One of the numerous contributions of Boscovich to science was his development of the unique solution to the problem of best linear fit to a set of astronomical data, nowadays known as linear interpolation. This approach was genuinely statistical and developed roughly at the same time when the normal distribution was being introduced in astronomical measurement practice.

Later on, the use of statistics was spread by Maxwell from practice in astronomy to the theory of atomism, when he established the first statistical laws in physics. Statistical physics became a precursor to quantum mechanics, in which the so called dynamical and statistical laws mingled, at least in Bohm's interpretation. This gave birth to the wavefunction, a concept of temporal development of probability distributions, and also to the specific term quantum measurement.

This meeting of the two types of laws may be interpreted in Boscovich's terms of potential and actual space, which he introduced in De continuitate lege (1754) and used it to overcome the gap between atomism and plenism by conceiving dimensionless atoms influencing each other via forces. Boscovich adopted the position that we can make calculations only in the potential space, but measure a particle only in one actual position. This potential space can be compared to the phase space of possible actual locations, the concept of potentiality in our description of the atomic world coming from the probabilistic-stastistical nature of the wavefunction.