Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He had many important contributions to the mathematics and physics such as: the construction of mechanical calculators, considerations on probability theory, the study of fluids, concepts of the pressure and vacuum, and the Pascal Triangle. After a divine experience in 1654, he devoted himself to meditating and writing philosophy. His many discoveries in the field of mathematics have made him one of the most important mathematicians in history (Broome).
Blaise Pascal was born in Clermont, France in 1623. He was one of five children and lost his mother at the age of three. Starting in 1631, his father, Étienne Pascal, devoted himself to the education of Blaise, who showed extraordinary intelligence. At age 16, Pascal produced a paper on conic sections, which is now called Pascal's theorem. At age 18, Pascal created a mechanical calculator able to do addition and subtraction (Pascal). In 1653, Pascal wrote the Traité du Triangle Arithmétique, which was a theory described as a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients. Today his theory is called the arithmetical triangle or Pascal triangle (Broome).
Pascal did much research in science that included contributions to the study of fluids, pressures, and vacuums. He also invented the hydraulic press and syringe. In 1654, he worked with another mathematician, Fermat, on the mathematical theory of probabilities (Broome).
In 1654, he was in a carriage accident and fifteen days later had an intense religious vision (Pascal). After the vision, Pascal began to attack the ideas of casuistry or complex reasoning to justify moral laxity. His wrote many essays and letters against this idea and was hated for this. Louis XIV of France ordered that his papers be shredded and burnt. Pascal largest theological writing was the Pensées, which was a sustained and coherent examination of and defense of the Christian faith. However, the novel was left unfinished because of his death in Paris on August 19, 1662 (Broome).
Blaise Pascal’s finding have provided much information to the mathmatic, scientific, and religious communitys.
RENÉ DESCARTES by career being a Mathematician carried his interest of entering into the philosophy realm. At a very young stage, he decided that nature is to be explained with certainty as Mathematics. Mathematics in itself is very numerical, where the nature cannot be expressed numerically but is bound in a neat and clear cut way. Thus, his philosophy about everything in nature is very mechanical and machine-like.
His knowledge was thus gained mathematically. His importance was not only by proving ideas through mathematics, but by proving the existence of God. He tried to build a reliable foundation for knowledge with the idea of God. As Descartes states, "If God is all knowing, all good, and all powerful, he would not let us live in constant ignorance." He gives other individuals incentive to find the truth, even if they feel the basis of finding the truth is impossible.
In paragraphs three through six the concept addressed is immorality, and how it is embedded into those who choose to believe and to not believe in the divine. However, the difference in immorality between the two sides are broad. Each side must make the choice every day to seek not only around them but also in themselves for the light of the divine or the darkness of immorality. Pascal is conveying to his audience that the one who does not think of the end of life will not be
Benjamin Banneker was an astronomer, scientist, mathematician, surveyor, clock-maker, author, and social critic. Most notable about his accomplishments was that despite racial constraints and little formal education, he was a self-taught man. By the end of his life, his achievements were well-known around the world.
Blaise Pascal was born in Clermont France on June 19, 1623 to Etienne Pascal. His mother died when he was only 3. He was the third of four children and the only boy. He was described as a man of: small stature, poor health, loud spoken, somewhat overbearing, precious, stubbornly persevering, a perfectionist, highly pugnacious yet seeking to be humble and meek. Pascal's father had somewhat unorthodox views on education, so he decided to teach his son himself. He forbade any mathematic teachings or material to be given to him and had any such texts removed from their house. Blaise became engulfed with curiosity due to this rule. He started to work with geometry on his own at the age of 12. He discovered that the sum of the three angles of a triangle is equivalent to two right angles. When his father discovered this he then allowed Blaise a copy of Euclid. At the age of 14 Blaise began accompanying his father to Mersenne's meetings. Mersenne was a member of a religious order of Minims. His cell held many meetings for the likes of Gassendi, Roberval, Carcavi, Auzout, Mydorge, Mylon, Desargues and others. By the time he was 15 Blaise admired the work of Desargues greatly. At 16 Pascal presented a single piece of paper at a Mersenne's meeting in June 1639. It held many of his geometry theorems, including his mystic hexagon. In December 1639 he and his family left Paris and moved to Rouen where his father Etienne was appointed tax collector for Upper Normandy. Soon after settling down in Rouen his Essay on Conic Sections was published in February of 1640. It was his first great work. Pascal also invented the first digital calculator to aid his father in his tax collecting duties. For three years he worked 1642 - 1545. Dubbed the Pascaline, it resembled a mechanical calculator of the 1940's. This almost assuredly makes Pascal second only to Shickard who manufactured the first in 1624. Pascal faced problems with the design of the calculator due to the design of French currency at the time. There were 12 deniers in a sol, and 20 sols in a livre. Therefore there were 240 deniers in a livre. Hence Pascal had to deal with more technical problems to work with this odd way of dividing by 240. Yet the currency system remained the same in France until 1799, but Britain's similar system lasted until 1971.
Blaise Pascal was born on 19 June 1623 in Clermont Ferrand. He was a French mathematician, physicists, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher. He was a child prodigy that was educated by his father. After a horrific accident, Pascal’s father was homebound. He and his sister were taken care of by a group called Jansenists and later converted to Jansenism. Later in 1650, the great philosopher decided to abandon his favorite pursuits of study religion. In one of his Pensees he referred to the abandonment as “contemplate the greatness and the misery of man”.
...ibutions to analytic geometry, algebra, and calculus. In particular, he discovered the binomial theorem, original methods for expansion of never-ending series, and his “direct and inverse method of fluxions.”
“..it is safe to say that he was a brilliant and profound Christian thinker who exercised his considerable intellect in a number of fields” (Morris). Morris himself considers Pascal as one that is knowledgeable in multiple fields, not only from a religious sense. With that, it does not mean that those who don’t understand cannot ever reach a point where they can comprehend. “There are three sources of belief: reason, custom, inspiration” (Pascal, 243). Pascal believes in having more than only the understanding of the religion.
Yang Hui has been found to be the oldest user of Pascal’s Triangle. But it is Blaise Pascal who around the year 1654 was credited for his extensive work on the many patterns of this triangle. Because of this people began to call it Pascal’s Triangle.
However, his greatest contribution to mathematics is considered to be logic, for without logic there would be no reasoning and therefore no true valid rules to the science of mathematics.
... Pascal was such a brilliant man because he could do both of these. Pascal was one of the only men that wrote about his beliefs in God and was an accredited scientist and mathematician too. He was a true man of the scientific revolution.
The Bernoulli family had eight significant and important mathematicians, starting with Jacob Bernoulli, born in 1654. Though there was a great deal of hatred and jealousy between the Bernuollis, they made many remarkable contributions in mathematics and science and helped progress mathematics to become what it is today. For example, Daniel discovered a way to measure blood pressure that was used for 170 years, which advanced the medical field. Daniel’s way of measuring pressure is still used today to measure the air speed of a plane. Without the Bernoulli family’s contributions and advancements to calculus, probability, and other areas of mathematics and science, mathematics would not be where it is now.
Blaise Pascal lived during a time when religion and science were clashing and challenging previous discoveries and ideas. Pascal lived from 1623 to 1662 due to his untimely death at the age of thirty nine. The scientific community grew enormously and Pascal was a great contributor to this growth. The growth in the scientific community is known as the Scientific Revolution. He lived in a time where an absolute monarch came into power, King Louis the XIV. Louis XIV was a believer in “one king, one law, and one faith” (Spielvogel, 2012). Pascal saw the destruction of protestant practices in France and the growth and acceptance of scientific discoveries. He used the scientific method to refine previous experiments that were thought to be logical but Pascal proved otherwise and eventually led to Pascal’s Law. He spent his life devoted to two loves: God and science. Within his book, “Pensees,” Pascal argues and shares his thoughts about God, science, and philosophy.
Ada Lovelace was the daughter of famous poet at the time, Lord George Gordon Byron, and mother Anne Isabelle Milbanke, known as “the princess of parallelograms,” a mathematician. A few weeks after Ada Lovelace was born, her parents split. Her father left England and never returned. Women received inferior education that that of a man, but Isabelle Milbanke was more than able to give her daughter a superior education where she focused more on mathematics and science (Bellis). When Ada was 17, she was introduced to Mary Somerville, a Scottish astronomer and mathematician who’s party she heard Charles Babbage’s idea of the Analytic Engine, a new calculating engine (Toole). Charles Babbage, known as the father of computer invented the different calculators. Babbage became a mentor to Ada and helped her study advance math along with Augustus de Morgan, who was a professor at the University of London (Ada Lovelace Biography Mathematician, Computer Programmer (1815–1852)). In 1842, Charles Babbage presented in a seminar in Turin, his new developments on a new engine. Menabrea, an Italian, wrote a summary article of Babbage’s developments and published the article i...
"programming" rules that the user must memorize, all ordinary arithmetic operations can be performed (Soma, 14). The next innovation in computers took place in 1694 when Blaise Pascal invented the first “digital calculating machine”. It could only add numbers and they had to be entered by turning dials. It was designed to help Pascal’s father who