Blaise Pascal - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

Biography

Born with Clermont, in Auvergne, Blaise Pascal loses his mother, Antoinette Bégon, at the three years age. His/her father, Etienne Pascal (1588 - 1651) very interested by the Mathematical and the Science S, was a local judge and member of small the Noblesse. Blaise Pascal had two sisters, Jacqueline, born in 1625, and Gilberte (born in 1620, married in 1641 with Florin Périer) who survived to him.

In 1631, Etienne goes with his children to Paris. It decides to educate itself his son who showed mental and intellectual provisions extraordinary. Indeed very early, Blaise has an immediate capacity for the Mathématiques and the Science, perhaps inspired by the frequent conversations of his father with the principal scientists of the time: Roberval, Mersenne, Desargues, Mydorge, Gassendi and Descartes. At eleven years, it composes a court Traité sounds of the vibrating bodies and shows the 32e proposal of Ier delivers Euclide. Etienne reacts by prohibiting to his son any continuation of his studies in Mathématiques up to fifteen years, so that it can study the Latin and the Greek . Holy-Beuve (in its History of Port-Royal , III, 484) tells:

At twelve years (1635), it starts to only work on the geometry and discovers that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles.

The work of Desargues interested particularly the young person Pascal and inspired to him, at sixteen years, a treaty on the sections Conique S: Test on conical the . The major part is lost by it but a significant result and original remain about it under the name of Théorème of Pascal. The work of Pascal was so early that Descartes, when he saw the manuscript, believed that he was of his father.

In 1638, Etienne, opposed to the tax provisions of the Cardinal of Richelieu, leaves Paris with its family to escape the Bastille. When Jacqueline, sister of Blaise, known as a compliment turned particularly well in front of Richelieu, Etienne obtains her grace. In 1639, the family settles with Rouen where Etienne becomes police chief delegated by the King for the tax and the lifting of the sizes.

At eighteen years (1641), Pascal builds Pascaline, Calculating machine able to carry out Addition S and Soustraction S in order to help his father in his work. He writes of it the directions for use … Avis necessary to those which will have curiosity to see the aforementioned machine and to make use of it. Several specimens are preserved, in France, with the Musée of Arts and Métiers in Paris and with the museum of Clermont-Ferrand. Although it is the whole beginning of mechanical calculation, it was a commercial failure because of its high cost (100 books). Pascal improves the design of the machine during ten more years and built about fifty specimens.

They are then the experiments on the Vide, following work of Torricelli, which occupies Pascal fully. Of 1646 with 1654, it multiplies the experiments with all kinds of instruments. One of them, in 1648 enables him to confirm the reality of the vacuum and the Atmospheric pressure and to establish the general theory of the balance of the liquids.

Pascal at the origin of the invention of the hydraulic press, is also based on the principle which bears its name.

Thanks to its knowledge in Hydrostatic, it takes part in the draining of the marshes poitevins, the request of the Duc of Roannez. that one even with which it will create the famous lines of fit with body with five grounds to circulate in Paris, preceding public transport and which reflects perfectly the preoccupation with an concrete action which lives the scientist.

One also owes him the invention of the Haquet, horse-drawn vehicle designed for the transport of the goods out of barrels.

Contributions to mathematics

All its life, Pascal contributes to mathematics by major work. As of 1640, it makes print its Essai for conical the and completes, in 1648, a treaty of the Generatio conisectionum ( Génération of the conic sections ), of which there remain only extracts taken by Leibniz. The great innovation is the Théorème of Pascal who says that the hexagramme formed by 6 points of a Conique has its convergent opposite sides in three aligned points, to see Hexagramme of Pascal.

From 1650, Pascal is interested in the Infinitesimal calculus and, into arithmetic, in the continuations of integers. It states for the first time the principle of the Raisonnement by recurrence.

In 1654, it writes its Traité arithmetic triangle in which it gives a convenient presentation in table of the coefficients of the binomial, the “arithmetic triangle”, now known under the name of “triangle of Pascal”. (It should be noted that a Chinese mathematician under the dynasty of Qin, Yang Today, had worked four centuries earlier on a concept similar to the triangle of Pascal and Omar Khayyam, six centuries earlier).

The same year, a friend, interested by the problems of play, questions it, Pascal corresponds with Fermat on the subject and from this collaboration will be born the mathematical theory from the Probabilités. His/her friend was the Chevalier of Mother and the problem was that known as of the “rule of the parties”: two players decide to stop playing before the end of the play and wish to share the profits in an equitable way while being based on the chances that each one had to gain parvenu at this point. It was the introduction of the concept of “mathematical Espérance”. Pascal, later in the Pensées will use a probabilistic argument, the “Pari of Pascal”, to justify his belief in God and a virtuous life. The work made by Pascal and Fermat in the probability theory constitutes an important preparation of the work of Leibniz on the Infinitesimal calculus.

Its last scientific work relates to the Cycloïde S. In 1658, it solves thus certain problems which occupied many mathematicians, in particular related on the surface and volume created by the rotation of cycloid around its axis.

After the mystical experiment of 1654, Pascal almost completely gives up any work of mathematics. However, after one sleepless night in 1658, it anonymously offers a price for the resolution of the squaring of the Cycloïde. Solutions are proposed by Wallis, Huygens, Wren and others; Pascal, always under a pseudonym, then publishes his own solution Histoire of the caster (in French and Latin) with a Suite of the history of the caster to the end of the year. In 1659, it sends to Huygens a Lettre on the dimension of the curved lines under the name of Dettonville.

Had Pascal confined his attention to mathematics He might cuts enriched the subject with many remarkable discoveries. Goal after his early youth He devoted must off his small measure off strength to theological questions. JL Coolidge, extracted from The mathematics off great amateurs , 1949.

Philosophy of mathematics

Axiomatic

The major contribution of Pascal to the Philosophie of mathematics is geometrical Spirit , writes originally like a foreword of a handbook Éléments of geometry for the famous small-schools of Port-Royal, at the request of Arnauld. This work was published only one century after its death. Pascal examines the possibilities there of discovering the Vérité, arguing that the ideal for a similar method would be to be based on the proposals whose truth is already established. However, he affirmed that it was impossible because to establish these truths, it would be necessary to be based on other truths and that the principles first could not be reached. From this point of view, Pascal affirmed that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain stated but not shown principles and the other proposals being developed from them. Nevertheless, there did not exist possibility of knowing if these principles were true.

In Of the geometrical Spirit and Art to persuade , Pascal studies more still the axiomatic method in geometry, particularly the question of knowing how the people can be convinced by the Axiome S on which the conclusions are then founded. Pascal is of agreement with Montaigne that to obtain the certainty in connection with these axioms and of the conclusions thanks to the human methods was impossible. He ensured that these principles could be seized only by the intuition and that this fact underlined the need for the God tender in the research of the truth.

Pascal also develops in geometrical Spirit… a theory of the Definition. He distinguishes the definitions which are conventional terms defined by the author and the definitions included in the language and included/understood by all because they indicate their referent naturally. The seconds are characteristic of the philosophy of the gasoline (Essentialisme). Pascal affirms that only the definitions of the first type are important for science and mathematics, considering that these fields should adopt the philosophy of the formalism, as Descartes established.

Pedagogy

Pascal shows in these Éléments of geometry all his interest for teaching and his reflections in connection with the pedagogy of mathematics and also in another fragment, known via Leibniz, on a method of reading which it discussed with his/her Jacqueline sister, charged with teaching in the small-schools of Port-Royal. He has seems he itself taught, at his place, with several children “in wrecks” (according to Villandry). In this method of reading, which it presents like a new manner to learn how to read easily in all kinds of languages , it recommends:

“This method looks at mainly those which cannot read yet. (...) each letter having its name, one only pronounces it differently than by assembling it with others. (...) It seems that the most natural way (...) is that those which show with reading, initially did not learn how to the children to know the letters, which by the name of their pronunciation. ”

Pascal gives indications on the order of presentation of the letters and from the various cases with or without Diphtongue, etc

“And then one would learn how to them to pronounce separately, and without spelling, the syllables this, Ci, Ge, gi, tia, tie, tii …”

Contributions to physical sciences

Experiment of liquors

Blaise Pascal also carried out the famous experiment of the liquors (which one would translate today by Expérience of the liquids ), which proved that there existed a “Atmospheric pressure”. At the time, the Église spread the idea that “the Nature detests the vacuum”. The majority of the scientists supposed that some invisible matter filled this space, but that it was not an empty space. Flood S having taken place in Italy and Holland had led to water pumpings to empty the ore careers of the two countries. But the Pompe S enormous manufactured for the occasion left perplexed the men of the church: the height of water in the tubes of pumping stopped with 10,33 Mr. And that in very different places. With Clermont, Blaise Pascal is writing a treaty on the Mécanique fluids. He thus emits the Hypothèse that a kind of “Atmospheric pressure” prevents the Eau from going up very high in the pumps, and that the vacuum occupies the higher space of the tubes. However, it strongly runs up against the Church, which makes remake the sealing of the pumps in order to check that it is not a question of air. But their work gives them finally wrong.

Blaise Pascal repeats, in 1646 with his father with Rouen, the experiments of Torricelli on the vacuum. A statement is sent by it to their friend Chanut (ambassador of the King in Sweden). In 1647, Pascal publishes his new Expériences concerning the vacuum and a foreword for a Traité Vacuum (see also vacuum in the vacuum), where it details the basic rules describing with which degree the various liquids could be maintained by the pressure of the air. It provides also the reasons for which a vacuum was really above the column of liquid in the barometric tube.

It then has the idea of an experiment which it will carry out the September 19th 1648: the atmospheric pressure should be different downtown (with Clermont-Ferrand) and in top from the mountain nearest, the Puy de Dôme, where the pressure must be lower than the pressure reigning with the level of the city. Pascal thus makes transport by his brother-in-law, Florin Périer, a tube of Torricelli in top of the Puy-de-Dôme. Cleaned S and Savant S follow the experiment. Thanks to the tube-witness downtown, the presence of vacuum is shown. It publishes the Récit of the great experiment of the balance of the liquors .

This research task finishes in 1651 by a Traité vacuum (only of the fragments are known) and its reduction by Pascal in two treaties of the Balance of the liquors and of Gravity of the air . It is in September of this year which his/her Etienne father dies.

The work of Pascal in the study of the fluids (Hydrodynamic and Hydrostatic) is centered on the principles of the hydraulic fluids. He invents the hydraulic Presse (using the water pressure to multiply the force) and the Seringue.

Vis-a-vis criticisms which supported that some invisible matter existed in the empty space of Pascal, Pascal answered Etienne Christmas one of the principal founders of the scientific method 17th:

“to show that an assumption is obvious, it is not enough that all the phenomena follow it; instead of that, if it leads to something of opposite to only one of the phenomena, that is enough to establish its falseness. ”

Its insistence on the existence of the vacuum places it, also, in conflict with many eminent scientists, including Descartes (perhaps also and especially for religious reasons).

Religion, philosophy, and literature of maturity

Religious conversion

From a biographical point of view, two basic influences guide it towards its conversion: the Jansénisme and the disease.

In 1646, the father of Pascal dislocated the thigh while falling on the ice, it is looked after by two doctors Jansenists (the Bottle-factory and Deslandes), disciples of Jean Duvergier de Hauranne (abbot of Saint-Cyran) which introduced the Jansénisme in France. Blaise frequently speaks with them lasting the three months about the treatment about his father, it borrows to them books of authors Janséniste S. It discovers that to go on the traces of Copernic and Galileo to release the physique of the dead load of Aristote and of the Scolastique is only the step of a vain reason, implied in the stain of very whole humanity, and that all this genius which bubbles in him only results it in diverting it of a terrible revelation and rédemptrice. What means knowledge which does not throw the man with the foot of the Cross? During this time, Pascal saw a kind of the “first conversion” and starts, during this year, to write on theological subjects. All its family puts itself “to taste God” with him.

As of its eighteenth year, it undergoes a nervous evil which seldom leaves it a day without suffering. In 1647, an attack of paralysis reaches it so much so that it cannot be driven any more without crutches. It has a headache, of the evils of belly, its legs and its feet are continuously cold and require care to activate blood circulation; it carries the bottoms soaked in brandy to be heated the feet. Partly to have better medical care, it goes to Paris with his sister Jacqueline. Its health improves but its nervous system is disturbed in a permanent way. Henceforth, it is prone to deep a Hypocondrie, which has affected its character and its philosophy. It became irritable, prone to accesses of proud and pressing anger, and it seldom smiles.

Pascal moves away from its first religious engagement and he lives during a few years what he called “one fashionable period” (1648 - 1654). His/her father dies in 1651 and Pascal takes possession of his heritage and that of his Jacqueline sister. This same year, Jacqueline enters to the convent of Port-Royal, in spite of the opposition of her brother. When time comes for it to pronounce its final wishes, he refuses to return a share of his heritage to him to pay his dowry of nun; without money it will have a position less raised in the hierarchy of the convent. It is only in 1653 that it will agree to constitute a dowry to him, at the time when a bubble of Innocent X condemns five proposals of Jansénius.

Thus, Pascal is at the same time rich and free. He takes a house sumptuously furnished, with many servants and is made lead in Paris with a car drawn by four or six horses. It spends its time in company of beautiful spirits, women and players (like its work on the Probabilités shows it). It continues a time, in Auvergne, its work and a lady of great beauty, which it calls the “Sapho of the countryside”. At that time, it inspires a Discours on passions of the love (which does not seem to be with its hand), and apparently it meditated on the marriage which it describes later like “ lowest of the living conditions allowed a Christian ”.

Jacqueline reproaches him her frivolity and requests so that it changes life. During the visits with his/her sister with Port-Royal in 1654, it shows contempt for the businesses of the world but it is not attracted by God.

With the threshold of death

At the end of 1654, it has an accident on the bridge of Neuilly where the horses plunge over the parapet and the car is close following them. Fortunately, the attachment breaks and the car remains in balance on the edge of the bridge. Pascal and his friends leave, but the hypersensitive philosopher, terrified by the proximity of death, disappears and remains unconscious. Ghost with him fifteen days later, the November 23rd 1654, between ten hours and half and midnight and half, Pascal has an intense religious vision which he immediately writes for itself in a short note, called the Memorial in literature, starting with: “ Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers nor of the scientists… ” and that he concludes by a quotation from the Psaume 119,16: “ I will not forget these words. Amen. ” It carefully sews this document in its coat and always transfers it when it changes clothing; a servant will discover it by chance after his death. During his life, Pascal was often regarded by error as a Libertin and, later, it was kept away as a person not having had a conversion that to its bed of death. His reactivated belief and his religious engagement, Pascal places in oldest of the two convents of Port-Royal for a fifteen in January 1655 days retirement. During the four following years, it regularly made the voyage between Paris and Port-Royal-of-Fields. It starts to write, immediately after its conversion, its major work on the religion, '' Provincial the '' .

Pascal took part in work of Traduction in French of the Bible, by using the principles of the Logique of Port-Royal.

'' Provincial the ''

Antoine Arnauld, leader of the Jansenist S since the death of Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, was in disagreement with the Sorbonne about a bubble of Innocent X (May 1653). Seeking to defend one of his friends, the marquis de Liancourt, it attracted itself the lightnings of the Sorbonne. The Jansenists sought a defender in the person of Pascal.

Pascal accepted, ensuring that it knew (according to Holy-Beuve) “how one could make this factum”, but which it could only promise “one outline” that others would be given the responsability “to polish”. Pascal started to publish the letters starting from the January 23rd 1656 under the pseudonym of Louis de Montalte. Pascal launched a memorable attack against the Casuistique, a popular moral method among catholic thinkers, particularly the Jésuites. Pascal denounced the Casuistique like the use of a complex Raisonnement to justify a morals laxist. Its method to argue was subtle: Provincial the claimed to be the Written letters by Louis de Montalte with provincial of his/her friends and the R.R.P.P. Jésuites on the subject of the morals and the policy of these fathers . He addresses himself to a friend who lives in province in connection with the discussions on morals and the theology who excited the intellectual and religious circles capital, particularly Sorbonne. Pascal combined the enthusiasm of a new convert and the brilliant spirit of a society man, with a style of the French Prose unknown until there. Beside their religious influence, the Provinciales were a popular literary work. Pascal made use of humor, the mockery and the malicious satire in his arguments, to allow a public use of the letters which will influence later French writers like Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and especially Montesquieu of the Lettres Persians .

The first five letters promote the major principles of the lesson Jansenists, for example the dogmas of the “close capacity” (Letter I) and of the “sufficient grace” (Letter II) and explain why they are not heretics. The letter V (March 20th 1656) is particularly virulent. Its attacks against the authorities take, according to Jean Lacouture, a polemical tone such as “Voltaire himself forever perhaps reached with this fulgurance”: he personally named and written a great number of personalities. The last letters more show Pascal on the defensive - the pressures on the Jansenists of Port-Royal so that they give up their teaching are increasing during this time - and contain the attack against the Casuistique. Letter XIV presents only one excuse: “I would like to have written a shorter letter, but I do not have time of them. ”

The series of eighteen letters, published between 1656 and 1657 by Pierre Small the, shocks Louis XIV, which ordered in 1660 that the book is shredded and burned. In 1661, the school Jansenist of Port-Royal was condemned in its turn and was closed, this leading to the signature of a papal bubble condemning the teaching of the Jansenists like heretics. The last letter defied the Pape itself, causing Alexandre VII to condemn the letters on September 6th 1657. But this did not prevent France cultivated to read them.

The pope Alexandre VII, whereas he was opposed publicly to them, was convinced by the arguments of Pascal. It ordered a revision of the texts Casuistique S right a few years after, in 1665 and 1666. The pope Innocent XI condemned the “Laxisme” in the Église in 1679.

Provincial the was widely diffused as of their publication, with more than one ten thousands of specimens.

Voltaire them has judged “good book which has ever appeared in France”, and when one asked Jacques Bénigne Bossuet which book it would have liked to write, it answered, the Provinciales of Pascal.

Jean Lacouture ( Jesuits ) quotes other appreciations, those of Henri Gouhier and François Mauriac.

About the impact that Provincial the in their historical context had, Jean Lacouture quotes the historian Marc Fumaroli (see Révolution copernician: the image of the Church tarnished during the Lights).

Miracle

When Pascal returns to Paris, just after having supervised the publication of its last letter, its religious belief is reinforced by its proximity with an apparent miracle which concerns his/her niece Marguerite Périer ten years old, in the vault of the convent of Port-Royal. His/her mother Gilberte Périer tells in the life of Mr Pascal whom it devoted to his brother:

“ It was in this time that it rained with God to cure my daughter of a lachrymal Fistule, with which she was afflicted there were three years and half. This dent was of a so bad quality, that the most skilful surgeons of Paris considered it incurable. And finally God had reserved himself to cure it by the contact of a Sainte Spine which is with Port-Royal; and this miracle was attested by several surgeons and doctors, and was authorized by the solemn judgment of the Church. ”

Later, the Jansenists and the catholics used for their defense this well documented miracle. In 1728, the pope Benoît XIII made use of it to show that the age of the miracles was not finished.

Pascal put in his blazon a surmounted eye of a crown of spines, with the inscription Scio cui credidi (“ I know in whom I believe ”). Its renewed faith, it decided to write its testamentary work, unfinished, the Pensées .

'' Pensées ''

Unfortunately, Pascal could not complete his theological work most important before dying. It was to be a constant and logical examination of the defense of the Christian faith, with for original title Apologie for the Christian religion .

After its death, many sheets of paper were found at the time of the sorting of its personal effects, on which were noted isolated thoughts, sheets gathered in bundles in a provisional order but speaking. The first version of these scattered notes is printed in 1670 under the title Pensées of M. Pascal on the religion and some other subjects . They became very quickly traditional. Because his/her friends and the disciples of Port-Royal were conscious that these fragmentary “thoughts” could lead to skepticism rather than with piety, they hid the thoughts skeptics and modified part of the remainder, for fear the king or the church does not take offense of it whereas the persecution of Port-Royal had ceased, and the writers did not wish a resumption of the polemic. It was necessary to wait the 19th century so that the Pensées are published completely and with the text of origin.

The Pensées of Pascal are largely regarded as one of the showpieces and a stage of the French literature. By presenting its observations on a chapter, Holy-Beuve regarded these pages as finest of the French language. Will Lasting, in its eleventh volume of the History of civilizations , the judge as “the most eloquent French book”. In the Thought , Pascal presents several philosophical paradoxes: Infinite and Nothing, Faith and Reason, heart and Matter, Dead and Life, Direction and Vanity -- apparently arriving at no final decision without the support of humility and the grace. By gathering them, it develops the Pari of Pascal.

Last work and dead

T.S. Eliot describes Pascal, at this period of its life, like “a man society man among the ascetics and like an ascetic among the society men”. The ascetic lifestyle of Pascal came from his faith in what it was natural and normal for a man to suffer. Into these last years disturbed by a bad health, it rejects the ordinances of its doctors while saying: “ the disease is the natural state of the Christian. ” According to his/her sister Gilberte, it would have written its Prière then to require of God the good use of the diseases .

In 1659, Pascal, whose health forever be good, falls seriously sick. The autopsy practiced after its death will reveal serious stomachic and abdominal problems, accompanied by cerebral lesions. In spite of this autopsy, the exact reason of its staggering health is not known, although speculations took place in connection with tuberculosis, of a cancer of the stomach or a combination of both. The headaches which assigned Pascal are allotted to the cerebral lesion. (Marguerite Périer, her niece said in her biography of Pascal that the autopsy revealed that “the cranium did not comprise any trace of joining other than the lambdoïde… with an abundance of brain, whose substance was so solid and if condensed… ”)

Louis XIV prohibited the movement Jansenist of Port-Royal in 1661. In answer, Pascal wrote one of his last work, Écrit on the signature of the form , urgently recommending to the Jansenists not to sign it. Later during this year, his/her sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemic in connection with jansénisme.

The last realization of Pascal, turning over to his inventive genius in 1662, was to inaugurate the first line of bus, transporting the passengers in Paris with “fit with body to five ground S” provided with several seats.

In 1662, the disease of Pascal became more violent. Conscious owing to the fact that it has few chances to survive, it thinks of finding a hospital for the terminal illness, but its doctors declare it untransportable. With Paris, the August 17th 1662, Pascal has convulsions and receives extreme oiling. He died the morning of 19, his last words being “ Can God never give up me ”. He is buried in the church Saint-Etienne-of-Mount.

Posterity

In the honor of its scientific contributions, the name of Pascal was given to the unit pressure international Système, with a computer programming language and to the law of Pascal (an important principle of Hydrostatique) and, as mentioned above, the Triangle of Pascal and the Pari of Pascal always bear his name.

The Université Clermont-Ferrand II was baptized with its name.

With the Canada, an annual contest of mathematics is called in its honor “Pascal Contest” which is opened with any pupil of Canada of less than 14 years and in 9th at the maximum. The development of the Theory of probability is the most important contribution of Pascal in mathematics. In the beginning applied to the play, it is used today in the economic scenes, particularly in Actuarial science. John Ross written:

“the theory of probability and the discoveries which follow it changed the way in which we consider uncertainty, the risk, decision making, and the capacity of an individual or company to influence the course of future events”.

However, it is advisable to note that Pascal and Fermat, which carries out the first important work in theory of probability, did not develop very far this field from studies. Christiaan Huygens, studying the question starting from the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, wrote the first book on the subject. Abraham de Moivre and Pierre-Simon Laplace is among the authors who prolonged the development of the theory.

In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French traditional period and it is read today as a one of the largest Masters of French prose. Its use of the satire and the spirit influenced posterior polemists. One remembers well the content of his literary work because of his strong opposition to the rationalism of Rene Descartes and the simultaneous assertion that philosophical empiricism was also insufficient to determine major truths.

Barbey d' Aurevilly sees in a PASCAL a “Hamlet of Catholicism”. Baudelaire the paraphrase and devotes its poem to him “the pit”.

A discussion in connection with Pascal occupies an important place in the film My night at Maud of the French realizer Eric Rohmer.

The meditation pascalienne on the Divertissement finds a prolongation in the novel of Jean Giono, a king without entertainment (1947). Giono borrows the title and the last sentence of the book from a passage of the Pensées (fragment 142 of the Brunschvicg edition): “A king without entertainment is a man full with miseries”.

Is Emmanuelle sister in her book “Food, for what that used? ” rests on some principles of the thought pascalienne which was a guide for it, throughout its life… (Collection I have Lu )

List principal works

The exact chronology of works of Pascal is difficult to establish because many texts are not dated and were published a long time after being written. Some were known only one century or more after the death of Pascal and others reached us only in a fragmentary or indirect way (notes of Leibniz or correspondence, for example).

Test for conical the (1642)
new Experiments concerning the vacuum (1647)
Account of the great experiment of the balance of the liquors (1648)
Treated arithmetic triangle (1654)
the Rule of the parties (1654)
Provincial the (Correspondences 1656 - 1657)
Element of geometry (1657)
Of the geometrical Spirit and of Art to persuade (1657)
History of the caster (1658)
Art to persuade (1660)
Thought (1670, posthumous)

References

Texts of Pascal

Very many editions exist.

Pascal, complete Works , Louis Lafuma, Threshold, the Integral one, 1963
Jean Mesnard (Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1964 - 1992), which contains all the texts which interest the life or the work of Pascal (including notarial acts, etc). But only 4 of 7 volumes appeared to date. One must thus sometimes have recourse to others éditions :
Pascal Blaise, Speech on the religion and some other subjects which were found after its death among its papers , were restored and published by Emmanuel Martineau, Paris, Beech-Armand Colin, 1992.
Pascal, complete Œuvres , ED. Michel Guern, coll Library of the Pleiad, Paris, Gallimard, 1998 - 1999

On Pascal

Francesco Paolo Adorno, Pascal , the Beautiful Letters. ISBN-10 2-251-76030-X.
Vlad Alexandrescu, the Paradox at Blaise Pascal , Peter Lang, 1997. ISBN-3-906754-72-3.
Albert Béguin, Pascal , Paris, Threshold, 1981 (nle ED.).
Attali, Jacques, “Blaise Pascal where French genius”
Jean Mesnard, Pascal and Roannez , 2 vol., Paris, Desclée De Brouwer, 1965
Leon Brunschvicg, Blaise Pascal , Paris, J. Vrin, 1953.
Leon Chestov: “The night of Gethsémani. Test on the philosophy of Pascal” (1923)
Coleman, Francis X.J., Neither Angel NOR Beast: The Life and Work off Blaise Pascal , New York, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986.
Collective, Blaise Pascal auvergnat: the family with work : exposure (Museums of art of Clermont-Ferrand, October 6th - November 8th 1981), Clermont-Ferrand, Association of the friends and correspondents of the international Center Blaise Pascal, 1981.
Jacques Darriulat, the Arithmetic one of the Grace: Pascal and magic squares , Paris, Beautiful letters, 1994.
Dominique Descotes, Pascal: biography, study of work , Paris, Albin Michel, 1994.
Jean-Louis Gardies, Pascal between Eudoxe and Cantor , Paris, J. Vrin, 1984.
Henri Gouhier, Blaise Pascal: conversion and apologetic , Paris, Vrin, 1986.
Henri Gouhier, Blaise Pascal, comments , Paris, Vrin, 1966.
Pierre Guenancia, Of the vacuum with God: test on the physics of Pascal , Paris, Maspero, 1976.
Thomas More Harrington, Pascal philosophizes , Paris, C.D.U. - S.E.D.E.S., 1982.
Pierre Humbert, the scientific Work of Blaise Pascal , Paris, Albin Michel, 1947.
Pierre Magnard, " Nature and history in the apologetic one of Pascal" , Paris, the Humanities
Pierre Magnard, " Pascal or the art of the digression" , Ellipses, 1995.
Pierre Magnard, " The vocabulary of Pascal" , Ellipses, 2001.
Jacques Moutaux (to dir.), Pascal and the geometry , Mount-Saint-Aignan, CRDP of Rouen: IREM of Rouen, 1993.
Martine Pécharman (to dir.), " Pascal. What the truth? " , P.U.F, 2000.
Jean-Felix Infant, Pascal, physicist and philosopher , Paris, academic Bookstore Didier, 1885.
John Ross, Pascal' S Legacy , an article on the influence of the theory of probability of Pascal
Tetsuya Shiokawa, Pascal and the miracles , Paris, Nizet, 1977.
Paul Valéry, “Variation on a thought”, 1923.

Herve Pasqua, " Pascal, thinker of the grace, Téqui, 2000.

See too

Bet of Pascal
University Blaise Pascal
Triangle of Pascal
Theorem of Pascal
Pascal, measuring unit
Pascal (language)
Dettonville, a complement on the Treated caster and the Method of indivisible the in geometry
Leon Chestov
Mathematical in Europe with the XVIIe century

External bonds

Work of Pascal digitized by the SCD of [[University Louis Pasteur] of Strasbourg] the
Biography and bibliography
Several works digitized available on Ebooks Free & Free and Gallica
Leibniz and Pascal: the history of a relation fertilizes between two philosophical mathematicians
Œuvres of Pascal: texts with agreements and list of frequency
'' Discours on passions of the love '' (1652-1653), allotted to Blaise Pascal.
Works of Blaise Pascal in numerical reading.
Philosophy and truth at Pascal by Frederic Baudin, teacher
audio Reading of the most famous texts of Pascal

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