Pascal, Blaise

(19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) Pascal was a French mathematician, inventor, Christian philosopher, and writer.  Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his De l'Esprit géométrique ("Of the Geometrical Spirit"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous "Petites-Ecoles de Port-Royal" ("Little Schools of Port-Royal") (1).
Pascal invented the hydraulic press and the syringe. 
As a writer, Pascal explored themes on Christianity including denouncing the idea of casuistry.  Though religious in theme, Provincial Letters gained popularity as a literary text., Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1).
Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for a person to suffer (1)
Pascal's most famous theoological work, publishd posthumously, was called the Pensées ("Thoughts"),  In Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanity—seemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace.  In an entry in Wallace Stevens' journal dated 1906, he wrote of Pensées 'and other similar works, "how true they all are!  I should like to have a library of such things"  (2).  In Necessary Angel, he discusses Pascal in his essay "Imagination as Value."   "Pascal's understanding of the imagination was apart of his understanding of everything else" (3).
==Legacy==
SI unit of pressure named for him
programming language bears his name
Pascal's law
Pascal's triangle
Pascal's wager
==References==
#Blaise Pascal
#Stevens, Wallace. Letters of Wallace Stevens. Ed. Holly Stevens. Berkley: University of California Press, 1996. 88. Print.
#Stevens, Wallace. The Necessary Angel Collected Poetry and Poems. Ed. Frank  Kermode and Joan Richardson. New York: Library of America, 1997. 275-239.