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Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher who made significant contributions to mathematics and science before turning to religion and philosophy. He invented the pascaline calculator, made contributions to hydrodynamics and hydrostatics, and wrote masterpieces of French literature on religious philosophy. He had a mystical experience that prompted him to devote all his attention to religion and wrote the Provincial Letters and Pensées. He died at the age of 39, leaving a lasting impact on both scientific and religious thought.
Blaise Pascal was a mathematician, philosopher and physicist from 17th century France. He made significant contributions to the mathematical and scientific world from a very young age before turning his attentions to religion and philosophy after a dramatic conversion at the age of 17. Pascal gave his name to several important mathematical and scientific concepts, and his religious works are considered masterpieces of the French language.
Blaise Pascal was born on June 19, 1623 in the city of Clermont in Auvergne, France. His mother died three years later and the rest of the family moved to Paris five years later. Blaise and his two sisters were very bright children and their father, Etienne Pascal, encouraged them. Etienne was also an amateur mathematician and scientist, inspiring his son’s early work in that vein. Blaise Pascal wrote a series of early mathematical treatises before the age of 18 and discovered what is now known as Pascal’s theorem concerning conic sections in projective geometry at the age of 16.
When Blaise Pascal was 15, the family moved to Rouen because his father’s opposition to some of Cardinal Richelieu’s policies made them unwelcome in Paris. Blaise Pascal continued his mathematical work, inventing a mechanical calculator later called the pascaline at the age of 18. Pascal’s later mathematical work concerned geometry and probability. In addition to his work in mathematics, Pascal contributed to the scientific fields of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics in his twenties. He invented the syringe and the hydraulic press and developed concepts that are now central to the field of hydrostatics.
Blaise Pascal suffered from a painful nervous condition from the age of about 18 and was partially paralyzed in 1647. Around the same time, his father was wounded and cared for by a physician who was also a Jansenist, one of the largest Catholic factions in France at the time. Pascal began to think more about religion and to write about theological matters, but his life did not change dramatically until a harrowing experience in 1654. That year, Blaise Pascal nearly lost his life in a carriage accident, in which the horses they ran off a bridge, leaving the cart dangling over the edge. Pascal fainted and remained unconscious for 15 days, after which he had a mystical experience that prompted him to devote all his attention to religion.
Pascal’s principal religious works were the Provincial Letters and the Pensées, or ‘Thoughts’. The Provincial Letters attacked what Pascal saw as corruption in the Catholic Church of his time. The Pensées, though unfinished, dealt with much broader questions of religious philosophy and have remained one of the most celebrated works of French literature.
Blaise Pascal fell seriously ill at the age of 36 and died three years later. The exact cause of his death has never been determined, but an autopsy revealed that many of his organs were in very bad shape. Although Pascal’s life was short, his contributions to both scientific and religious thought had a lasting effect on the world.
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