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Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

Mathematician, physicist, and theologian, inventor
of the first digital calculator, who is often thought of
as the ideal of classic French prose. Pascal lived in
the time when Copernicus' discovery that the earth
moves round the sun had made fallen human
beings insignificant factors in the new order of the
world. Facing the immensity of the universe, Pascal
felt horror "The eternal silence of these infinite
spaces terrifies me." For him the world seemed
empty of ultimate meaning or significance without
Christianity, which he defended against the assaults
of freethinkers. While Montaigne lived at ease with
skepticism, Pascal was tormented by religious
doubt, and took the question Why are we here? with
the utmost seriousness, revealing his thoughts in his
most famous book, the posthumous Penses.
"Pascal's disillusioned analysis of human bondage is
sometimes interpreted to mean that Pascal was
really and finally an unbeliever, who, in his despair,
was incapable of enduring reality and enjoying the
heroic satisfaction of the free man's worship of
nothing. His despair, his disillusion, are, however, no
illustration of personal weakness; they are perfectly
objective, because they are essential moments in the
progress of the intellectual soul; and for the type of
Pascal they are the analogue of the drought, the dark
night, which is an essential stage in the progress of
the Christian mystic." (T.S. Eliot in Selected Essays,
1960)
Blaise Pascal was born in Clermont-Ferrand,
Auvergne (now Clermont-Ferrand), a town on the
slope of Puy de Dme, an extinct volcanic peak. A
sickly, precocious child, he grew up without the
company of other children. His mother Pascal had
lost at an early age. He studied privately, tutored
mostly by his father, Etienne, who was a scientist
and a government official. By age 12 he had worked
out Pythagoras' theorem by himself. At thirteen
Pascal was introduced to a discussion group, called
the Acadmie Mersenne after the black-robed friar.
This scientific circle included the philosopher-
mathematician Ren Descartes and the amateur
mathematic genius Pierre de Fermat. For a time
Pascal's father was disgraced for complicity in a
bond-holders' protest, but he was rehabilitated with
the help of Richelieu's niece. In 1631 the family
moved to Paris and in 1640 then to Rouen. When his
father died, he was able to leave a sufficient
patrimony to his son and his two daughters.
From an early age Pascal showed an inclination
toward mathematics. He wrote at the age of 16 a
highly appreciated treatise Essay pour les Coniques.
Together with Fermat, Pascal invented the calculus
of probabilities and laid the foundations for Gottfried
Wilhelm von Leibniz's infinitesimal calculus. Pascal
also designed a calculating machine becoming one
of the fathers of the Computer Age and later the
barometer, the hydraulic press, and the syringe. In
Clermont Pascal demostrated how the weight of the
Earth's atmosphere balanced the mercury in the
barometer.
Pascal suffered on an off with stomach pains,
headaches, bouts of sweating, and partial paralysis
in his legs. His treatment included bleedings,
purgings, and the consumption of asses' milk. In
1646 Parcal's father dislocated his hip, and two
Jansenist brothers, Adrien and Jean Deschamps,
came to his aid. By the end of the year the entire
Pascal family had converted to Jansenism, the
Catholic sect rivaling the Jesuits who had the
support of the King, Louis XIV. Pascal's sister,
Jaqueline, entered the Jansenist convent of Port-
Royal in south-west Paris and became one of the
most passionate advocates of the sect. The
Jansenists, who were never officially accepted by
the Catholic Church, were named after Cornelius
Jansenius (1587-1638), a Flemish theologian. The
Jansenists argued that since the Fall in the Garden
of Eden, all humankind has been corrupted by sin.
Their objection to the Jesuits stemmed from what
they saw as the over-reliance of the Jesuits on
human free will, to the detriment of divine grace.
Jansenius, in his book Augustinus, stated that the
salvation of the individual man must be achieved by
a combination of his own effort and the free-will to
exercise his natural ability together with
supernatural grace.
On his father's second retirement, Pascal returned in
1647 to Paris, where his physical condition
improved. He was adviced by a doctor to give up all
continued mental labor, and seek as much as
possible all opportunities to divet himself. Until 1654
Pascal devoted himself to mathematics and
scientific studies, but he also spent time in the
company of young men of leisure. His sister Gilberte
called his wordly period "the time of his life that was
worst employed." One of Pascal's partying friends
introduced him to chevalier de Mr, an expert
gambler, who brought him the so-called problem of
points. Pascal solved the puzzle with Fermat. At the
heart of their computational method was a triangle
array called Pascal's triangle, actually discovered by
a Chinese mathematician, Jia Xian, around 1050,
published by Zhu Shijie, in 1303, and discussed in a
work by the Italian Renaissance mathematician
Gerolamo Cardano.
- - 1
- -1 1
- 1 2 1
-1 3 3 1
1 4 6 4 1
(Every number in the triangle is the sum of the two
above it.)
After a mystical experience on November 23-24,
1654, he had a second conversion, and dropped
most of his friends. He sold everything except his
Bible, began to wear an iron belt with points on the
inside, and denounced his studies of mathematics
and science. Pascal defended Jansenism against
the Jesuits in Lettres provinciales (Provincial
Letters). The work progresses from parody to
provocative formulations. In France the dichotomy
between Jesuits and Jansenists come to mean the
moral divide between opportunism and blunt
integrity.
After his horses plunged off a bridge to their deaths
in 1654, Pascal renewed his spiritual direction and
made occasional retreats to the Jansenist
community at Port-Royal des Champs. In 1659
Pascal fell gravely ill. His last years he devoted
himself to charitable projects. From 1660 to 1662
Pascal worked on a public transportation system for
Paris. It concisted of horse-drawn carriages, "Five-
Penny Coaches", scheduled to run along regular
routes. Pascal died in Paris on August 19, 1662, as a
result of what is believed to have been a painful
stomach ulcer. Pascal's autopsy revealed a severe
lesion in his brain. Memorial, his document of faith,
was found sewn in his clothing on his death. He had
apparently carried the sheets with him for the last
eight years of his life.
Pascal examined the problems of human existence
from both psychological and theological points of
view. "The heart has its reasons which reason
knows nothing of," he once wrote. Against the
immensity of the universe he measured the fate of
human beings "Man is but a reed, the weakest
thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed." For
Jansenists his work came at the right time: they
needed an outsider to defend their cause. The
Letters, written with freshness and spontaneity, was
ideal for that purpose. According to the famous
"Pascals wager", sane and prudent persons must
bet their lives on Roman Catholicism. If they do, and
it turns out to be true, then they have won an
eternity of bliss. And if it turns out to be false, and
death is after all annihilation, what has been lost?
Due to its greater expected value, religious belief is
more rational. But of course there is a weakness in
this beautiful reasoning Roman Catholicism is not
the only religion; there is an actual infinity of other
possible universal truths.
Experimenting with the vacuum, Pascal published in
1663 his study Trait de la pesanteur de la masse de
l'air, where he argued that "experiments are the true
teachers which one must follow in physics." This
principle of empiricism put Pascal into conflict with
Descartes, whose starting point was human reason.
"Those who are accustomed to judge by feeling,"
Pascal said, "do not understand the process of
reasoning, for they would understand at first sight
and are not used to seek for principles. And others,
on the contrary, who are accustomed to reason from
principles, do not at all understand matters of
feeling, seeking principles and being unable to see
at a glance." But Pascal's belief in God was based on
personal religious experience he saw that reason
cannot decide the question of God's existence, but
he could appeal to it. In Penses Pascal wrote: "Men
despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may
be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion
is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence
and respect. Next make it attractive, make good
men wish it were true, and then show that it is."
Pascals studies deeply influenced the development
of modern essay writing. The idea of intuition as
presented in Penses had an impact on the
philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778),
Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), and Henri Bergson
(1859-1941). Also the popularity of Provincial Letters
has remained undiminished. Pascal was among the
first noteworthy philosophers who seriously
questioned the existence of God. When he imagined
himself arguing with somebody who was
constitutionally unable to believe, Pascal could find
no arguments to convince him. He concluded that
belief in God could only be a matter of personal
choice. This basically revolutionary approach to the
problem of God's existence it became a matter of
betting has never been officially accepted by any
church. Samuel Butler wrote later in his notebook:
"What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation
after all? It should be: 'I bet my Redeemer liveth.'"
For further reading: Pascal and Theology by Jan Miel
(1969); Pascal et Montaigne by Bernard Croquette
(1974); Pascal's Provincial Letters by Walter E. Rex
(1977); Pascal by A.J. Krailsheimer (1980); Blaise
Pascal by Hugh M. Davidson (1983); Portraits of
Thought by Buford Norman (1988); Pascal and
Disbelief by David Wetsel (1994); Les Penses de
Pascal by Jean Mesnard (1993, orig. ed. 1976);
Playing with Truth by Nicholas Hammond (1994);
Blaise Pascal: Reasons of the Heart by Marvin
Richard O'Connell (1997); 'Pascal' by Anthony Levi, in
A Companion to the Philosophers, ed. Robert L.
Arrington (1999); Pascal's Wager: The Man Who
Played Dice with God by James A. Connor (2006) - See
also: Isaiah Berlin
Selected works:
Les provinciales: ou, les lettres crites par
Louis de Montalte un provincial de ses amis et
aux RR. PP. Jsuites, 1656-57
- The Mystery of Jesuitism discovered in certain
Letters, written upon occasion of the Present
Differences at Sorbonne between the
Jansenists and the Molinists (tr. 1679) /
Provincial Letters (tr. 1816) / The Provincial
Letters of Blaise Pascal (translated by Thomas
McCrie, 1847) / The Provincial Letters
(translated by A.J. Krailsheimer, 1966)
Penses de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur
quelques autres sujets, 1669-70
- Monsieur Pascall's Thoughts, Meditations, and
Prayers, Touching Matters Moral and Divine
(translated by Joe Walkr, 1688) / Thoughts on
Religion and Philosophy by Blaise Pascal
(translated by Isaac Taylor, 1838) / The
Thoughts on Religion, and Evidence of
Christianity (translated by George Pearce, 1850)
/ Thoughts of Blaise Pascal (translated by Paul
C. Kegan, 1885) / The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal
(translated by W.F. Trotter, 1904) / Thoughts
(translated by Morits Kaufman, 1908) / Pascal's
Penses (translated by Hugh Stewart, 1950) /
Pascal's Penses (tranlated by Martin Turnell,
1962) / Penses (translated by A.J. Krailsheimer,
1966) / Blaise Pascal: Penses and Other
Writings (translated by Honor Levi, 1995)
- Mietteit (suom. L.F. Rosendal, 1952; Martti
Anhava, 1996)
Oeuvres compltes, 1904-14 (14 vols.)
Great Shorter Works of Pascal, 1948 (translated
with an introd. by by Emile Cailliet and John C.
Blankenagel)
Oeuvres compltes, 1954 (edited by Jacques
Chevalier)
Oeuvres compltes, 1963 (edited by Louis
Lafuma)
Oeuvres compltes, 1964-92 (4 vols., edited by
Jean Mesnard)
The Essential Pascal, 1966 (translated by
Gertrude Pullen, edited by Robert Gleason)
Selections, 1989 (edited by Richard H. Popkins)
The Mind on Fire, 1989 (edited by James M.
Houston)
Selected Readings, 1991
Penses and Other Writings, 1995 (translated by
Honor Levi, intr. and notes by Anthony Levi)
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