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Blaise Pascal is considered one of the most versatile minds in modern
history. He was a writer and philosopher as well as a gifted mathematician
and physicist. Among his contributions are the theory of probability,
Pascal's triangle, and the Principle of Mathematical Induction. Pascal's
father, himself a mathematician, believed that his son should not study
mathematics until he was 15 or 16. But at age 12, Blaise insisted on
learning geometry, and proved most of its elementary theorems himself.
At 19, he invented the first mechanical adding machine. In 1647, after
writing a major treatise on the conic sections, he abruptly abandoned
mathematics because he felt his intense studies were contributing to
his ill health. He devoted himself instead to frivolous recreations
such as gambling, but this only served to pique his interest in probability.
In 1654 he miraculously survived a carriage accident in which his horses
ran off a bridge. Taking this to be a sign from God, he entered a monastery,
where he pursued theology and philosophy, writing his famous Pensees.
He also continued his mathematical research. He valued faith and intuition
more than reason as the source of truth, declaring that "the heart has
its own reasons, which reason cannot know."
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