Blaise pascal (1623-1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and theologian. He revolutionized the world from an early age, with inventions ranging from the first calculator to the first public transport service.
His main contributions include Pascal's theorem, pascalin, the existence of a vacuum or his experiments on atmospheric pressure. He was a man whose purpose was to change the way the world worked and to hand all his knowledge into the hands of science..
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Blaise Pascal was born on June 19, 1623 in the Auvergne region, specifically in Clermont. This region is located in the south-central area of France.
His family was of noble origin. His father was called Étienne Pascal and he trained in the capital of France as a jurist.
After this training, Étienne served as a high-ranking magistrate and his main role was as vice-president judge in the Clermont tax collecting body. Years later he was an outstanding mathematician.
The roots of Pascal's mother, named Antoinette Begon, included a well-off bourgeois family whose members were engaged in commerce..
Blaise had two sisters, an older and a younger. When his younger sister, Jaqueline, was born, Blaise's mother died as a result of birth complications. Pascal was just three years old.
In 1631, when Blaise was 8 years old, the family moved to Paris. Étienne Pascal's intention was for his children to have more opportunities to access quality education and other advantages that they could only achieve while in the capital of France.
This desire of Étienne included all his children, but especially Blaise, who from a young age had already shown himself to be a person with above-average intellectual gifts..
According to the biography of Blaise Pascal presented by his sister Gibert, once his mother died, the father decided to take charge of his son's education, keeping him away from formal education.
Years passed, and 9 years later, in 1640, Blaise's father was appointed head of collection and tribute and royal commissioner in Normandy..
It was in this context when, in 1641, Blaise Pascal invented for his father the Pascal wheel or pascaline, which is considered the oldest calculator on record..
This machine couldn't do addition, but in the next 10 years Pascal managed to improve on this invention so that subtraction was also possible. Pascal patented this artifact, only that it cost a lot of money to produce it, since the elaboration was one by one and completely by hand. For this they were excessively expensive.
Pascal only produced 50 machines, and of these nine copies are still preserved.
The society in which Pascal developed was made up of powerful and wealthy characters. Although his father had some enemies because he was very strict about enforcing his duties as a judge, still Blaise and his sisters thrived without major restrictions in this environment.
Blaise's younger sister had literary writing skills. For her part, Gilbert, the older sister, married a relative brought from Clermont to be Étienne's assistant. This happened in 1641.
In 1646 Blaise's father had a serious accident, which led him to spend a while recovering. At that time the entire family approached religion through the teachings of Bishop Cornelio Jansenio, who was a reformist of Dutch origin..
Despite the fact that the Pascal family had not been characterized until then for being of a believing nature, the words of this bishop were influential in all the members of the family.
The influence reached such a point that his sister Jaqueline became a nun, and Pascal attributed the series of ailments that constantly suffered in her legs to divine punishment. Following this conception, Pascal decided that he would lead an austere life.
Pascal could be considered to be somewhat extreme in his religious fervor, as he even once pressured the Archbishop of Ruan to reprimand a seminarian who had advocated a more rationalist position on religion..
Despite this, Pascal always considered that his scientific inclinations and his thirst for knowledge in this field were not negatively influenced by the religion that he professed and based on which he lived..
From 1646 Pascal dedicated himself to studying the options to achieve a vacuum check, repeating the experiments generated by the mathematician and physicist Evangelista Torricelli, made in 1643.
In 1647 he published his considerations and traveled to Paris, where he met with such prominent personalities as René Descartes himself, however, he did not obtain favorable responses..
In 1649 the so-called Fronde took place in Paris, which was a set of demonstrations that took place in the capital of France. In this context, the Pascal family moved to Auvergne, and two years later, in 1651, Pascal's father, Étienne, died..
At that time Pascal's sister, Jaqueline, finally entered as a nun in a Janesist convent called Port-Royal des Champs.
After his father passed away, Pascal began to focus with greater emphasis on being part of the Parisian society. He did not have much money but he maintained his status as a nobleman, so he could perfectly participate within the so-called Paris society.
In this context, he was in contact with great thinkers of the time who introduced him to areas such as modern philosophy, in addition to the simple fact of how to carry on conversations within this area of society..
Pascal continued with his investigations, being very productive in these years. In 1653 he published a treatise in which he talked about atmospheric pressure. This is considered to be the first treatise in which the topic of hydrostatics is developed in a fairly descriptive way..
Similarly, in that same year he began to study the characteristics of probability theory, thanks to his fondness for games of chance, very common among the nobility at the time..
A year later, in 1654, Pascal dedicated himself to publishing different works related to the proof by mathematical induction and the combination and order of numbers.
After having been linked to Parisian society for a long time, in 1654 he suffered a depressive state and decided to move away from these characters.
He even preferred to move to an area further away from the members of this society and began to visit his sister frequently in the convent..
Some sources indicate that on November 23, 1654, Pascal had an accident in his chariot, which led to the following events. Although this information is not confirmed, the truth is that this day he wrote a note in which a religious rebirth experience is reflected..
From that moment on, Pascal definitively cut ties with the society of Paris and instead devoted himself to his religious fervor. His new circle of friends was made up of theologians and other scholars who lived in the vicinity of the convent of Port-Royal des Champs, with whom he conversed constantly..
Around that time, in 1656, his niece named Marguerite Périer had an abscess in one eye, had visited the convent and was cured immediately.
This fact helped Pascal feel even more of a believer and began to dedicate himself to writing theological and religious texts. This he did with the help of his teammates Pierre Nicole and Antoine Arnauld.
Between 1656 and 1657, Pascal anonymously published a series of pamphlets with a satirical nature in which he criticized the religious approach shown by the Jesuits, who had problems with the Jansenists.
This writing was called Provincial letters and it had a lot of impact, which made it very popular in the society of the time. This work is considered one of the most emblematic of French prose, and even a literary classic of France.
In this conflict the Jesuits showed superiority and placed themselves above the Jansenists, being supported by the Pope and the King. Despite the fact that the greatest power rested at that time with the Jesuits, Pascal did not stop defending his ideas, even when several of his companions joined the Jesuits..
So, 1658 was the year in which he began to write what he considered his greatest apologetics related to the Christian religion. This writing alternated with mathematical research, as it was when he delved into the characteristics of the cycloid.
It is estimated that the ascetic way of life that Pascal led may have caused him to become ill, and even continue to weaken more and more. Yet he kept working; in 1654 he formed a committee charged with producing a new translation of the Bible.
In 1662 Pascal founded a carriage company called The Fifty-cent Floats together with a colleague named Roannez. This undertaking was what started public transport in the capital of France.
When he was 39, Blaise Pascal died. The cause of death was a malignant tumor that began in his stomach and spread to his brain. Before dying, Pascal arranged for his assets to be sold and the money raised to be donated for charitable purposes.
Pascal's theorem was published in 1639, in "The Conics Essay”. Known as Pascal's mystical hexagon, his theorem explains that "if a hexagon is inscribed in a conic section then the points of intersection of the pairs of opposite sides are collinear".
That is, if we extend the lines of a hexagon inscribed in a conic section, then the pairs of sides at their intersection will create a straight line.
Pascal, in 1647, first demonstrated the existence of a vacuum. Contrary to the thinking of Aristotle and Descartes, Pascal carried out a series of experiments with the barometer and mercury, thus demonstrating what Torricelli had theorized.
Thus he managed to prove what many believed impossible: that the space that exists above a liquid inside a barometer is a vacuum. This experiment laid the foundation for his next study on atmospheric pressure..
Although it was a subject previously discussed, Pascal performed the decisive experiment on atmospheric pressure.
He filled two barometers with mercury (B1 and B2). B1 was taken to the top of a mountain and B2 was left at the beginning of this.
The mercury level was constant in B2 but as B1 rose, the mercury level decreased. In this way, he proved that the higher the altitude, the less atmospheric pressure.
This experiment is the basis for studies in hydrostatics and hydrodynamics.
Formulated in 1648, this principle states that when pressure is exerted at some point in a confined fluid, this pressure will be exerted at all points in this fluid..
For example, if we make three holes in an inflatable mattress, the air will come out with the same pressure for each one of them..
This principle revolutionized the world of hydraulics, which is the basis of all types of mechanics from aeronautics to fluids..
To test the theory, Pascal conducted an experiment and created a syringe to demonstrate pressure. This syringe would be the forerunner for the syringe used in modern medicine. And from this principle derived the invention of the hydraulic press.
It was formulated in 1653, in its Traité du triangle arithmétique (Treatise of the arithmetic triangle), and laid the foundations for the development of the probability theory that came to light a year later.
Although this type of number pattern was studied thousands of years before, it was Pascal who gave it a correct interpretation..
The triangle starts from the top with a one and both of its sides are ones, the sum of the upper numbers results in the lower numbers and thus the structure of the triangle is formed.
Because the numbers are infinite, so is the triangle. It has wide uses in algebra, probabilities, combinatorics, fractals, and in various other branches of mathematics..
It arises in 1654, being formulated by Pascal and Pierre de Fermat.
Pascal made use of his triangle to be able to shape this theory, because the probabilities can in a certain way be calculated if one takes into account what has been happening before them..
It was applied with the following example: a game of chance is interrupted before it can end, the winnings must be distributed.
Using the triangle, Pascal and de Fermat established the numerical probabilities with mathematical precision, of what could have been the result of having been able to continue the game in order to distribute the win in a fair way.
This theory is still used in mathematics, cryptology and even in everyday life.
Pascalin is the forerunner of modern calculators. Manufactured in 1645, it was the first calculator to be produced, used, and distributed; besides having been the only operational mechanical calculator of the seventeenth century.
It was invented to ease his father's work and thus calculate taxes. He could only add and subtract, yet he was so advanced for his time that he obtained the royal privilege of patenting his product and being the only one who could design and manufacture calculators in France..
Numbers were entered and a crank turned to the correct side performed the operation.
It is speculated that roulette was invented in China and that it reached the mainland through merchants.
But a much more realistic theory is that Blaise Pascal invented roulette, especially since the word "roulette" means little wheel in French..
In 1655 Pascal devised a 36-number roulette that does not contain zero. He did it because he was looking for a continuous motion machine.
However, if roulette can be traced back to Pascal, the modern version of roulette can be attributed to Francois and Louis Blanc, who in 1842 added a zero to Pascal's wheel, forever changing the odds in favor of the house..
In 1662, shortly before his death, Pascal suggested and patented the idea of establishing a collective carriage service in Paris, which did not yet have an engine, in which schedules, routes and even a fee were determined..
Although he did not invent something scientific or technical, he did create a new service, which years later would become the transport service.
Although there is no proof, Blaise is also credited with inventing the wheelbarrow to transport people.
The French word for this possible Pascal invention is brouette.
It is a system by which Pascal's principle is demonstrated. It consists of a liquid immersed in a closed container, with two ends in which there are two pistons that can move.
If pressure is applied to one of these, then said pressure is transmitted to the other end and increases as many times as the size of the surface to which it is being transmitted..
Blaise Pascal's works are extensive and varied in nature, as he worked on topics related to both mathematics and the field of religion. Some of the most emblematic Pascal books are the following:
-Essai pour les coniques, in 1639.
-Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide, in 1647.
-Traité du triangle arithmétique, in 1653.
-Provincial letters, between the years 1656 and 1657.
-De l'Esprit géométrique, in 1658.
-Écrit sur la signature du formulaire, in 1661.
-I thought, posthumous, published in 1669.
Of all his works, some of the most important and transcendent were Provincial letters or Provincial letters; Y I thought or Thoughts. Below we will describe the most relevant aspects of each of these works:
It is a set of 18 letters that Blaise Pascal wrote. To do so he used the pseudonym Louis de Montalte.
The first of the letters that make up this work was written in January 1656, while the last indicates March 1657 as the date of writing..
At this moment in history there was a conflict situation between the Jansenists, an order that Pascal followed, and the Jesuits. The Faculty of Theology of the Sorbonne University in Paris had condemned a Jansenist friend of Pascal named Antoine Arnauld.
This condemnation had as an argument that Arnauld had professed opinions that the Jesuits considered scandalous and opposed to the established dogma.
The letters that Pascal wrote seek to criticize the fact that the Jesuits relied heavily on the explanation of things through specific cases. In addition, for Pascal the Jesuits showed a very relaxed moral, so in his letters he also mentioned this characteristic in a humorous way.
It is said that one of the most relevant elements of these letters is the perfection of the prose constructed by Pascal.
The way in which Pascal linked his mockery of the Jesuits together with the neatness with which the arguments are developed, made this work one of the most emblematic creations of French literature..
Historical records indicate that important post-Pascal writers, such as Rousseau and Voltaire, were heavily influenced by this work..
In 1660 King Louis XIV ordered all copies of the Provincial letters, and as a consequence of the general content, Pope Alexander VII had condemned the work.
This did not prevent said book from reaching the population, and it is said that even Pope Alexander VII later condemned the lax morality of the Jesuits, probably under the influence of the ideas expressed by Pascal.
This book, whose title is translated into Spanish as Thoughts, compiles the writings that Pascal wanted to translate into an apologetics he was preparing. Pascal died before completing this work, so these writings were published posthumously.
The central theme of Pascal's dissertations in this book revolves around reflecting on the human being, as well as defending the Christian religion in a very clear way..
Certain evidences estimate that, before dying, Pascal had arranged his texts in such a way as to determine the way in which he preferred them to be published; however, there is no knowledge of the actual order that Pascal had arranged for this work.
The first publication of this work was in 1669, and later other publishers sought the possibility of republishing it by carrying out a reorganization of the contents.
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