suspect that they may all depend upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards each other, and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from each other. . ."
    Three laws of motion: "inertia"; F = MA; equal and opposite reaction
    Inverse square law: force of gravity is inversely proportional to the distance between two point sources (this is why the Adkins diet works better on the moon, but not so good on Jupiter!)

Marquis Pierre Simon de Laplace, Essai Philosophique sur les probabilités (1814)
"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 any given moment knew all of the forces that animate nature and the mutual positions of the beings that compose it, if this intellect were vast enough to submit the 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."

Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time (1988)
". . . if there really is a complete unified theory, it would presumably determine our actions.  And so the theory itself would determine the outcome of our search for it! . . . if we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists.  Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of why it is that we and the universe exist.  If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason–for then we would know the mind of God."
    Grand Unified theory would mathematically describe the equivalence of the four fundamental universal forces: gravity, electromagnetism, strong force (binds protons and neutrons), weak force (decay of protons to neutrons, electrons, and other particles); in other words, it would describe the nature of the universe before the universe was.

Indeterminate Sciences

–Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859)
"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of various kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other and so dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. . . There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."


–Werner Heisenberg, Uncertainty Principle
"The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa." (1925)
"In the sharp formulation of the law of causality-- ‘if we know the present exactly, we can calculate the future'-it is not the conclusion that is wrong but the premise." (1927)
"I believe that the existence of the classical ‘path' can be pregnantly formulated as follows: The ‘path' comes into existence only when we observe it." (1927)

–Lee Smolin, The Life of the Cosmos (1997)
". . . the metaphor of the universe we are now trying to imagine, which I would like to set against the picture of the universe as a clock, is an image of the universe as a city, as an endless negotiation, an endless construction of the new out of the old.  No one made the city, there is no city-maker, as there is a clock maker.  If a city can make itself, without a maker, why can the same not be true of the universe? . . . So there never was a God, no pilot who made the world by imposing order on chaos and who remains outside, watching and proscribing. . . The world will always be here, and it will always be different, more varied, more interesting, more alive, but still always the world in all its complexity and incompleteness. . . . All we have of natural law is a world that has made itself.  All we may expect of human law is what we can negotiate among ourselves, and what we take as our responsibility.  All that we may gain of knowledge must be drawn from what we can see with our own eyes and what others tell us they see with their eyes.  All we may expect of justice is compassion.  All we may look up to as judges are each other.  All that is possible of utopia is what we make with our own hands.  Pray let it be enough."