Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal (/pæˈskæl, pɑːˈskɑːl/;[3] French: [blɛz paskal]; 19 June 1623 – 19

Blaise Pascal
August 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic
theologian. 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 generalising the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in
defence of the scientific method.

In 1642, while still a teenager, he started some pioneering work on calculating

machines. After three years of effort and 50 prototypes,[4] he built 20 finished
machines (called Pascal's calculators and later Pascalines) over the following 10
years,[5] establishing him as one of the first two inventors of the mechanical
calculator.[6][7]

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 Painting of Blaise Pascal made by
age of 16, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, François II Quesnel for Gérard
strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Edelinck in 1691
Following Galileo Galilei and Torricelli, in 1647, he rebutted Aristotle's followers Born 19 June 1623
who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. Pascal's results caused many disputes Clermont-Ferrand,
before being accepted. Auvergne, France

In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Died 19 August 1662
Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism.[8] Following a religious (aged 39)
experience in late 1654, he began writing influential works on philosophy and Paris, France
theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales Residence France
and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In that Nationality French
year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetical triangle. Between 1658
and 1659, he wrote on thecycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Era 17th-century
philosophy
Throughout his life, Pascal was in frail health, especially after the age of 18; he died Region Western philosophy
just two months after his 39th birthday.[9]
School Jansenism
Main Theology ·
interests Mathematics ·
Contents Philosophy · Physics
Early life and education Notable Pascal's Wager
Contributions to mathematics
ideas
Pascal's triangle
Philosophy of mathematics
Pascal's law
Contributions to the physical sciences
Pascal's theorem
Adult life, religion, philosophy, and literature
Religious conversion Influences
Brush with death
Influenced
The Provincial Letters
The Pensées
Last works and death
 Legacy
Works
See also
References
Further reading
External links

Early life and education

Pascal was born in Clermont-Ferrand, which is in France's Auvergne region. He lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of
three.[10] His father, Étienne Pascal (1588–1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and
member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the youngerJacqueline and the elder Gilberte.

In 1631, five years after the death of his wife,[2] Étienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon
hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became an instrumental member of the family. Étienne, who never remarried, decided
that he alone would educate his children, for they all showed extraordinary intellectual ability, particularly his son Blaise. The young
Pascal showed an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science.

Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections.

Following Desargues' thinking, the 16-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of
proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", Essai pour les
coniques ("Essay on Conics") and sent it—his first serious work of mathematics—to
Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a
hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of
opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).

Pascal's work was so precocious that Descartes was convinced that Pascal's father
had written it. When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son
and not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he
has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the
ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that

Portrait of Pascal would scarcely occur to a 16-year-old child."[11]

In France at that time offices and positions could be—and were—bought and sold.
In 1631, Étienne sold his position as second president of the Cour des Aides for 65,665 livres.[12] The money was invested in a
government bond which provided, if not a lavish, then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to,
and enjoy, Paris. But in 1638 Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Years' War, defaulted on the government's bonds.
Suddenly Étienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.

Like so many others, Étienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his
opposition to the fiscal policies of Cardinal Richelieu, leaving his three children in
the care of his neighbour Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past
who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only
when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance
that Étienne was pardoned. In time, Étienne was back in good graces with the
cardinal and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city
of Rouen—a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos.
An early Pascaline on display at the
In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and Musée des Arts et Métiers, Paris
recalculations, of taxes owed and paid (into which work the young Pascal had been
recruited), Pascal, not yet 19, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of
addition and subtraction, called Pascal's calculator or the Pascaline. Of the eight Pascalines known to have survived, four are held
by the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and one more by the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original
mechanical calculators.[13] Although these machines are pioneering forerunners to a further 400 years of development of mechanical
methods of calculation, and in a sense to the later field of computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial
success. Partly because it was still quite cumbersome to use in practice, but probably primarily because it was extraordinarily
expensive, the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and a status symbol, for the very rich both in France and elsewhere in Europe.
Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade, and he refers to some 50 machines that were built to
his design.

Contributions to mathematics
Pascal continued to influence mathematics throughout his life. His Traité du triangle
arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") of 1653 described a
convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients, now called Pascal's
triangle. The triangle can also be represented:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6
0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
1 1 2 3 4 5 6
2 1 3 6 10 15
3 1 4 10 20
Pascal's triangle. Each number is the
4 1 5 15 sum of the two directly above it. The
5 1 6 triangle demonstrates many
mathematical properties in addition
6 1
to showing binomial coefficients.

He defines the numbers in the triangle byrecursion: Call the number in the (m + 1)th
row and (n + 1)th column tmn . Then tmn = tm–1,n + tm,n–1, for m = 0, 1, 2, ... and n = 0, 1, 2, ... The boundary conditions are tm,−1 = 0,
t−1,n = 0 for m = 1, 2, 3, ... and n = 1, 2, 3, ... The generator t00 = 1. Pascal concludes with the proof,

In 1654, he proved Pascal's identity relating the sums of thep-th powers of the firstn positive integers for p = 0, 1, 2, …, k.[14]

In 1654, prompted by his friend the Chevalier de Méré, he corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on the subject of gambling problems,
and from that collaboration was born the mathematical theory of probabilities.[15] The specific problem was that of two players who
want to finish a game early and, given the current circumstances of the game, want to divide the stakes fairly, based on the chance
each has of winning the game from that point. From this discussion, the notion of expected value was introduced. Pascal later (in the
Pensées) used a probabilistic argument, Pascal's Wager, to justify belief in God and a virtuous life. The work done by Fermat and
Pascal into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork forLeibniz' formulation of the calculus.[16]

After a religious experience in 1654, Pascal mostly gave up work in mathematics.

Philosophy of mathematics
Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("Of the Geometrical Spirit"),
originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-
Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths,
arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however,
he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them up—first principles,
therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal ar
gued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain
principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to
be true.

Pascal also used De l'Esprit géométrique to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are
conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they
naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only
definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of
formalism as formulated by Descartes.

In De l'Art de persuader ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the
question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne
that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can
be grasped only through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.

Contributions to the physical sciences

Pascal's work in the fields of the study of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered
on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press
(using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. He proved that
hydrostatic pressure depends not on the weight of the fluid but on the elevation
difference. He demonstrated this principle by attaching a thin tube to a barrel full of
water and filling the tube with water up to the level of the third floor of a building.
This caused the barrel to leak, in what became known asPascal's barrel experiment.

By 1647, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with

barometers. Having replicated an experiment that involved placing a tube filled with
mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some
mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the
time, most scientists contended that, rather than a vacuum, some invisible matter
was present. This was based on the Aristotelian notion that creation was a thing of
substance, whether visible or invisible; and that this substance was forever in
motion. Furthermore, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something,"
Aristotle declared.[17] Therefore, to the Aristotelian trained scientists of Pascal's
time, a vacuum was an impossibility. How so? As proof it was pointed out:

Light passed through the so-called "vacuum" in the glass tube.

Aristotle wrote how everything moved, and must be moved by
something. An illustration of the (apocryphal)
Therefore, since there had to be an invisible "something" to move the Pascal's barrel experiment
light through the glass tube, there was no vacuum in the tube. Not in the
glass tube or anywhere else. Vacuums – the absence of any and
everything – were simply an impossibility.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide ("New experiments
with the vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also
provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube. This work was followed by Récit de la
grande expérience de l’équilibre des liqueurs ("Account of the great experiment on equilibrium in liquids") published in 1648.

The Torricellian vacuum found that air pressure is equal to the weight of 30 inches of mercury. If air has a finite weight, Earth's
atmosphere must have a maximum height. Pascal reasoned that if true, air pressure on a high mountain must be less than at a lower
altitude. He lived near the Puy de Dôme mountain, 4,790 feet (1,460 m) tall, but his health was poor so could not climb it.[18] On 19
September 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister
Gilberte, was finally able to carry out the fact-finding mission vital to Pascal's theory
. The account, written by Périer, reads:

The weather was chancy last Saturday...[but] around five o'clock that morning...the Puy-de-Dôme was visible...so I
decided to give it a try. Several important people of the city of Clermont had asked me to let them know when I
would make the ascent...I was delighted to have them with me in this great work...

...at eight o'clock we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town....First I poured
16 pounds of quicksilver...into a vessel...then took several glass tubes...each four feet long and hermetically sealed at
one end and opened at the other...then placed them in the vessel [of quicksilver]...I found the quick silver stood at 26"
and 3½ lines above the quicksilver in the vessel...I repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the
same spot...[they] produced the same result each time...

I attached one of the tubes to the vessel and marked the height of the quicksilver and...asked Father Chastin, one of
the Minim Brothers...to watch if any changes should occur through the day
...Taking the other tube and a portion of the
quick silver...I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme, about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon
experiment...found that the quicksilver reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines...I repeated the experiment five times
with care...each at different points on the summit...found the same height of quicksilver...in each case...[19]

Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-
Boucherie, a height of about 50 metres. The mercury dropped two lines.

In the face of criticism that some invisible matter must exist in Pascal's empty space, Pascal, in his reply to Estienne Noel, gave one
of the 17th century's major statements on the scientific method, which is a striking anticipation of the idea popularised by Karl
Popper that scientific theories are characterised by theirfalsifiability: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suf
fice
that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to
establish its falsity."[20] His insistence on the existence of the vacuum also led to conflict with other prominent scientists, including
Descartes.

Pascal introduced a primitive form ofroulette and the roulette wheel in his search for aperpetual motion machine.[21]

Adult life, religion, philosophy, and literature

For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between
nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably
concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was
drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed.

Blaise Pascal, Pensées No. 72

Religious conversion
In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58-year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's
age and the state of medicine in the 17th century
, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home
to two of the finest doctors in France: Monsieur Doctor Deslandes and Monsieur Doctor de La Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would
not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..."[22] But
treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become regular visitors.
 Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert, proponent of a splinter group from Catholic
teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into
the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke
with the doctors frequently, and after their successful treatment of his father, borrowed from
them works by Jansenist authors. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion"
and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year
.

Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what
some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648–54). His father died in 1651 and left
his inheritance to Pascal and his sister Jacqueline, for whom Pascal acted as conservator.
Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of
Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of
his chronic poor health; he needed her just as she had needed him.
Pascal studying the cycloid,
by Augustin Pajou, 1785, Suddenly there was war in the Pascal household. Blaise pleaded with
Louvre Jacqueline not to leave, but she was adamant. He commanded her to stay, but
that didn't work, either. At the heart of this was...Blaise's fear of
abandonment...if Jacqueline entered Port-Royal, she would have to leave her
[23]
inheritance behind...[but] nothing would change her mind.

By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline
signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early
January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms
without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..."[24] In early June 1653, after what must have seemed like endless
badgering from Jacqueline, Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun
to smell like a cult."[25] With two thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29-year-old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty.

For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs
of the world but was not drawn to God.[26]

Brush with death

On 23 November 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious vision and immediately recorded the
experience in a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and
the scholars..." and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this
document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death.[27]
This piece is now known as the Memorial. The story of the carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the
Memorial is disputed by some scholars.[28] His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents
at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It
was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the Provincial
Letters.

The Provincial Letters

Beginning in 1656–57, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the
early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of
complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the
pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in
the midsts of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the
school had to sign a 1656papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied
Alexander VII himself. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pasc
al's arguments.

Aside from their religious influence, the Provincial Letters were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and
vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like
Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Charles Perrault wrote of the Letters: "Everything is there—purity of language, nobility of thought, solidity in reasoning, finesse in
raillery, and throughout an agrément not to be found anywhere else."[29]

The Pensées
Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the Pensées ("Thoughts"), was not completed before his
death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title Apologie de
la religion Chrétienne ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). The first version of the numerous scraps of paper found after his death
appeared in print as a book in 1669 titled Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets ("Thoughts of M. Pascal
on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the Apologie's main strategies was to use the
contradictory philosophies of skepticism and stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order
to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God.

Pascal's Pensées is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in French prose. When commenting on one particular
section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language.[30] Will Durant hailed the Pensées as "the
most eloquent book in French prose".[31]

Last works and death

T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among
ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived
from a belief that it was natural and necessary for a person to suffer. In 1659, Pascal
fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations
[32]
of his doctors, saying, "Sickness is the natural state of Christians."

Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response,

Pascal wrote one of his final works, Écrit sur la signature du formulaire ("Writ on
the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his
sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism.
Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was
inaugurating perhaps the first bus line, the carrosses à cinq sols, moving passengers
within Paris in a carriage with many seats.

In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent, and his emotional condition had
severely worsened since his sister's death. Aware that his health was fading quickly,
he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that Pascal's epitaph in Saint-Étienne-du-
he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on 18 August 1662, Pascal went into Mont, where he was buried
convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words
being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-
Étienne-du-Mont.[32]

An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage
to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on
tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two.[33] The headaches which afflicted Pascal are generally attributed to his
brain lesion.

Legacy
In honour 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.

Pascal's development of probability theory was his most influential contribution to

Death mask of Blaise Pascal.
mathematics. Originally applied to gambling, today it is extremely important in
economics, especially inactuarial science. John Ross writes, "Probability theory and
the discoveries following it changed the way we regard uncertainty, risk, decision-
making, and an individual's and society's ability to influence the course of future
events."[34] However, it should be noted that Pascal and Fermat, though doing
important early work in probability theory, did not develop the field very far.
Christiaan Huygens, learning of the subject from the correspondence of Pascal and
Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Later figures who continued the
development of the theory includeAbraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace.

In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the
greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The content of his literary work is best
remembered for its strong opposition to the rationalism of René Descartes and simultaneous assertion that the main countervailing
philosophy, empiricism, was also insufficient for determining major truths.

In France, prestigious annual awards,Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in
the Ile de France region.[35] One of the Universities of Clermont-Ferrand, France – Université Blaise Pascal – is named after him.
.[36]
The University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, holds an annual math contest named in his honour

Pascalian theology has grown out of his perspective that we are, according to W
ood, "born into a duplicitous world that shapes us into
[37]
duplicitous subjects and so we find it easy to reject God continually and deceive ourselves about our own sinfulness".

Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic, Blaise Pascal, which originally aired on Italian television in 1971.[38] Pascal was a
subject of the first edition of the 1984BBC Two documentary, Sea of Faith, presented by Don Cupitt.

In 2014, Nvidia announced its new Pascal microarchitecture, which is named for Pascal. The first graphics cards featuring Pascal
were released in 2016.

The 2017 game Nier: Automata has multiple characters named after famous philosophers; one of these is a sentient pacifistic
machine named Pascal, who serves as a major supporting character. Pascal creates a village for machines to live peacefully with the
androids they're at war with and acts as a parental figure for other machines trying to adapt to their newly-found individuality
.

Works
Essai pour les coniques[Essay on conics] (1639)
Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide[New experiments with the vacuum] (1647)
Récit de la grande expérience de l’équilibre des liqueurs[Account of the great experiment on equilibrium in liquids]
(1648)
Traité du triangle arithmétique[Treatise on the arithmetic triangle] (1653)
Lettres provinciales [The provincial letters] (1656–57)
De l'Esprit géométrique[On the geometrical spirit] (1657 or 1658)
Écrit sur la signature du formulaire(1661)
Traité du triangle arithmétique(Treatise on arithmetical triangle) (written c.1654;[39] publ. 1665)
 Pensées [Thoughts] (incomplete at death; publ. 1670)

See also
Scientific revolution
List of pioneers in computer science
List of works by Eugène Guillaume

References
1. Vincent Jullien (ed.), Seventeenth-Century Indivisibles Revisited, Birkhäuser, 2015, p. 188.
2. O'Connor, J.J.; Robertson, E.F. (August 2006). "Étienne Pascal" (http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographi
es/Pascal_Etienne.html). University of St. Andrews, Scotland. Retrieved 5 February 2010.
3. "Pascal" (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pascal). Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
4. (fr) La Machine d’arithmétique, Blaise Pascal(http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Machine_d%E2%80%99arithm%C3%A
9tique), Wikisource
5. Mourlevat, Guy (1988).Les machines arithmétiques de Blaise Pascal(in French). Clermont-Ferrand: La Française
d'Edition et d'Imprimerie. p. 12.
6. See Schickard versus Pascal: An Empty Debate?(http://metastudies.net/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Site.SchicardvsPasc
al) and Marguin, Jean (1994).Histoire des instruments et machines à calculer
, trois siècles de mécanique pensante
1642–1942 (in French). Hermann. p. 48.ISBN 978-2-7056-6166-3.
7. d'Ocagne, Maurice (1893).Le calcul simplifié (http://cnum.cnam.fr/CGI/fpage.cgi?8KU54-2.5/248/150/369/363/369)
(in French). Gauthier-Villars et fils. p. 245.
8. "Blaise Pascal" (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11511a.htm). Catholic Encyclopedia. Retrieved 23 February 2009.
9. Hald, Anders A History of Probability and Statistics and Its Applications before 1750
, (Wiley Publications, 1990)
pp.44
10. Devlin, p. 20.
11. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV"by Will & Ariel Durant; chapter II, subsection 4.1 p.56)
12. Connor, James A., Pascal's wager: the man who played dice with God(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) ISBN 0-06-076691-
3 p. 42
13. A complete list of known Pascalines and also a review of contemporary replicas can be found at
Surviving
Pascalines (http://metastudies.net/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Site.SurvivingPascalines) and Replica Pascalines (http://m
etastudies.net/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Site.ReplicaPascalines)at http://things-that-count.net
14. Kieren MacMillan, Jonathan Sondow (2011). "Proofs of power sum and binomial coef ficient congruences via
Pascal's identity". American Mathematical Monthly. 118: 549–551. arXiv:1011.0076 (https://arxiv.org/abs/1011.0076)
. doi:10.4169/amer.math.monthly.118.06.549 (https://doi.org/10.4169/amer.math.monthly.118.06.549).
15. Devlin, p. 24.
16. "The Mathematical Leibniz"(http://www.math.rutgers.edu/courses/436/Honors02/leibniz.html). Math.rutgers.edu.
Retrieved 16 August 2009.
17. Aristotle, Physics, VII, 1.
18. Ley, Willy (June 1966). "The Re-Designed Solar System"(https://archive.org/stream/Galaxy_v24n05_1966-06#page/
n93/mode/2up). For Your Information. Galaxy Science Fiction. pp. 94–106.
19. Périer to Pascal, 22 September 1648, Pascal, Blaise.Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960), 2:682.
20. Pour faire qu'une hypothèse soit évidente, il ne suffit pas que tous les phénomènes s'en ensuivent, au lieu que, s'il
s'ensuit quelque chose de contraire à un seul des phénomènes, cela suffit pour assurer de sa fausseté , in Les
Lettres de Blaise Pascal: Accompagnées de Lettres de ses Correspondants Publiées , ed. Maurice Beaufreton, 6th
edition (Paris: G. Crès, 1922), 25–26, available athttp://gallica.bnf.fr and translated in Saul Fisher, Pierre Gassendi's
Philosophy and Science: Atomism for EmpiricistsBrill's Studies in Intellectual History 131 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2005),
126 n.7
21. MIT, "Inventor of the Week Archive: Pascal : Mechanical Calculator" (http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/pascal.html), May
2003. "Pascal worked on many versions of the devices, leading to his attempt to create a perpetual motion machine.
He has been credited with introducing the roulette machine, which was a by-product of these experiments."
22. Connor, James A., Pascal's wager: the man who played dice with God(HarperCollins, NY, 2006) ISBN 0-06-076691-
3 p. 70
23. Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969), p. 122
24. Jacqueline Pascal, "Memoir" p. 87
25. Miel, Jan. Pascal and Theology. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969), p. 124
26. Richard H. Popkin, Paul Edwards (ed.),Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 edition, s.v. "Pascal, Blaise.", vol. 6, p.
52–55, New York: Macmillan
27. Pascal, Blaise. Oeuvres complètes. (Paris: Seuil, 1960), p. 618
28. MathPages, Hold Your Horses. (http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath558/kmath558.htm) For the sources on
which the hypothesis of a link between a carriage accident and Pascal's second conversion is based, and for a sage
weighing of the evidence for and against, see Henri Gouhier
, Blaise Pascal: Commentaires, Vrin, 1984, pp. 379ff.
29. Charles Perrault, Parallèle des Anciens et des Modernes(Paris, 1693), Vol. I, p. 296.
30. Sainte-Beuve, Seventeenth Century (https://books.google.com/books?id=I0P0A8XK29QC&pg=P
A167) ISBN 1-113-
16675-4 p. 174 (2009 reprint).
31. The Story of Civilization: Volume 8, "The Age of Louis XIV"by Will & Ariel Durant, chapter II, Subsection 4.4, p. 66
ISBN 1-56731-019-2
32. Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers (https://books.google.com/books?id=uV3rJkmnQhsC&printsec=frontcover)
. (New
York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996).ISBN 0-486-28973-7, p. 104.
33. Muir, Jane. Of Men and Numbers (https://books.google.com/books?id=uV3rJkmnQhsC&printsec=frontcover)
. (New
York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1996).ISBN 0-486-28973-7, p. 103.
34. Ross, John F. (2004). "Pascal's legacy" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1299210). EMBO Reports. 5
(Suppl 1): S7–S10. doi:10.1038/sj.embor.7400229 (https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.embor.7400229). PMC 1299210 (http
s://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1299210) . PMID 15459727 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1545
9727).
35. "Chaires Blaise Pascal"(https://web.archive.org/web/20090613064029/http://www .chaires-blaise-pascal.org/uk/inde
x.html). Chaires Blaise Pascal. Archived fromthe original (http://www.chaires-blaise-pascal.org/uk/index.html) on 13
June 2009. Retrieved 16 August 2009.
36. "CEMC – Pascal, Cayley and Fermat – Mathematics Contests – University of W aterloo" (http://www.cemc.uwaterloo.
ca/contests/pcf.html). Cemc.uwaterloo.ca. 23 June 2008. Retrieved 16 August 2009.
37. "Blaise Pascal on Duplicity, Sin, and the Fall" (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/blaise-pascal-on-duplicity-sin
-and-the-fall-9780199656363?cc=gb&lang=en&#) . global.oup.com. Retrieved 2016-03-24.
38. Blaise Pascal (http://www.tcm.turner.com/tcmdb/title/title.jsp?stid=488698)at the TCM Movie Database
39. David Pengelley - "Pascal's Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle" (https://www.math.nmsu.edu/hist_projects/pascalII.
pdf)

Further reading
Adamson, Donald. Blaise Pascal: Mathematician, Physicist, and Thinker about God(1995) ISBN 0-333-55036-6
Adamson, Donald. "Pascal's Views on Mathematics and the Divine," Mathematics and the Divine: A Historical Study
(eds. T. Koetsier and L. Bergmans. Amsterdam: Elsevier 2005), pp. 407–21.
Broome, J.H. Pascal. (London: E. Arnold, 1965).ISBN 0-7131-5021-1
Davidson, Hugh M. Blaise Pascal. (Boston: Twayne Publishers), 1983.
Devlin, Keith (2008). The Unfinished Game: Pascal, Fermat, and the Seventeenth-Century Letter that Made the
World Modern. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-00910-7.
Farrell, John. "Pascal and Power". Chapter seven ofParanoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau(Cornell UP,
2006).
Goldmann, Lucien, The hidden God; a study of tragic vision in the Pensees of Pascal and the tragedies of Racine
(original ed. 1955, Trans. Philip Thody. London: Routledge, 1964).
Groothuis, Douglas. On Pascal. (Belmont: Wadsworth, 2002). ISBN 978-0534583910
Jordan, Jeff. Pascal's Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).
 Landkildehus, Søren. "Kierkegaard and Pascal as kindred spirits in the Fight against Christendom" Kierkegaard
in
and the Renaissance and Modern Traditions (ed. Jon Stewart. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2009).
Mackie, John Leslie. The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God
. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1982).
Pugh, Anthony R. The Composition of Pascal's Apologia, (University of Toronto Press, 1984).
Saka, Paul (2001). "Pascal's Wager and the Many Gods Objection". Religious Studies. 37 (3): 321–41.
doi:10.1017/S0034412501005686.
Stephen, Leslie. "Pascal". Studies of a Biographer. 2. London: Duckworth and Co. pp. 241–284.
Tobin, Paul. "The Rejection of Pascal's Wager: A Skeptic's Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus".
authorsonline.co.uk, 2009.
Yves Morvan, Pascal à Mirefleurs ? Les dessins de la maison de Domat
, Impr. Blandin, 1985. (FRBNF40378895)

External links
Oeuvres complètes, volume 2(1858) Paris: Libraire de L Hachette et Cie, link fromHathiTrust.
Works by Blaise Pascal at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Blaise Pascalat Internet Archive
Works by Blaise Pascal at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
The Correspondence of Blaise Pascalin EMLO
Simpson, David. " "Blaise Pascal" ". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Clarke, Desmond. "Blaise Pascal". In Zalta, Edward N. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Blaise Pascal at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
Pensées de Blaise Pascal. Renouard, Paris 1812 (2 vols.) D ( igitized)
Discussion of the Pascaline, its history, mechanism, surviving examples, and modern replicas at http://things-that-
count.net
Pascal's Memorial in orig. French/Latin and modern English, trans. Elizabeth .TKnuth.
Biography, Bibliography. (in French)
Works by Blaise Pascal at Open Library
BBC Radio 4. In Our Time: Pascal.
Blaise Pascal featured on the 500 French Franc banknote in 1977.
Blaise Pascal's works: text, concordances and frequency lists
"Blaise Pascal". Catholic Encyclopedia. 1913.
Etext of Pascal's Pensées (English, in various formats)
Etext of Pascal's Lettres Provinciales (English)
Etext of a number of Pascal'sminor works (English translation) including,De l'Esprit géométriqueand De l'Art de
persuader.
O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Blaise Pascal", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of
St Andrews.

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