Introduction
Not Just a Rock
We advance, both as individuals and as a species, by solving problems. As
a rule of thumb, the reward for solving problems increases with the dif-
ficulty of the problem. Part of the appeal of solving a difficult problem is
the intellectual challenge, but a reward that often accompanies the solu-
tions to such problems is the potential to accomplish amazing feats. After
Archimedes discovered the principle of the lever, he remarked that if he
were given a lever and a place to stand, he could move Earth.^1 The sense
of omnipotence displayed in this statement can also be found in the sense
of omniscience of a similar observation made by the eighteenth-century
French mathematician and physicist Pierre-Simon de Laplace. Laplace
made major contributions to celestial mechanics, and stated that if he
knew the position and velocity of everything at a given moment, he would
be able to predict where everything would be at all times in the future.
“Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the
forces by which nature is animated and the respective positions of the be-
ings which compose it, if moreover this intelligence were vast enough to