Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

Philosophy and Technology

By Johann Heinrich P. Malongo
Boyhood

He was taught by his father

His father avoided teaching him Math so he taught himself
Geometry
He discovered a Basic Projective Theorem at the age of 16.
At the age of 18, he invented the first mechanical adding
machine or a mechanical calculator
Timeline of his life

1623 Born at Clerment-Ferrand in June 19. Son of Etienne Pascal, a minor

noble and government official.
1626 Mother died when Pascal was three years old.
1631 Etienne moves to Paris and directs his childrens education based on
pedadogy of Montaigne. Blaise proves to be exceptional at mathematics.
1642 Blaise begins to work on his calculating machine to assist father in
the computation of taxes
1647 Visits by Descartes and discussion on atmospheric pressure and the
function of barometer.
Timeline of his life

1648 Blaise returns to Claremont. Writes treatise on conic sections.

1654 November 23, a two-hour ecstatic vision leads to his conversion. The
account of this vision is kept in the lining of his coat at all times.
1656 Appearance of the first of the Provincial Letters.
1658 Lectures on his apologetics to the Leaders of Port-Royal.
1659 Comes down with the illness that will lead to his death. Works in brief
periods of relief from suffering.
1662 August 17, Blaise dies in the house of one of his sisters.
1670 Publication of his Thoughts which he had worked on sporadically the
last four years of his life.
Despite chronic ill health, Pascal made historic contributions to
mathematics and to physical science, including both experimental
and theoretical work on hydraulics, atmospheric pressure, and the
existence and nature of the vacuum. As a scientist and philosopher
of science, Pascal championed strict empirical observation and the
use of controlled experiments; he opposed the rationalism and
logico-deductive method of the Cartesians; and he opposed the
metaphysical speculations and reverence for authority of the
theologians of the Middle Ages.
 Brought up by two sisters: Gilberte, author of an excellent
biography on Pascal, and Jacqueline, who competed with Pascal as
a child prodigy.
Died at the age of 39 in intense pain from cancer.
In one of his most famous books, he says: If God does not exist,
one stands to lose nothing by believing in him anyway, whereas if
he does exist, one stands to lose everything by not believing,
which is said to be his motto.
Pascals Triangle

In mathematics, Pascal's triangle is a

triangular array of the binomial
coefficients. In the Western world, it is
named after French mathematician Blaise
Pascal, although other mathematicians
studied it centuries before him in India,
Persia (Iran), China, Germany, and Italy.
The triangle has patterns to solve problems
involving permutations and combinations.
Pascals Theorem which deals with conic section
In 1640, wrote Essay on Conic Section
Helped laid down the principles of the Theory of Probability
Pascals Law: states that in a fluid at rest, the pressure on any
surface exerts a force perpendicular to the surface and
independent of the direction of orientation of the surface.
In 1647, Pascal published New Experiments Concerning the Void.
Philosophy of Science

He also recognizes three different types or sources of knowledge

related to his so-called three orders: body/sense; mind/reason;
heart/will or instinct, each with its own domain or area of
applicability, level of certainty, and tests of confirmation and
reliability.
Philosophy of Science

Pascals outlook is ahead of its time and admirable in its self-restraint and in
its awareness of its own limitations.
He makes room for hypothesis and even imaginative insight and conjecture
and also allows a deductive component
He acknowledges that all hypotheses must be tested and confirmed by
rigorous experiments, and even if he didnt actually carry out his experiments
exactly as described, he nevertheless accepts the necessity of such testing.
Pascal fully understood that once a hypothesis is tested and confirmed, the
problem of determining the true cause of the phenomenon still remains and
becomes itself a matter for further conjecture.
 However, as he himself and his fellow experimentalists certainly
knew, there can be nearly as many reasons why an expected result
does not occur, such as defective apparatus, lack of proper
controls, measurement errors, extraordinary test circumstances,
etc, as there are explanations for a result that occurs as expected.
Technology

In 1642, at the age of 18, Pascal invented and build the first
mechanical calculator as a means of helping his father perform
tedious tax accounting. Pascals father was the tax collector for the
township of Rouen.

The device was called Pascals calculator or the Pascaline or the

Arithmetique. Pascal continued to make improvements to his design
through the next decade and built fifty Pascaline machines in total.
Technology

Built for Etienne Pascal, his

father an accountant for the
King of France
Prove to society that human
brain power can be artificially
produced by machine
Thus he earned the distinction
to be the Father of modern
calculators
 Technology

A mechanical calculator, or
calculating machine, was a
mechanical device used to perform
automatically the basic operations of
arithmetic. Most mechanical
calculators were comparable in size
to small desktop computers and have
been rendered obsolete by the
advent of the electronic calculator.
Various desktop mechanical
calculators used in the office from
1851 onwards.
 The Pascals Calculator or The
Pascaline
The first Pascaline could only
handle 5-digit numbers, but later
Pascal developed 6 digit and 8 digit
versions of the Pascaline.
The machine could add, subtract, multiply, and divide. Multiplication and division
were somewhat difficult to do, by performing multiplication and division by
repeated addition and subtraction. In fact the machine could really only add,
because subtractions were performed using complement techniques, in which the
number to be subtracted is first converted into its complement, which is then
added to the first number.
There were problems faced by Pascal in the design of the calculator which were
due to the design of the French currency at that time. There were 20 sols in a livre
and 12 deniers in a sol. The system remained in France until 1799 but in Britain a
system with similar multiples lasted until 1971.
Pascal had to solve much harder technical problems to work with this division of
the livre into 240 than he would have had if the division had been 100.
 Pascaline with cover removed

The calculator had metal wheel dials that

were turned to the appropriate numbers
using a stylus; the answers appeared in
boxes in the top of the calculator. Blaises
calculated was a polished brass box, about
350mm by 125 mm by 75mm. It was compact
enough to carry. On the top was a row of
eight movable dials, with numerals from 0 to
9, which is use to add a column of up to
eight figures.
Summary

Blaise Pascal was a French philosopher, mathematician, scientist,

inventor, and theologian.
In mathematics, he was an early pioneer in the fields of game theory
and probability theory.
In philosophy he was an early pioneer in existentialism (existence
precedes essence)
As a writer on theology and religion he was a defender of Christianity.
In technology, he was an inventor of a mechanical calculator which is
said to be the ascendant of the modern-day digital calculators.
The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. We feel it
in a thousand things. I say that the heart naturally loves the
Universal Being, and also itself naturally, according as it gives itself
to them; and it hardens itself against one or the other at its will.
You have rejected the one, and kept the other. Is it by reason that
you love yourself?