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"Calculus" had an older meaning; I think this is what he meant.
* It is [[India]] that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit. But its very simplicity and the great ease which it has lent to computations put our [[arithmetic]] in the first rank of useful inventions; and we shall appreciate the grandeur of the achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of [[Archimedes]] and Apollonius, two of the greatest men produced by antiquity.
* It is [[India]] that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit. But its very simplicity and the great ease which it has lent to computations put our [[arithmetic]] in the first rank of useful inventions; and we shall appreciate the grandeur of the achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of [[Archimedes]] and Apollonius, two of the greatest men produced by antiquity.
* The theory of probabilities is at bottom nothing but common sense reduced to [[calculus]]; it enables us to appreciate with exactness that which accurate minds feel with a sort of instinct for which ofttimes they are unable to account.
* The theory of probabilities is at bottom nothing but common sense reduced to calculus<ref>Laplace was very likely referring to the older meaning of this word, as a "way of calculating or reckoning something", rather than the modern usage of [[calculus|differential or integral calculus]]</ref>; it enables us to appreciate with exactness that which accurate minds feel with a sort of instinct for which ofttimes they are unable to account.
* All the effects of [[Nature]] are only the mathematical consequences of a small number of immutable laws.
* All the effects of [[Nature]] are only the mathematical consequences of a small number of immutable laws.
* Man follows only phantoms.
* Man follows only phantoms.
* Numbers, Ronald L. ''Creation by Natural Law: Laplace's Nebular Hypothesis in American Thought'' (1977).
* Numbers, Ronald L. ''Creation by Natural Law: Laplace's Nebular Hypothesis in American Thought'' (1977).
==References==
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