Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace, (born March 23, 1749, Beaumount-en-Auge, Normandy, France—died March 5, 1827, Paris), French mathematician, astronomer, and physicist who was best known for his investigations into the stability of the solar system.

Pierre-Simon Laplace's father, Pierre Laplace, was comfortably well off in the cider trade. Laplace's mother, Marie-Anne Sochon, came from a fairly prosperous farming family who owned land at Tourgéville. Many accounts of Laplace say his family were 'poor farming people' or 'peasant farmers' but these seem to be rather inaccurate although there is little evidence of academic achievement except for an uncle who is thought to have been a secondary school teacher of mathematics. This is stated in [1] in these terms:-
There is little record of intellectual distinction in the family beyond what was to be expected of the cultivated provincial bourgeoisie and the minor gentry.

Like Inception, because it involves the protagonist, Neo, finding out that his world is an illusion created by a computer, The Matrix raises skeptical worries about whether we can know that our world is real. But if we follow the story out to its sequels—Reloaded and Revolutions—we see additional worries about whether humans have free will.