Customer Reviews

Pascal's Wager: The Man Who Played Dice with God

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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

I knew about "Pascal's wager" before reading this book: the calculated risk of believing in God---or not believing. What I hadn't known was that this arose from Pascal's experiences with gambling, science, and God. He wrestled to bring math and God together in a lucid way, and yet he embraced Jansenism (a Calvinistic branch of Catholicism that ultimately was condemned as heretical). He was sick and in pain much of the time, and yet he loved life.

I can't imagine a more qualified author for "Pascal's Wager". Connor is a former Jesuit priest who also holds degrees in science, philosphy, and literature. I highly recommend this book.

I was so impressed with this book, it is so well written - really lovely language besides showing the subject important. It is a very good book for getting some feel for the period of science in its infancy, a successful infancy in this case. I also recommend George H. Daniels American Science in the Age of Jackson for his comments on the writing of science histories. Genius is not predictable and does not come out of a natural progression of scientific knowledge. So many other factors influence a person, let alone a society, to either embrace or obstruct the advancement of knowledge. It takes a certain amount of luck, providence, connections and charm, too, never hurts. I also recommend the novel The Cry and the Covenant by Morton Thompson about the obstruction of the simple idea of sepsis, for the case of an unlucky example.

While I found this book interesting, it suffers from inflated article syndrome- while not very long to begin with, it is still too long and suffers from redundancy and some "filler" needed to bulk it up to book size.

Pascal is a fascinating historical figure who straddled the worlds of reason and faith, and the author does a good job in chronicling and analyzing this nexus. However, while informative, a great deal of this book deals with Christian sects of 17th century France and it this which could have been greatly truncated with no real harm to the story. Unfortunately this would have resulted in a very small book indeed, or better yet an in depth magazine article, something better for the reader but not for the author's financial situation. Oh well...

I did enjoy the last chapter, which is almost a tangential riff on the uncertainty of existence, something that quantum mechanics has lent a scientific respectability to, and the uncanny way the universe seems designed to create conscious life, a fact that modern science has found so difficult to explain that it is forced to veer off on its own journey of faith with the Multiverse hypothesis. Paul Davies among others have written books on these subjects if you care to explore them in more detail.

All in all, I do feel I know Pascal, and his times, better after reading this book. But the question is , was that increase in knowledge worth the cost [both financial and timewise] of acquiring it? So this devolves into a mini Pascal's wager which I am not sure I can answer in the affirmative.

This is a book that combines my two favorite passions; mathematics and Catholicism. The book talks about the life of Pascal and much of his religious thought, noting his major mathematical and scientific achievements. In the book, we learn that Pascal was a Jansenist; that is, a movement that was very strict concerning sin and penance. The author discusses the famous "Pascal's Wager" and shows how all the criticisms in this day and age miss the point; Pascal was addressing a specific group of people at a specific time in history in a specific place in history. Indeed, Pascal's wager is silly in a vacuum (haha, get it? he discovered the existence of the vacuum) but it is not meant to be argued in a vacuum. One thing that the scientist/mathematician reading the book would probably like to have seen more of in the book is exposition on the math that Pascal did. Exposition on the science in a "popular level" is done in such books as "The Man who Loved only Numbers", "The Man who Knew Infinite", and other biographies of famous mathematicians, but not here. The chapters are short, and cover specific years, following Pascal along his life. It was an interesting read, and I learned a lot about Pascal, his faith, and his work.