Pascal's Wager [Paperback]

James A Connor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 21, 2007

A child prodigy, Pascal made essential additions to Descartes' work at the age of 16. By the age of 19, he had invented the world's first mechanical calculator. But despite his immense contributions to modern science and mathematical thinking, it is Pascal's wager with God that set him apart from his peers as a man fully engaged with both religious and scientific pursuits. One night in 1654, Pascal had a visit from God, a mystical experience that changed his life. Struggling to explain God's existence to others, he dared apply his mathematical work to religious faith. He argued for the existence of God basing his position on outcomes - his famous wager. By applying to the existence of God the same rules that governed the existence and position of the universe itself, Pascal sounded the death knell for medieval 'certainties' and paved the way for modern thinking.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Is there a God? Are you willing to bet your eternal soul on your answer? This essentially is what has become known as Pascal's Wager, a bare-bones approach to challenging the folly of unbelief. Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) is widely regarded as a brilliant mathematician, but he is less well-known as a deep student of religion and the Bible. He and his father were devoted Jansenists, schismatic Roman Catholics seeking to revive Augustine's stern views of judgment, predestination and radical orthodoxy. Connor, professor of English at Kean University in New Jersey and author of Kepler's Witch and Silent Fire, believes that this passion, along with Pascal's insatiable curiosity and his father's deep love for learning, produced the prodigy who would change the way we view both God and the sciences. Driven by the tumultuous events of 17th-century France (vividly recreated by Connor), and meeting resistance not only from fellow mathematicians like René Descartes but from such powerhouses as the Jesuits, young Pascal repeatedly proved himself more than just a "spoiled son of a controlling father," rising above the challenges of his youth and diminutive stature. Written for a general audience, this biography is a compelling and readable study of one of the most influential thinkers in religious history. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Following his biography of astronomer Johannes Kepler (Kepler's Witch, 2004), which dwelt on the religious side of Kepler's life, Connor takes up a near contemporary also beset by problems of faith and reason. Mathematician and mystic Blaise Pascal, Connor notes, matured during a revival of Catholicism in mid-seventeenth-century France. He was an adherent of Jansenism, whose theological parameters are explained amid Connor's narrative of Pascal's illness-plagued life (he died at 39). The account fixes Pascal amid his immediate family and their participation in Jansenism. Recounting the attraction of the Pascal family to the movement, Connor shows the conflict between domestic life and faith. His sister Jacqueline was prevented from entering a Jansenist convent, as she desired, because father and brother Blaise needed her help at home. Meanwhile, Blaise thought about probability and the existence of God, and devised the wager to which Connor's title refers. Well written and well informed (Connor is a former Catholic priest), this biography should interest readers drawn to the crossroads of religion and science. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Lion Publishing Plc (September 21, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0745952976
• ISBN-13: 978-0745952970
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,039,249 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting fellow, interesting times, interesting intersection of science and religion., January 15, 2007

By 

Mark Maisonneuve (Eastpointe, MI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pascal's Wager: The Man Who Played Dice with God (Hardcover)

This fairly short (216 pages) book centers around the central dilemma of Blaise Pascal's, the 17th century math prodigy's, life philosophy: How to reconcile his austere view of life as should be lived by a creation of God with his obvious love of math, science, and worldly ideas. Another hundred pages could have been used to flesh out Pascal's writings and scientific ideas so that the reader could make more of his own decision about him. Instead the author has chosen to present his own thesis for acceptance or rejection. There is considerable interesting background provided on the France of Pascal's time and on Jansenism, the ascetic (Augustinian) form of deterministic (Calvinistic) Catholicism that Pascal ultimately accepted.

There are several descriptions of the discoveries of Pascal and his peers but nothing that requires a math or science background. The last chapter is a musing by the author that uses the probabilistic view of modern life that Pascal originated by his seminal work in probability theory. The author's dividing of people into climbers and sprawlers is insightful especially if you're inunudated with amazing coincidence \ God's providence spam e-mails as I seem to be. Recommended if you're Roman Catholic, definitely recommended if you're a fan of the Jesuits (the author is a former Jesuit). The book reads fast and is divided into short chapters; useful if, as I do, you like to finish a chapter before getting off the mass transit. Well recommended.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful little book about physics and faith, October 5, 2007

By 

William E. Warner "war-ner" (Norfolk, Virginia USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pascal's Wager: The Man Who Played Dice with God (Hardcover)

As an engineer I had studied all about Pascal's products, the conic sections, the vacuum, and the probability studies. However, until I read this book never could have imagined the sad and inspirational story behind the genius, Blaise Pascal. It is written in short readable chapters that give you a vivid picture on the 17th century in which he lived. The book gives a spectacular vision of the beginning of science as we know it in the 21st century. It also examines the conflict of one man between his faith and his passion for science. I won't tell you how it comes out that for you to read. The only thing I will tell you is that it is not the usual science is good and religion is bad that you find in many book today. Read this book, and if you have children interested in science have them read it too, or better read it to them.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Mind Looking for a Heart, April 30, 2008

By 

Jesse L. Maghan (Chester, Connecticut USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Pascal's Wager: The Man Who Played Dice with God (Hardcover)

PASCAL'S WAGER: The Man Who Played Dice With God.
By James A. Connor, Harper Collins Publishers, 2006]

James Connor has given us the opportunity to enter the physical space and place of 1588-1670 France. He brings classic and substantive insight into the provincial and fomenting social mores of these times: the militancy and corruption of the papacy; the intrusive and diminishing ideology of Aristotelian philosophy; and, the deepening schism in the Catholic Church and monarchies of Pascal's times. Through the lens of Blaise Pascal's tightly-knit family, we enter the inordinate emotional sibling reliance (addiction) of children who have been raised in the isolated, dominating, and cloistered world of a widowed father suddenly thrust into self-survival and the salt of erudition. Through his infancy and childhood years Blaise Pascal was afflicted with an abnormality which forced him to shift into a shrieking knot of psychic pain whenever he was with more than one parent at a time. From the beginning of his days Pascal was labeled a dark angel. Caught in the polemic of the adamancy of original sin and simultaneously possessed with the fomenting dreams of a scientist, Pascal's heart and mind joined the tight rope of his life-long pain stricken body in total accommodation. The essential terror of this dilemma necessitated a sort of "doubling phenomenon" as a protective shield against the continuous threats to his spiritual identity and intelligence.

"When I think about the shortness of my life," Pascal said, "melted into the eternity that came before me, and into the eternity that will come after...and the insignificance of the space I fill and even see, I'm lost in the infinite vastness of that space that lies beyond, that space of which I am ignorant and which has no knowledge or care of me. I'm frightened and astonished to awaken in this place rather than that and I see no reason why I should be here and not there, now and not then. Who put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time come to me?" (Connor: 179)

Living in these polemics eventually brought Pascal into conceiving a rationality of faith based on gambling. Miraculously, Pascal's lifelong physical and emotional pain coupled with the Faustian delight of formulating mathematical theories resulted in the genius birth of the science of probability. Further, his piercing insights into the "law of big vs. the law of averages" and his brilliant staging of a new metaphysics embodied in quantum mechanics; his prideful invention of the first computing machine, the Pascaline are primo among the collective hallmarks of his extraordinary life. Connor's case study of Pascal's divided psyche exposes a tightly leashed self-will evolving into a theology of moral powerlessness. Pointing out that, in 1658, with the return of signaling pain, Pascal had taken to wearing "an iron girdle full of sharp points, which he put next to his skin." Any time Pascal had a prideful thought, or felt pulled toward some diversion, he pushed on the girdle, driving the points into his flesh. He wore that girdle until the day he died. Connor's biography of Blaise Pascal provides a curved mirror adroitly exposing the primal desire of mortals as they seek to decipher the Immortal; and, to discover the veracity of that great spiritual river running between the heart and the soul. He beautifully illustrates Pascal's scientific mind as influencing today's inquiries into cybernetics, physics, nanotechnology; advanced theories of relativity, space stations, and, yes, "the truth and the comics" imbedded in blasting beyond Disney's Black Hole. Within the context of our stumbling steps at the cusp of the 21st century, Connor offers a beguiling interpolative rendition of the facts during Pascal's life and times: How do we reconcile the scientist and the mystic? How do we formulate true questions, questions that ask a question and continue to ask another after that? Perhaps Blaise is whispering to us today, reminding that the ancient hawk of peril, courage, and creativity of his times coincide with the "new age" inquiry of our own. James A. Connor whispers back:

"Personally, this one universe is enough for me. I find it to be as weird as I can handle. Weirdness is a value in and of itself, for in weirdness lies poetry, and in poetry lies beauty, and in beauty lies truth, weird as it is. Pascal would appreciate this. (Connor: 215)

Jess Maghan Chester, CT