Blaise Pascal

Broschiertes Buch

Pensees

Beschreibung

2019 Reprint of 1960 Edition. Edited with an introduction and notes by Louis Lafuma. Translated by John Warrington. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition software. The Pensees ("Thoughts") is a collection of fragments on theology and philosophy written by 17th-century philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal. Pascal's religious conversion led him into a life of asceticism, and the Pensees was in many ways his life's work. The Pensees represented Pascal's defense of the Christian religion. The concept of "Pascal's Wager" stems from a portion of this work. The Pensees is a collection of philosohical fragments, notes and essays in which Pascal explores the contradictions of human nature in pscyhological, social, metaphysical and - above all - theological terms. Mankind emerges from Pascal's analysis as a wretched and desolate creature within an impersonal universe, but who can be transformed through faith in God's grace.

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.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Martino Fine Books
• Seitenzahl: 308
• Erscheinungstermin: 5. April 2019
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 152mm x 19mm
• Gewicht: 503g
• ISBN-13: 9781684223343
• ISBN-10: 1684223342
• Artikelnr.: 56154294