Read Pascal's Wager for Free Online
Authors: James A. Connor
level of maturity. Suddenly he realized that Blaise was not just precocious, but a prodigy. What could he do with such a son? What should he do? Both thrilled and fearful, nearly in tears, according to Gilberte he left his son alone by the fire, to continue re-creating the work of a man he had never read. Étienne said nothing about disobedience.
[1635]
Blaise Among the Geometers
For he by geometric scale,
Could take the size of pots of ale.
—S AMUEL B UTLER
Philosophy is written in this grand book—I mean the universe—which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth.
—G ALILEO G ALILEI
F ighting back tears, Étienne left Blaise to his studies and hurried to the house of his friend, another mathematician, a man named Jacques Le Pailleur. Once there, he wept openly, and Le Pailleur, concerned that some tragedy had fallen on the Pascals, fretted. What could cause his old friend to be so upset? Étienne stopped him mid-fret and told him that he was not weeping from grief, but from joy, and showed him some of the papers onto which Blaise had transferred his fireplace diagrams and calculations. After glancing at the handful ofdrawings, with symbols and arrows drawn in a child’s hand, Le Pailleur realized that Blaise was a gifted child. He saw that, having been denied mathematics by his father’s pedagogy, Blaise had simply invented it for himself. 6 Le Pailleur advised Étienne to abandon his course of study and to introduce the boy to mathematics at once. When Étienne returned home, instead of punishing Blaise, he presented him with a copy of Euclid, and told him to study it in earnest.
What better gift could a young intellectual have had at that time than a gift for mathematics? Mathematics was, after all, the royal science. The medieval universe was fading away, and the old divine certainties were losing ground. The scientists and philosophers of France were busy casting about for something new to bet their souls on, a new ground of order, a new way to make the universe spin properly, and for most of them, that something was mathematics. Everyone in France used it; it was the latest, hottest thing. Those in the inner circles of thought passed around treatises on geometry like junk novels at the beach, while merchants sought new ways to turn their business dealings into numbers.
Even the philosophers and theologians turned to mathematics for insight. The great French gardens were finger exercises in geometry; the vast, ostentatious hôtels of the high aristocracy were designed and built according to mathematical principles. Metaphysics, before and after Descartes, was gradually becoming a creature of mathematical logic. The pinnacle of reality was the pinnacle of order, and mathematics was the measure of that order. In their deepest hearts, French intellectuals thought that God was the ultimate mathematician, and now Étienne Pascal’s own son had proved himself to be an adept at reading God’s mind, a mathematical prodigy, a child who was born to geometry just as Mozart, 150 years in the future, would be born to music.
Sometime after, Étienne brought young Blaise along when he attended the little gathering of mathematicians and scientists that met in Père Mersenne’s monastic quarters. Marin Mersenne was one of the great scientific majordomos of the age, a defender and promulgator of Galileo’s astronomy, a gatherer of mathematicians and natural philosophers, and a great opponent of those mystic fakeries alchemy and astrology. He wasa priest, a member of the Order of Minims, the most humble of all religious orders. Mersenne’s little group, which would eventually become the Academy
[1635]
Blaise Among the Geometers
For he by geometric scale,
Could take the size of pots of ale.
—S AMUEL B UTLER
Philosophy is written in this grand book—I mean the universe—which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth.
—G ALILEO G ALILEI
F ighting back tears, Étienne left Blaise to his studies and hurried to the house of his friend, another mathematician, a man named Jacques Le Pailleur. Once there, he wept openly, and Le Pailleur, concerned that some tragedy had fallen on the Pascals, fretted. What could cause his old friend to be so upset? Étienne stopped him mid-fret and told him that he was not weeping from grief, but from joy, and showed him some of the papers onto which Blaise had transferred his fireplace diagrams and calculations. After glancing at the handful ofdrawings, with symbols and arrows drawn in a child’s hand, Le Pailleur realized that Blaise was a gifted child. He saw that, having been denied mathematics by his father’s pedagogy, Blaise had simply invented it for himself. 6 Le Pailleur advised Étienne to abandon his course of study and to introduce the boy to mathematics at once. When Étienne returned home, instead of punishing Blaise, he presented him with a copy of Euclid, and told him to study it in earnest.
What better gift could a young intellectual have had at that time than a gift for mathematics? Mathematics was, after all, the royal science. The medieval universe was fading away, and the old divine certainties were losing ground. The scientists and philosophers of France were busy casting about for something new to bet their souls on, a new ground of order, a new way to make the universe spin properly, and for most of them, that something was mathematics. Everyone in France used it; it was the latest, hottest thing. Those in the inner circles of thought passed around treatises on geometry like junk novels at the beach, while merchants sought new ways to turn their business dealings into numbers.
Even the philosophers and theologians turned to mathematics for insight. The great French gardens were finger exercises in geometry; the vast, ostentatious hôtels of the high aristocracy were designed and built according to mathematical principles. Metaphysics, before and after Descartes, was gradually becoming a creature of mathematical logic. The pinnacle of reality was the pinnacle of order, and mathematics was the measure of that order. In their deepest hearts, French intellectuals thought that God was the ultimate mathematician, and now Étienne Pascal’s own son had proved himself to be an adept at reading God’s mind, a mathematical prodigy, a child who was born to geometry just as Mozart, 150 years in the future, would be born to music.
Sometime after, Étienne brought young Blaise along when he attended the little gathering of mathematicians and scientists that met in Père Mersenne’s monastic quarters. Marin Mersenne was one of the great scientific majordomos of the age, a defender and promulgator of Galileo’s astronomy, a gatherer of mathematicians and natural philosophers, and a great opponent of those mystic fakeries alchemy and astrology. He wasa priest, a member of the Order of Minims, the most humble of all religious orders. Mersenne’s little group, which would eventually become the Academy