However much we may feel free, everything that we do is, according to Laplace, completely determined. Indeed the entire cosmos is reduced to a gigantic clockwork mechanism, with each component slavishly and unfailingly executing it preprogrammed instructions to mathematical precision. Such is the sweeping implication of Newtonian mechanics.

The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature's Creative Ability to, Order the Universe, Chapter 2 (p. 11), Simon & Schuster. 1988