An unnecessary hypothesis
Victor Hugo hastily scribbled the anecdote on a sheet of paper, never saw it published during his lifetime, and surely could not have imagined the fate that awaited it: "Mr Arago had a favorite anecdote," he wrote in 1847. "When Laplace had published his Mécanique céleste, he would say, the Emperor summoned him. The Emperor was furious. 'What!' he cried when he saw Laplace. 'You set out the entire system of the world, you give the laws of all creation, and nowhere in your book do you mention the existence of God!' 'Sire,' Laplace replied, 'I had no need of that hypothesis.'"
Today, this punchline has become a slogan for a form of atheism in which mathematics takes God's place. Laplace's actual intention probably did not go that far.
Coming from a staunch advocate of determinism, it was probably intended instead as a criticism of the Newtonian view of a God supposedly all too ready to intervene in the affairs of Creation.
