Blaise Pascal was a prominent French scientist who made a significant contribution to several areas of human thought: literature, philosophy, physics, mathematics, mechanics. Among other things, he has the honor of creating 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 in his youth, Blaise Pascal showed interest and talent for
research activities. The first treatise on Euclidean geometry came out of his pen when the guy was only 16 years old. And at the age of 19, he designed his first version of the computational mechanism. By the way, this his passion 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 of 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, through the famous experience, was the first in the world to discover the phenomenon of atmospheric pressure. However, the results were not immediately and not fully accepted by science. Torricelli used a glass tube in which there was a vacuum and which was immersed with its open end in a vessel of water. Under air pressure, water “escaped” into this tube, where there was no vacuum. Blaise Pascal was the first to fully understand the significance of the experiment, the existence of atmospheric pressure and its differences at different
heights above sea level (as air becomes increasingly thinner). The life of the scientist from 1652 to 1654 is called secular by biographers. An interesting detail of his biography is the case when a friend asked him a question about gambling and options for the loss of dice or cards. This was so interesting for the philosopher that the topic was launched into scientific circulation. Together with another famous mathematician, Pierre Fermi, the scientist laid the foundation for probability theory. In the same period of his life, the famous
Pascal triangle and the concept of combinatorics associated with it were created.
Blaise Pascal: Philosophy
Along with an inquiring mind comprehending the surrounding physical world, the thinker also had a well-supported worldview position. His biographers distinguish two periods in life when Pascal turned to religion. However, this did not mean for him a detachment from a rationalistic approach to the world. B 1645-1658
years, the great Frenchman was at the center of the theological struggle of two movements: the Jesuits and the Jansenites. The result was his work, known today as the “Letters of the Provincial,” where Pascal took the side of the latter, criticizing 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 health deteriorated sharply. In the last years of his life, the researcher experienced severe headaches and a sharp general weakening. Despite this, he almost until the last days of his life realized himself as an inventor. So, he belongs to the idea of the first public transport - omnibus, which was launched in Paris in the spring of 1662, just six months before Pascal's death.