（この本について）
この本は、ブレーズ・パスカル著、津田穣（ゆたか）訳の「パンセ（瞑想録）」です。
著者ブレーズ・パスカルの生没年は、一六二三年—一六六一年、
訳者津田穣の生没年は、一九一〇年—一九五五年、
となっていますので、この本はパブリックドメインとなっています。
またこの「パンセ」は以下のような構成となっています。
パンセ 上巻
第一類 幾何学の心と繊細の心
第二類 人間の認識
第三類 不信仰の人々に対して
第四類 信仰の方法
第五類 法律
パンセ 中巻
第六類 思考の尊厳
第七類 キリスト教の教理
第八類 この宗教の二重の基礎
第九類 諸宗教
第十類 表徴
パンセ 下巻
第十一類 預言
第十二類 イエス・キリストの証
第十三類 奇跡
第十四類 教会の分立
この本はそのうちの下巻となります。
この古典教養文庫版の「パンセ」には次のような特長があります。
１、現在では使われない言い回しや言葉は、現在普通に使われる言葉に置き換えたところがあります。句読点の位置など、読みやすいようӗ
Among the contemporaries of Descartes none displayed greater natural genius than Pascal, but his mathematical reputation rests more on what he might have done than on what he actually effected, as during a considerable part of his life he deemed it his duty to devote his whole time to religious exercises.
At 16, Pascal began designing a calculating machine, which he finally perfected when he was thirty, the pascaline, a beautiful handcrafted box about fourteen by five by three inches. The first accurate mechanical calculator was born.
Pascal was dismayed and disgusted by society's reactions to his machine and completely renounced his interest in science an mathematics, devoting the rest of his life to God. He is best known for his collection of spiritual essays, Les Pensees.
Ironically, Pascal, who was a genius by any measure, with one of the finest brains of all time, died of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 39.
Among the contemporaries of Descartes none displayed greater natural genius than Pascal, but his mathematical reputation rests more on what he might have done than on what he actually effected, as during a considerable part of his life he deemed it his duty to devote his whole time to religious exercises.
He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a Tax Collector in Rouen. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. Following a mystical experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensees.
In honor of his scientific contributions, the name Pascal has been given to the SI unit of pressure, to a programming language, and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics), and as mentioned above, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's wager still bear his name.
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