7 h 3 minAudiobook8 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What connects a calculating machine, a gambler’s dice, and a searching mind drawn to Christian faith?
In Pascal, John Tulloch follows Blaise Pascal from a gifted childhood in provincial France into science, religious dispute, and philosophy. The boy works out geometry on his own. The young inventor builds a calculating machine. As Pascal investigates the vacuum and considers problems of chance, questions of mathematics sit alongside the demands of family and faith.
Tulloch, a Scottish minister and church historian, gives Pascal’s religious life as much attention as his science. You meet the writer who challenges the Jesuits in the Provincial Letters and the thinker behind the unfinished Pensées. A quarrel within French Catholicism shapes the story, bringing Pascal’s convictions into conflict with the religious authorities around him.
What you’ll discover
- A boy discovering geometry Meet the child who works out geometry for himself before his wider scientific life begins.
- Science with practical roots Follow Pascal’s calculating machine alongside the long columns of sums in his father’s tax work.
- Dice and difficult questions See how the Chevalier de Méré’s questions about gambling lead Pascal toward problems of chance.
- Faith amid fierce dispute Explore the Catholic quarrel surrounding Port-Royal and Pascal’s challenge to the Jesuits in the Provincial Letters.
- The mind behind the Pensées Approach the unfinished notes through a life that holds mathematics and Christian thought together.
Who will love it
For readers who love a life told alongside its ideas, and anyone curious how one mind could hold mathematics and religion together.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A prodigy raised by his father
- Science made him a public name
- Faith enters through the family
- Chance, society and the night of fire
- The Provincial Letters and the quarrel with the Jesuits
- Last years, the Pensées and what lasts
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Pascal
by John Tulloch · 1878
A calculating machine, a quarrel with the Jesuits and a night of intense prayer reveal Pascal's science and faith.
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In short
Blaise Pascal lived only thirty-nine years, yet he left his mark on geometry, physics, the theory of chance, French prose and Christian thought. John Tulloch, a Scottish minister and scholar who died in 1886, wrote this life of him for English readers in the 1870s.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A prodigy raised by his father
Blaise Pascal was born in 1623 in Clermont, in the Auvergne region of France. His mother died when he was three. His father, Étienne Pascal, held a legal and tax post and was a capable mathematician. Blaise had two sisters, Gilberte, who was older, and Jacqueline, who was younger.
After his wife's death, Étienne gave himself to the education of his children. He moved the family to Paris in 1631. There he taught Blaise himself, and he kept to a plan. The boy was to learn languages first, and mathematics was held back until he was older.
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What is Tulloch's Pascal about?
It is a short biography of Blaise Pascal, the seventeenth century French thinker. It covers his childhood, his work in mathematics and physics, his religious turning point, the Provincial Letters, and the unfinished writings that became the Pensées.
Who was Blaise Pascal?
Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, writer and Christian thinker who lived from 1623 to 1662. He built an early calculating machine, helped found probability theory, studied air pressure, and wrote the Provincial Letters and the Pensées.
What is the Pensées by Pascal?
The Pensées, meaning thoughts, are the loose papers Pascal gathered for a defense of the Christian faith. He died before finishing the book. Friends published the papers in 1670. They include his famous argument known as the wager.
The author
John Tulloch
1823–1886 · Scottish theologian
John Tulloch (1823–1886) was a Scottish theologian and Church of Scotland minister. He became principal of St Mary’s College, St Andrews, in 1854 and held that post until his death. He wrote Leaders of the Reformation (1859) and Pascal (1878). He died in Torquay, England.
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