Pensees: Pascal's Thoughts on God, Religion, and Wagers

Pascal, Blaise

ISBN 10: 1947844814 / ISBN 13: 9781947844810

Verlag: Suzeteo Enterprises, 2010

In. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers ria9781947844810_new

Inhaltsangabe:

Blaise Pascal set out to produce a monumental work of Christian apologetics but his untimely death meant that only his fragmentary notes--his thoughts--would be passed on to future generations. The 'random' notes of most people would not be worth preserving; not so with Blaise Pascal. Not only do his 'thoughts' continue to provoke new insights into the Christian religion, but they were praised as among the finest in French literature. This edition comes with an index for tracking down concepts and tracing Pascal's sophisticated reasoning throughout the volume.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor: Blaise Pascal (19 June 1623 - 19 August 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic theologian. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalising the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defence of the scientific method. In 1642, while still a teenager, he started some pioneering work on calculating machines. After three years of effort and 50 prototypes, he built 20 finished machines (called Pascal's calculators and later Pascalines) over the following 10 years, establishing him as one of the first two inventors of the mechanical calculator. Pascal was an important mathematician, helping create two major new areas of research: he wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of 16, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo Galilei and Torricelli, in 1647, he rebutted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. Pascal's results caused many disputes before being accepted. In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. Following a religious experience in late 1654, he began writing influential works on philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensees, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In that year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetical triangle. Between 1658 and 1659, he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids. Throughout his life, Pascal was in frail health, especially after the age of 18; he died just two months after his 39th birthday.

Bibliografische Details

Titel: Pensees: Pascal's Thoughts on God, Religion,...
Verlag: Suzeteo Enterprises
Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
Einband: Hardcover
Zustand: New