Blaise Pascal was a prominent French scientist who made a significant contribution to several areas of human thought at once: literature, philosophy, physics, mathematics, mechanics. Among other things, he is credited with creating the theories of projective and probabilistic geometry, mathematical analysis, as well as a number of philosophical works.
Blaise Pascal: biography
The future scientist was born in the family of the chairman of the financial and judicial chamber in June 1623. Already at a young age, Blaise Pascal showed interest and talent for
research activities. The first treatise on Euclidean geometry came out from under his pen when the guy was only 16 years old. And at the age of 19, he designed his first version of the computing mechanism. By the way, this hobby of his later gave Europe even more advanced calculating machines. Today, Blaise Pascal is rightfully considered the founder of cybernetics and one of the most important scientists in world history, along with Newton, Descartes or Planck. However, the list of his achievements is very wide. In 1634, Evangelisto Torricelli, on behalf of his teacher Galileo Galilei, was the first in the world to discover the phenomenon of atmospheric pressure through a famous experiment. However, the results obtained were not immediately and not fully accepted by science. Torricelli used a glass tube in which there was a vacuum and which, with its open end, was immersed in a vessel of water. Under air pressure, the water "ran away" into this tube, where there was no vacuum. Blaise Pascal was the one who first fully realized the significance of the experiment, the existence of atmospheric pressure and its differences at different altitudes above sea level (as the air becomes more and more rarefied). Biographers call the period of the scientist's life from 1652 to 1654 secular. An interesting detail of his biography is the case when a friend asked him a question about gambling and options for dropping dice or cards. This interested the philosopher so much that the topic was launched into scientific circulation. Together with another famous mathematician, Pierre Fermi, the scientist laid the foundation for the theory of probability. In the same period of his life, the famous Pascal triangle and the related concept of combinatorics were created.
Blaise Pascal: Philosophy
Along with an inquisitive mind comprehending the surrounding physical world, the thinker also had a well-supported ideological position. His biographers distinguish two periods in his life when Pascal turned to religion. At the same time, this did not at all mean for him a rejection of the rationalistic approach to the world. In 1645-1658
for years the great Frenchman found himself at the center of the theological struggle between two currents: the Jesuits and the Jansenites. The result was his work, known today as the Letters of a Provincial, wherePascal took the side of the latter, criticizing the Jesuit dogmatic theology from the standpoint of rationalism. In addition to presenting the philosophical views of the scientist, this work is also valuable from a literary point of view. In the late 1650s, the scientist's he alth deteriorated sharply. The last years of his life, the researcher experienced severe headaches and a sharp general weakening. Despite this, he realized himself as an inventor almost until the last days of his life. So, he owns the idea of the first public transport - the omnibus, which was launched in Paris in the spring of 1662, just six months before Pascal's death.
