Reference
- Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)French mathematician, physicist, and religious recluse who was not only a scientist anxious to solve some of the problems of the day but also a gifted writer and a moralist. He is remembered not so much for his original creative work - as are his contemporaries René Descartes and Pierre de Fermat - but for his contributions to projective geometry, the calculus of probability, infinitesimal calculus, fluid statics, and his methodology in science generally. Much of his work has become appreciated only during the last 150 years.
Pascal was born on 19 June 1623 at Clermont-Ferrand, the son of a civil servant in the local administration. His mother died when he was only three, and his father - also a respected mathematician - looked after the family and saw to the education of the children. In 1631 they all moved to Paris, where Pascal's sister Jacqueline showed literary talent and Pascal himself displayed mathematical ability. By 1639, when Pascal was 16, he was already participating in the scientific and philosophical meetings run at the Convent of Place Royale by its director, Father Marin Mersenne (1588-1648); some of these meetings were attended also by Descartes, Fermat, and other celebrated figures. The illness and eventual death of his father led Pascal to commit himself to a more spiritual mode of life, one from which he was at times terrified of lapsing. Converted to the rigorous form of Roman Catholicism known as Jansenism in 1646, he finally experienced a fervently spiritual ‘night of fire’ on 23 November 1654, and from then on wrote only at the direct request of his spiritual advisers, the order of monks at Port Royal. Five years later his health had become poor enough to prevent him from working at all. After 1661, when his sister died, Pascal became even more solitary and his health deteriorated further. His last project was to design a public transport system for Paris. The system was actually inaugurated in 1662, the year Pascal died. He died from a malignant ulcer of the stomach on 19 August 1662 in Paris, aged only 39...
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Perspectives
Pascal
Ever since the edifying life written by his sister in the months after his death, canonical representations of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) have revered him for the scientific genius of his youth, the religious conversions of his mid-life, and the great books and greater saintliness of his last years. All this monumentalizes the hero, but it also reduces the man to a mind and spirit and it divides his life and work into unrelated halves. The preeminent specialist, Jean Mesnard, still picks up the subject where Gilberte Pascal left it in 1662. No historian in our language has even attempted to put the halves together again. In Pascal: The Man and His Two Loves, John R. Cole reintegrates a life that began with familial attachments and achieved youthful marvels of invention and experiment with an Arithmetic Machine and Vacuum Experiments; Cole argues that love for his father spun the wheels and filled the void. Pascal then converted, having suffered particularly painful separations and losses; Cole's central chapters adapt Freudian methods to relate his newly ardent love of God to his prior love of parents. Finally, the convert wrote contrasting classics, the Provincial Letters and the Penses, before years of sanctified suffering terminated his work; Cole suggests that disciplined study of his affective life makes possible new readings of these great books.
The Unfinished Game
Before the mid-seventeenth century, scholars generally agreed that it was impossible to predict something by calculating mathematical outcomes. One simply could not put a numerical value on the likelihood that a particular event would occur. Even the outcome of something as simple as a dice roll or the likelihood of showers instead of sunshine was thought to lie in the realm of pure, unknowable chance. The issue remained intractable until Blaise Pascal wrote to Pierre de Fermat in 1654, outlining a solution to the "unfinished game" problem: how do you divide the pot when players are forced to end a game of dice before someone has won? The idea turned out to be far more seminal than Pascal realized. From it, the two men developed the method known today as probability theory. InThe Unfinished Game, mathematician and NPR commentator Keith Devlin tells the story of this correspondence and its remarkable impact on the modern world: from insurance rates, to housing and job markets, to the safety of cars and planes, calculating probabilities allowed people, for the first time, to think rationally about how future events might unfold.
Pascal's Lettres Provinciales
In this study which highlight the textual richness rather than the theological propriety of 'Les Lettres provinciales,' Professor MacKenzie focuses on the recurring issue of fragmentation. In the view Pascal wants to promulgate, fragmentation would characterize Jesuitical casuistry in a basic way, informing as it does the semilogy, textual stratagems and moral theology of his Molinist rivals. In debunking such modes of thinking, Pascal himself turns to tactics of counter-fragmentation which allow him to put his own structure of Truth, defined as simple and unfragmented, into the most intense relief.
Multiplication of Force
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new window
Blaise Pascal discovered the formula to determine fluid pressure. Distributed by A&E Television Networks.
Yanghui's Triangle
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowHost Dan Rockmore uses a diagram to explain Pascal's triangle. He uses an example with the purchases of 2 of 5 hats.
Problem of Points
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowInspired by his gambling, 16th century Italian doctor Gerolamo Cardano publishes the first work in probability. His work is expanded on by Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat. Pascal invents the first digital calculator.
Online Resources
- Antideterminism and human nature in blaise pascal's philosophyThe aim of this article is to approach the anthropological conception of the French philosopher Blaise Pascal, present in the Pensees, focusing on the nondeterministic attitude towards man. In this work the French philosopher presents man as an insignificant being inside an infinite universe, and there is no possibility that it has a privileged position in the cosmo. In this case, man does not have an ontological situation, which can confer some relevance to him within the universe. On the other hand, the principles of the practical sphere, according to author, are no more than principles made by habit, and in this sense all the principles that ground human action should not be considered natural and absolutely necessary. Faced with this picture, it is possible to perceive in Pascal's philosophy what we call an antideterminist posture about man, because his existence has no relevance in the cosmological sense, just as there are no absolute principles that can guide him in a necessary and practice dimension. However, from a reflection on the human contradictions, present in the phenomenon of Amusement (Divertissement), it is possible to obtain a reference that allows to understand the man, this reference is a Christian principle, original sin.
- The sublime rhetoric of Pascal's wagerBlaise Pascal's famous wager continues to influence debates over existential risk. This paper analyzes the structure and use of the argument with four goals: first, to establish the wager as a fundamentally rhetorical move, undiminished in force by the various logical objections that have been leveled over time; second, to link it to the rhetorical sublime and a tradition of negative theology; and third, to examine its contemporary use, focusing on debates over nuclear weapons. The purpose of this discussion is not only to recover Pascal's reputation as an expert rhetorician but also to illustrate the potential political benefits and hazards of his wager's modern uses in debates over public policy, alongside possibilities offered by the sublime more generally.
History of Probability Theory
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowBlaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat exchange letters about imaging possible future outcomes of an incomplete game. Individuals can calculate with precision the likelihood of events occurring. Distributed by PBS Distribution.