Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal

Introduction

Blaise Pascal was a mathematician, physicist, philosopher and theologian French, this precocious child, was educated by his father. The early works of Pascal are related to natural sciences and applied sciences, and contributed significantly to the construction of mechanical calculators and the study of fluids. He explained the concepts of pressure and vacuum to expand the work of Torricelli (Pascal, 1910). Pascal wrote important texts on the scientific method. At sixteen, he wrote a treatise on projective geometry, and from 1654 he worked with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, which strongly influenced the modern theories of economics and social sciences. After a mystical experience which followed an incident in which he risked life, in 1654, he abandoned mathematics and physics to devote himself to religious and philosophical reflections. He died two months after his 39th birthday, in 1662, after a long illness that afflicted him since childhood.

Biography

Born in Clermont-Ferrand, in the Auvergne, Pascal lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of 3 years, when it never recovered from the birth of her daughter Jacqueline Pascal (1625 - 1662). As for this reason, his father, Étienne Pascal who was the judge and mathematician, was personally responsible for his education. The young Blaise turned out very early in the study and understanding of mathematics and physics. He was admitted to the meetings of the scientific circle around Marin Mersenne, who was in correspondence with the greatest scientists of the time, including Girard Desargues, Galileo Galilei, Pierre de Fermat, René Descartes, and Torricelli. From 1639 to 1647 was at Rouen, where his father had been an assignment by the Cardinal Richelieu (Krailsheimer,1980). Here, in 1640, Blaise Pascal wrote his first scientific work "On Conic Sections", based on the work of Desargues, and in 1644 built his first car calculator, the Pascaline. In 1646, moreover, his father, who was injured in a fall, he was treated by two gentlemen of the sect of Jansenius, which soon convinced him that both his children to embrace religious ideas and moral Jansenist.

In 1650, because of his frail health, Pascal temporarily left the study of mathematics. In 1653, his health, he wrote “Traité du triangle arithmétique”, in which he described the arithmetical triangle that bears his name.

Following an accident in 1654 on the bridge of Neuilly, where the horses ended up over the parapet, but the carriage miraculously survived, Pascal definitely abandoned the study of mathematics and physics to devote himself to philosophy and theology. From that time, Pascal became part of the "solitary", of the Abbey of Port-Royal, lay people dedicated to meditation and study, among whom was his sister, and here he became a member of the sect of Jansenists, founded and led Bishop Jansenius (Pascal, 1910). Just at that time had ignited a fierce controversy between the Jansenists and theologians of the University of Sorbonne in Paris, and he intervened in this dispute, in defense of Jansenism.

On 23 January 1656 published his first letters, under the pseudonym of Louis ...