Global myocardial function, regional myocardial function, and the Daemon of Laplace.

Abstract

Pierre-Simon Laplace, the famous 18th century French mathematician, physicist, and astronomer, expressed in his book ‘Essai philosophique sur des Probabilites’ his deterministic view on the world with the idea that if a hypothetical intellect would be aware of all laws of nature and the exact condition of all its components at a certain point in time, any past or future state of the universe could be calculated from that.1 This intellect became later popular as ‘Daemon of Laplace’, and the idea was challenged by both philosophers and physicists. Not only that in final consequence such a deterministic world spirit would exclude the existence of a free will, it also causes a logical problem as this intelligence would be part of the system and had to calculate itself. Finally, modern quantum mechanics tells us that both location and velocity of a particle cannot be measured at the same time. Determining the regional work performed by the ventricular myocardium leaves us with a less philosophic problem on a smaller scale, but with a comparable intellectual challenge. And also here Laplace was involved in laying the foundations. In a joint work with Lavoisier, they confirmed in 1780 that oxygen consumption of an animal has an energetic equivalent in the body heat that can melt the ice inside a calorimeter.2 The same principle is …