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Blaise Pascal: Works
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Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662) was a French mathematician. Though best known for his works in math, including the creation of Pascal's Triangle, which is named after him, and developments in the field of probability, Pascal was ... a scientist. He wrote in support of the scientific method and also contributed to physics. Later he wrote two books about Christianity.
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A prodigy in math, Blaise Pascal was a contemporary and rival of René Descartes. In spite of years of ill health and a short life, Pascal accomplished quite a bit: he published a significant work on the geometry of conical sections when he was only sixteen; he invented a calculating machine by the time he was nineteen; he and Pierre de Fermat founded the modern theory of probability; he described the principle that is the basis for the hydraulic press (called Pascal's Law); and he proved that there was a vacuum above the atmosphere. Pascal had a religious conversion in the 1650s and devoted himself to religion instead of science. He is famous for the philosophical theorem known as Pascal's Wager, and for the remark that history would have been different had Cleopatra's nose been differently shaped.
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Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was a renowned French physicist, mathematician and philosopher. He became known for his incredible contribution to physics, for the extensive experiments that he carried out. He ... became renowned for his work in mathematics on the probability theory. As a philosopher, he is known for his collection of reflections on Christian morality called Pensées.
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Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("On the Geometrical Spirit"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Little Schools of Port-Royal" (Les Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time... he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them up—first principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
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Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was a French mathematician and scientist who is famous for his work dealing with the pressure of liquids and the theory of probability. He ... designed a calculating machine, and, at the age of 16, wrote a book on Geometry which caught the attention of the great mathematician, Rene Descartes.1
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In 1654, Pascal publishes his Traité du triangle arithmétique ("Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle") in which he describes a convenient tabular presentation for the binomial coefficients: the Pascal's triangle. The same year, a friend interested in gambling exposed a problem that would lead to a new mathematical field. Suppose there are two players who want to finish a game early and want to divide the stakes fairly. How much should each player receive? Pascal corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on the subject, and the mathematical theory of probabilities was born. They introduced the notion of expected value, and their work into the calculus of probabilities laid important groundwork for Gottfried Leibniz's formulation of the infinitesimal calculus.[1]
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