linguistic:voice_change, quality:corruption
I had no need of that hypothesis

A frequently cited but potentially apocryphal interaction between Laplace and Napoleon purportedly concerns the existence of God. Although the conversation in question did occur, the exact words Laplace used and his intended meaning are not known. A typical version is provided by Rouse Ball:

Laplace went in state to Napoleon to present a copy of his work, and the following account of the interview is well authenticated, and so characteristic of all the parties concerned that I quote it in full. Someone had told Napoleon that the book contained no mention of the name of God; Napoleon, who was fond of putting embarrassing questions, received it with the remark, 'M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator.' Laplace, who, though the most supple of politicians, was as stiff as a martyr on every point of his philosophy, drew himself up and answered bluntly, Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là. ("I had no need of that hypothesis.") Napoleon, greatly amused, told this reply to Lagrange, who exclaimed, Ah! c'est une belle hypothèse; ça explique beaucoup de choses. ("Ah, it is a fine hypothesis; it explains many things.")

An earlier report, although without the mention of Laplace's name, is found in Antommarchi's The Last Moments of Napoleon (1825):

Je m'entretenais avec L..... je le félicitais d'un ouvrage qu'il venait de publier et lui demandais comment le nom de Dieu, qui se reproduisait sans cesse sous la plume de Lagrange, ne s'était pas présenté une seule fois sous la sienne. C'est, me répondit-il, que je n'ai pas eu besoin de cette hypothèse. ("While speaking with L..... I congratulated him on a work which he had just published and asked him how the name of God, which appeared endlessly in the works of Lagrange, didn't occur even once in his. He replied that he had no need of that hypothesis.")

In 1884, however, the astronomer Hervé Faye affirmed that this account of Laplace's exchange with Napoleon presented a "strangely transformed" (étrangement transformée) or garbled version of what had actually happened. It was not God that Laplace had treated as a hypothesis, but merely his intervention at a determinate point:

In fact Laplace never said that. Here, I believe, is what truly happened. Newton, believing that the secular perturbations which he had sketched out in his theory would in the long run end up destroying the Solar System, says somewhere that God was obliged to intervene from time to time to remedy the evil and somehow keep the system working properly. This, however, was a pure supposition suggested to Newton by an incomplete view of the conditions of the stability of our little world. Science was not yet advanced enough at that time to bring these conditions into full view. But Laplace, who had discovered them by a deep analysis, would have replied to the First Consul that Newton had wrongly invoked the intervention of God to adjust from time to time the machine of the world (la machine du monde) and that he, Laplace, had no need of such an assumption. It was not God, therefore, that Laplace treated as a hypothesis, but his intervention in a certain place.

Laplace's younger colleague, the astronomer François Arago, who gave his eulogy before the French Academy in 1827, told Faye of an attempt by Laplace to keep the garbled version of his interaction with Napoleon out of circulation. Faye writes:

I have it on the authority of M. Arago that Laplace, warned shortly before his death that that anecdote was about to be published in a biographical collection, had requested him to demand its deletion by the publisher. It was necessary to either explain or delete it, and the second way was the easiest. But, unfortunately, it was neither deleted nor explained.

The Swiss-American historian of mathematics Florian Cajori appears to have been unaware of Faye's research, but in 1893 he came to a similar conclusion. Stephen Hawking said in 1999, "I don't think that Laplace was claiming that God does not exist. It's just that he doesn't intervene, to break the laws of Science."

The only eyewitness account of Laplace's interaction with Napoleon is from the entry for 8 August 1802 in the diary of the British astronomer Sir William Herschel:

The first Consul then asked a few questions relating to Astronomy and the construction of the heavens to which I made such answers as seemed to give him great satisfaction. He also addressed himself to Mr Laplace on the same subject, and held a considerable argument with him in which he differed from that eminent mathematician. The difference was occasioned by an exclamation of the first Consul, who asked in a tone of exclamation or admiration (when we were speaking of the extent of the sidereal heavens): 'And who is the author of all this!' Mons. De la Place wished to shew that a chain of natural causes would account for the construction and preservation of the wonderful system. This the first Consul rather opposed. Much may be said on the subject; by joining the arguments of both we shall be led to 'Nature and nature's God'.

Since this makes no mention of Laplace's saying, "I had no need of that hypothesis," Daniel Johnson argues that "Laplace never used the words attributed to him." Arago's testimony, however, appears to imply that he did, only not in reference to the existence of God.