Philosophy & Mathematics
Blaise Pascal
The Mathematician Who Stared into the Abyss
Pascal is for the person who lives in the tension between knowing that reason has limits and refusing to abandon it. You've probably felt the vertigo of being a thinking creature in an infinite universe that doesn't care — and suspected that distraction is how most people cope with it. Pascal named that coping mechanism "diversion" and argued that our entire civilization is built on the inability to sit quietly in a room. He was a mathematical genius, a physicist, and a mystic. His fragments read like dispatches from someone who has seen both the beauty and the terror of being human.
the wretchedness and grandeur of humanityfaith and reasonthe wagerdiversion and self-deceptionthe heart has its reasons
Where to Start Reading
Pensées (trans. A.J. Krailsheimer)
Pascal's unfinished masterwork — a collection of fragments intended for a defence of Christianity that was never completed. Many fragments stand alone as miniature essays. The Penguin edition is the standard. Read as you would poetry — slowly, not sequentially.
The Provincial Letters
Pascal's attack on Jesuit casuistry — theological polemic delivered with devastating wit. Surprisingly readable and historically fascinating. The letters that made Pascal famous in his own lifetime.
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”