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Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal


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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The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.
topics: heart , love , quip , reason  
3009 likes
All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
topics: ironic , sad  
1797 likes
I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter." ( , 1657)
709 likes
I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise.
374 likes
People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.
330 likes
Kind words don't cost much. Yet they accomplish much.
286 likes
To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.
topics: philosophy  
285 likes
Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.
topics: curiosity , pride , vanity  
273 likes
The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of... We know the truth not only by the reason, but by the heart." - Blaise Pascal
251 likes
I made this [letter] very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.
topics: humor , letter  
248 likes
I lay it down as a fact that if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.
topics: betrayal , frienship  
236 likes
All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.
207 likes
When one does not love too much, one does not love enough.
184 likes
Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain. (Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)
176 likes
The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.
166 likes
We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others.
163 likes
It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the truth.
topics: natural , sickness , truth  
154 likes
Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.
153 likes
Man's sensitivity to the little things and insensitivity to the greatest are the signs of a strange disorder.
148 likes
To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.
topics: philosophy  
142 likes

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