Pascal's Pensees - Softcover

Pascal, Blaise

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1617202940 ISBN 13: 9781617202940

Publisher: Wilder Publications, 2022

Synopsis

Pascal's Pensées is a masterpiece, and a landmark in French literature. This is Pascal's most influential theological work in it he surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanity-seemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace.

About this title

About the Author

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Christian philosopher. 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. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method. In 1642, while still a teenager, he started some pioneering work on calculating machines, and after three years of effort and 50 prototypes he invented the mechanical calculator. He built 20 of these machines in the following ten years. Pascal was an important mathematician, helping create two major new areas of research: he wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of 16, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. Pascal's results caused many disputes before being accepted. 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 Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetical triangle. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids. Pascal had poor health especially after his 18th year and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wilder Publications
• Publication date: 2022
• ISBN 10: 1617202940
• ISBN 13: 9781617202940
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 265