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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. Blaise 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 Pensées. 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. ('Introduction' by T.S. Eliot, in Pensées by Blaise Pascal, translated by W.F. Trotter, 1958, p. xv) Blaise Pascal was born in Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne (now
Clermont-Ferrand), a town on the slope of Puy de Dôme, 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. Pascal never attended university. By the age of 12 Pascal had worked out Pythagoras' theorem by himself. At thirteen Pascal was introduced to a discussion group, called the Académie Mersenne after the black-robed friar. This scientific circle included the philosopher-mathematician René 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. Allegedly he
had no pain-free days after the age of eighteen. 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." (Of Men and Numbers: The Story of the Great Mathematicians by Jane Muir, 1996, p. 94) One of Pascal's partying friends introduced him to chevalier de Méré, an expert gambler, who brought him the so-called problem of points. Pascal solved the puzzle with Fermat, a lawyer and polymath. As a byproduct, they established the foundations of the modern theory of probability. 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 After a mystical experience on the night of November 23, 1654,
which
is referred to by his biographers as "The Night of Fire," he had
a second
conversion, and dropped most of his friends. While he lived, he never
mentioned this experience to anyone. 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. In the book Pascal asks the question,
"whether Jesuits may be allowed to kill Jansenists". Indeed, father, it would be better to have to do with persons who have no religion at all, than with those who have been taught on this system. For, after all, the intention of the wounder conveys no comfort to the wounded. The poor man sees nothing of that secret direction of which you speak; he is only sensible of the direction of the blow that is dealt him. And I am by no means sure but a person would feel much less sorry to see himself brutally killed by an infuriated villain, than to find himself conscientiously stilettoed by a devotee. (The Provincial Letters of Blaise Pascal, a new translation with historical introduction and notes by Thomas M'Crie, edited by O. W. Wright, Hurd and Houghton, 1866, p. 246) I hope you understand, then, fathers, that to avoid the crime
of murder, we must act at once by the authority of God, and according
to the justice of God; and that when these two conditions are not
united, sin is contracted; whether it be by taking away life with his
authority, but without his justice; or by taking it away with justice,
but without his authority. From this indispensable connection it
follows, according to St. Augustine, "that he who, without proper
authority, kills a criminal, becomes a criminal himself, chiefly for
this reason, that he usurps an authority which God has not given him;"
and on the other hand, magistrates, though they possess this authority,
are nevertheless chargeable with murder, if, contrary to the laws which
they are bound to follow, they inflict death on an innocent man. (The
Provincial Letters of Blaise Pascal, a new translation with historical
introduction and notes by Thomas M'Crie, edited by O. W. Wright, Hurd
and Houghton, 1866, pp. 357-358) 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 final 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. His last words were: "My God, forsake me not." (Scientists of Faith: Forty-eight Biographies of Historic Scientists and Their Christian Faith by Dan Graves, 1996, p. 58) 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 does not know," he wrote. (Pascal's Pensées by Blaise Pascal,
with an introduction by T.S. Eliot, 1958, p. 79) 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."
(Ibid.,
p. 98) 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 "Pascal's 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 set of beliefs; there is an actual infinity
of
other possible universal truths. Paul Tobin has argued that "we know of
many more gods of many different religions, all of which have different
schemes of rewards and punishments. Given that there are more than
2,500 gods known to humankind, and given Pascal's own assumptions that
one cannot comprehend God (or gods), then it follows that even the best case scenario . . . the
changes of making a successful choice is less than one in 2,500 or
0.04%." (The
Rejection of Pascal's Wager: A Skeptic's Guide to the Bible and the
Historical Jesus by Paul Tobin, with foreword by Gerd Lüdemann,
2009, p. ix) Moreover, Pascal's necessity of
betting doesn't make sense for an atheist, for whom the probability
that God exists is 0.Pascal's elegant attempt to think together two
different discourses,
the theological and the mathematics of probability, makes a distinction
between the
act of believing and the object of belief. This was mocked by Douglas Adams in
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
(1987) in which Electric Monks "believed things for you, thus saving
you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing
all the things the world expected you to believe." (Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
by Douglas Adams, 1987, p. 4) Experimenting with the vacuum, Pascal published in 1663 his
study Traité de la pesanteur de la
masse de l'air,
where he argued that in physics experiments are the true teachers
which one has to
follow. 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." (Pensées
by Blaise Pascal, translated by W.F. Trotter, edited by Anthony Uyl,
2018, p. 5) 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 Pensées Pascal wrote: "Men despise religion; they hate it, and fear it is true. To remedy this, we must begin by showing that religion is not contrary to reason; that it is venerable, to inspire respect for it; then we must make it lovable, to make good men hope it is true; finally, we must prove it is true" (Pascal's Pensées by Blaise Pascal, with an introduction by T.S. Eliot, 1958, p. 53) Pascal´s studies deeply influenced the development of modern
essay writing. The idea of intuition as presented in Pensées
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.'" (The
Notebooks of Samuel Butler: Volume I (1874-1883), edited by
Hans-Peter Breuer, 1984, p. 69) 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 Pensées 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); Pascal the Philosopher: An Introduction by Graeme Hunter (2013); Études sur la vie et les Pensées de Pascal by Michel Le Guern (2015); Pascal's Wager, edited by Paul Bartha (2018); Why Read Pascal? by Paul J. Griffiths (2021); Philosophie de Pascal: le principe d'inquiétude by Laurence Devillairs (2022); A Thinking Reed: Pascal's Voice, Yesterday and Today by Stephen N. Williams (2023); Pascal, ou, La pensée figurative by Hubert Aupetit (2023) Selected works:
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