Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and Catholic writer. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. He showed an early interest in mathematics and science, and at the age of 16 he wrote a treatise on conic sections that was praised by Descartes. He also invented an early mechanical calculator called the Pascaline, which could perform addition and subtraction. He later collaborated with Fermat on the theory of probability, which influenced the development of modern economics and social science. Pascal also made important contributions to the study of fluids, pressure, vacuum, and the cycloid. He experimented with a barometer and demonstrated that atmospheric pressure decreases with altitude. He also formulated Pascal’s law, which states that pressure exerted on a confined fluid is transmitted equally in all directions. Pascal was also a religious thinker who defended the Jansenist movement within Catholicism. He wrote the famous Lettres provinciales, which criticized the Jesuits for their moral laxity and casuistry. He also wrote the Pensées, a collection of fragments on theology and philosophy that contain his famous argument for belief in God known as Pascal’s wager. He argued that it is rational to believe in God even if there is no conclusive evidence, because the expected value of doing so is infinitely greater than not doing so. Pascal died at the age of 39 from stomach cancer. He was buried at the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont in Paris. His work influenced many later thinkers such as Leibniz, Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Kant, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche